What are the odds of overtime play…

The Republicans Leadership of the House (well at least the Orange One) have decided to cave on their latest hostage taking excursion. That means that on Friday morning, Boehner will ask fellow Republican House members to support President Obama’s position on the payroll tax cut extension by unanimous consent. If all goes according to plan, then folks will not see their taxes increase, unemployment extensions end and medicare payments to doctors shrink on January 1st.

That is a pretty big “if”.

Afterall, we are talking about the Republican Party and the Tea Party mob that controls it. Just one House Member—seeking to become the new hero of the 27 percenters—could throw the entire game into overtime. All he or she would have to do is object to the motion for unanimous consent. That would extended any final resolution to some time next week when all members of the House would be forced to take a recorded vote on the two month extension.

Now, no sane person, party or movement would do that—but we are talking about the Tea Party—so I think the odds are slightly better than 50/50 that one of their wankers in the House will object and force another week of nonsense before the majority of the House overwhelming votes to support the President. And the person forcing a week of delay will become an instant hero to the wingnuts demanding the crazification of all politics. The base will love it.

And they’ll hate Boehner for his cave.

It is only a matter of time before Cantor and some of the boys surround John to stick in the knives.

So it goes.

Cheers

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The comedic stylings of Pravda on the Potomac

It’s funny because it assumes that the weeping Orange one was ever in control of anything.

Claiming that any establishment Republican is in charge of the Republican Party is a beltway in-joke that can be told over and over again. Every Conservative “leader” is just a mini-Danton living in fear of the moment when the mob turns on him or her. Perhaps this is why John is a fountain of tears.

Cheers

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Suffer Little Children

Good post by Steven Taylor over at OTB and Rick Santorum’s odd morality:

Having said that (and hopefully have forestalled comments along those lines), Santorum does keep saying things that I think a substantial portion of the population believes. To wit: he frequently makes moral claims that paint the picture of a universe in which all outcomes are justly generated by the actions of individuals. In this universe, people are successful because they work hard and make good choices and people fail because they do not work hard enough and/or because of bad choices.

Now, let me stipulate another point: it is doubtlessly true that hard work and good decisions are incredibly helpful to the generation of success whilst slothfulness and bad decisions frequently lead to bad outcomes. This is not the issue. The issue is the degree to which is it possible to neatly categorize the citizenry into nice, neat boxes of the good and hard-working (i.e., the successful) and the bad and slothful (i.e., those who have failed in one capacity or another). Indeed, this issue is the crux of the social policy debate and is at the heart of contemporary partisanship (e.g., it is why Republicans frequently cast tax increases as “punishing achievers”—a phrase rife with normative judgments about the way the universe works).

Along these lines we can go back a few weeks to a town hall meeting in Iowa where Santorum extolled the value of “suffering” and apparently finds it problematic that various policies (e.g., food stamps, Medicaid, etc.) ameliorate suffering because, after all, “suffering is part of life and it’s not a bad thing, it is an essential thing in life.”

The thing is, Steven doesn’t realize it, but the only thing that separates Santorum from most of our elites is how blunt he is- he actually uses the word suffering, and not some euphemistic bullshit like “shared sacrifice” that David Brooks or Douthat or some other douche bag might trot out. It’s the core of the entire mythology they have used to divide “real America” from the decadent coastal elites. Real Americans understand “belt-tightening” and don’t want a “handout” and will “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” It’s so ingrained in our conversation that we actually have people making the honest-to-goodness argument that we shouldn’t extend unemployment benefits during the worst recession since the Great Depression because… we don’t people too comfortable while unemployed or they might not look for a job.

Now, mind you, as with everything else involving the GOP, this is a hoax. When they talk about suffering, they aren’t talking about the rich and well-to-do. They are talking about everyone else out in idiot America who hasn’t been able to see through this shit and keep voting Republican because both sides do it or the baby jeebus told them to save snowflake babies or because Obama is coming for their guns or because gays make them feel icky. That’s how they can simultaneously argue that the payroll tax should die but god forbid any tax cuts on the rich expire.

And don’t get me started on the glibertarians, who think basically the same thing, except without the religious component. To them, if you are suffering, it was because you made unwise choices in our fabulous free market FAP FAP FAP. At any rate, suffering is the entire core of the GOP philosophy. It’s just that you are the one they want suffering. But cheer up, I’m sure Chris Matthews will agree it builds character.

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RIP, USPS

The Post Office didn’t die, it was murdered:

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night will keep your postman from delivering that Mad Men DVD you’ve been waiting for. But legacy labor costs and the disruptive force of the Internet? Yeah, that’ll do it.

Today, the Postal Service announced roughly $3 billion in service cuts that will slow down the delivery of first-class mail for the first time in 40 years. Starting in April, it plans to shutter more than half of its 461 mail processing centers, stretching out the time it will take to ship everything from Netflix DVDs to magazines. One-day delivery of stamped envelopes will all but certainly become a thing of the past.

The announcement is just the latest sign of a sad and increasingly dire fact: the Postal Service is in shambles. This past fiscal year, it lost a mere $5.1 billion. In 2012, it’s facing a record $14.1 billion shortfall and possible bankruptcy. In order to turn a profit, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe says the agency needs to cut $20 billion from its annual budget by 2015. That’s almost a third of its yearly costs.

How did it come to this? The culprits include the Internet, labor expenses, and, as with pretty much every problem our country faces now, Congress.

This was a planned homicide:

At the very end of that year, Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA). Under PAEA, USPS was forced to “prefund its future health care benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years in an astonishing ten-year time span” — meaning that it had to put aside billions of dollars to pay for the health benefits of employees it hasn’t even hired yet, something “that no other government or private corporation is required to do.”

So when rural Americans start screaming because the mail isn’t coming, they can go blame their “fiscally conservative” Congresscritter.

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The Grover must be appeased…

Congress must act this month to extend unemployment benefits and the extend/expand the Social Security Tax Cut. A failure to do so will increase taxes for every working American and cut life sustaining support for the unemployed. To pay for this, Democrats have suggested that the Nation’s 300,000 millionaires have a very slight increase in taxes. This is quite fair and most people in the Nation support the plan.

But it angers The Grover and he must be appeased.

On Thursday, the vengeful demigod of the modern Republican Party met with his fearful worshipers in Congress to tell them what was and what was not acceptable.

Turns out that The Grover does not view increasing taxes on EVERY working American as an increase in taxes. In fact, the GOP demigod has declared that letting a temporary tax cut expire is not a tax increase—if it is a tax cut that only impacts workers:

But Norquist differed. “For the president to run around and say not continuing a temporary tax cut is an increase is inaccurate,” he said in an interview after the closed-door meeting with the lawmakers.

Norquist said neither himself nor his group, Americans for Tax Reform, necessarily opposes extending the payroll tax cut—although he suggests any scenario that includes “another one-year extension of the tax holiday in return for a permanent tax increase on something else” would be a “mistake.”

The Grover has spoken. A tax increase on millions of Americans is not actually a tax increase because the Social Security Tax Holiday is temporary and will expire without Congressional action to extend it. But, The Grover does not apply the same logic to every temporary tax cut with an expiration date

As a demigod who makes the rule, The Grover can also break them. In a complete flip-flop, The Grover has also ruled that letting the temporary Bush Tax cuts for the top 1% expire in January 2013 would be increasing taxes. Strange are the ways of The Grover and one should never expect consistency from a conservative grifter demigod.

On Thursday, he gave his minions marching orders. An extension of the Tax Holiday and unemployment benefits would be OK as long as they are not paid for by asking that any millionaire might be forced to cut back on their caviar allowance by even the smallest tax on their earnings above $1,000,000.

Sacrifice is needed, but it must come from the poor and the middle-class.

Congressional Republicans have come up with a plan for a ritual sacrifice of workers that is crafted to appease The Grover. Instead of asking any of the Nation’s 300,000 millionaire to pay their share, they will ask all Federal Employees to pay for the extension of the tax holiday and unemployment benefit through payroll freezes and the elimination of 200,000 workers from the work force.

Jobs will be destroyed, more people will suffer and gap between the 99% and the 1% will get wider, but sacrificing workers is how Modern Conservatives engage in the ritual blood sacrifice that The Grover demands. And The Grover—above all other oaths and all other Gods—must be appeased or you will face his terrible vengeance. No wonder John the Orange One is always crying…

And with that, how about an Open Thread.

Cheers

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Little triggers

Did anyone think that the Super Committee wouldn’t fail?

What happens next is that they block the triggered cuts to defense and get to work extending the Bush tax cuts, right?

Both sides are at fault here, Obama showed a lack of leadership, this is all great news for Bloomberg-Bayh 2012.

Update. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to get this Washington Post reporter to agree that this is great news for Bayh-Bloomberg or some other idiotic “centrist” mash-up (I’m having trouble thinking of others today).

Update. Two Bayhmentum, Bloomentum questions so far, but the guy handled them well.

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Move Along Now, Nothing to See Here

The NY Times notices the rich are getting richer and the poor, well, you know the drill:

At Wal-Mart, shoppers cut back on staples like milk and meat that had price increases of a few cents. At Saks Fifth Avenue, they paid full price for shoes and designer fashions at a rate higher than before the recession.

As several big chains reported third-quarter results on Tuesday, the divide between hard-pressed and prosperous Americans continued to be a defining characteristic of the retail economy.

“Clearly it’s a bifurcated market,” said Stephen I. Sadove, chairman and chief executive of Saks, in an interview. “The high-end consumer is much more tied to the stock market and the Dow and how they’re feeling about their personal situation, more so than the lower end of the market,” where concerns about gas prices and unemployment were more prevalent.

The rarified air of a Saks CEO. The reason the poor and working class are cutting back on necessities like meat and milk isn’t because they are “more concerned,” it’s because THEY’RE FUCKING BROKE AND HAVE NO JOB. You may cut back on luxuries out of concern, but you don’t cut back on feeding your family unless you have no money. You may say to yourself “the market really took a dive, so I guess I’ll hold off on that Bugatti,” but no one says “the market was down a touch, I think I’ll starve the kids.” Wanker. I’m to the point now that I think any asshole making stupid remarks like this should be forced to wear a top hat and monocle in public so everyone knows to kick them in the junk.

Maybe that cheating scumbag John Edwards was on to something. At any rate, it looks like the days of the rich feeling guilty about conspicuous consumption are over.

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Mitt Romney is always welcome here

We in Ohio were lectured for months by Governor Kasich and media that Kasich’s union busting law was not about unions. It was about health insurance. It was about merit pay. It was about budgets. It was about balancing the state budget. Very few in Ohio believed that, because it was obviously not true.

The Republican base in Ohio are now going to push a constitutional amendment that will destroy both public sector and private sector unions. That’s what opponents of Governor Kasich like me told Ohio private sector union members. We said “they’ll go after you next”. What we didn’t know is that they would go after private sector unions members even if they failed in destroying public sector unions, but it really doesn’t matter. What we said they were planning is in fact what they’re now doing.

This wasn’t hard to predict. Governor Walker in Wisconsin told us all about it, way back in February:

Gov. Scott Walker claims that Ohio’s overwhelming rejection of anti-labor legislation modeled on the measures he developed and promoted in Wisconsin has no bearing on the debate about whether he should remain in office.
The governor is in full spin mode.

By any measure, last Tuesday’s election results from Ohio represented a devastating rejection of the agenda Walker and his allies have been peddling since February. Offered an opportunity to endorse a Walker-style attack on collective bargaining rights for state, county and municipal workers and teachers, Ohioans voted “no” by 61-39 percent.
Of Ohio’s 88 counties — with big cities, small towns and rural areas — 82 voted to defend public employees and their unions. More Ohioans took a pro-union position in 2011 than voted for the governor who promoted the anti-labor legislation, John Kasich, in 2010.

Faced with the facts, Walker’s political team claimed that comparisons of Wisconsin and Ohio were “ridiculous.” Funny, that’s not what Wisconsin’s governor was saying back in February, when he refused to negotiate with unions representing state employees, and when he and his aides tried to lock hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites out of the state Capitol.
“I talk to Kasich every day — John’s gotta stand firm in Ohio,” Walker told the caller he thought was David Koch. Walker said that Kasich was one of the new Republican governors who, like the Wisconsinite, “got elected to do something big.” “You’re the first domino,” the Koch caller said of Walker’s anti-labor push in Wisconsin.“Yes,” replied Walker. “This is our moment.”

Throughout the conversation, Walker portrayed himself as the quarterback of a national push to cut pay and benefits for teachers and other public workers, and to crush unions. And he suggested that Kasich was on his team, carrying out the same mission in Ohio that Walker has undertaken in Wisconsin. “Little did I know how big it would be nationally,” Walker chirped. “This is our time to change the course of history.”

People don’t change the course of history by assessing public workers 15% more in health care costs. People don’t change the course of history by balancing a state budget. Governor Walker isn’t telling the truth about his objectives or his plans, just like Governor Kasich wasn’t telling the truth about his objectives or his plans. That’s now become painfully obvious in Ohio, because conservatives are moving ahead to destroy both public and private sector unions.

The campaign to recall Walker kicked off. It will be harder in Wisconsin than it was in Ohio, because in Ohio John Kasich is so disliked and his campaign staff were so inept and incredibly arrogant that we thought at times they were on our side.

We also got some last minute help from the entire GOP 2012 Presidential field, who parachuted in to tell everyone in Ohio that Kasich had lied to us all for nearly a year, and all the GOP superstars were 110% on board with the union busting campaign Kasich had been vehemently denying he was conducting. That must have been awkward for the former Fox News personality. Wisconsin, invite Mitt Romney to visit with Walker volunteers the week before the vote, and then sit back and watch as the entire GOP Presidential field endorses the anti-worker agenda Walker will have just spent six months denying. It’s magical.

We’ll be watching in Ohio, and we’re pulling for you.

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By The Way, David Brooks Is Still Always Wrong

I know this is already long since fishwrap, but amidst the many disembowelings of David Brooks discovery that he has always been at war with Eurasia   always  loved Mittens, I have to rage, rage, at the relentless, endless, fetishization of the deepest, most degrading fantasy of the right.  No, not that one.  Nor that one either.  Nor this.

No it’s the almost touching faith evinced by Mr. Brooks and the entire GOP presidential field in the existence of a free market in health care.  So, just to flagellate a truly dead horse, let’s take a look at one specific passage from Our Lady of Perpetual Broderism’s Romney tongue-bath:

True Medicare reform replaces the fee-for-service system with premium support. Government gives people money, rising slowly over time, to shop around for their own private insurance plans. The system would reward efficiency and quality, not just quantity. Competition between providers would unleash a wave of innovation.

The only problem is that the marketplace for health care that exists in the world real people inhabit bears little or no resemblance to Brooks’ pleasant vision of informed consumers, with full information in hand, shopping around for the perfect combination of benefits and price they need—not just now, but through the life (and death) cycle all of us endure.

 

That is: most evocations of the free market in just about anything call up spherical cows, simplified (and dangerously convincing) models of what actually happens in the world.  But to imagine a genuine Ec. 101 free market in health care—and to praise someone as “serious” for building policy on the assumed reality of such delusion—that takes real effort, a true commitment to avoid knowing inconvenient facts. More »

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Too much voting going on, apparently

Why aren’t our friends on the other side of the aisle democracy enthusiasts?

County boards of election must stop early in-person voting as of 6 p.m. Friday, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted has advised, prompting Democrats to cry foul. This occurs as a number of counties are reporting higher-than-usual absentee mail-in and early in-person voting for an off-year election, perhaps driven by interest in high-profile ballot issues such as Issue 2, which affects collective bargaining.
The early voting issue was created by a voter referendum effort on a controversial overhaul of state election law, House Bill 194, that had a spillover effect on separate legislation, House Bill 224, containing some similar language. The referendum effort has placed House Bill 194 on hold indefinitely, but the latter law passed unanimously and took effect last week.

As a result, Mr. Husted, a Republican, issued an advisory to boards of election in mid-October that early voting is prohibited during the last three days before Tuesday’s election. The Lucas County Board of Elections had scheduled business hours for Saturday and Sunday but canceled them to comply with last month’s advisory. Democrats, however, contend Mr. Husted based his advisory on a law dealing primarily with military ballots that had its legs cut out from under it by the referendum on the first law.

In Lucas County, roughly half of 16,150 absentee ballots requested as of yesterday had been returned. Elections Director Ben Roberts reported the board has received them at the pace of roughly 170 per day, up from an average of 123 at about the same time before the November, 2010, election. “We expect a deluge in the last two days,” he said.

Briefly, Democrats and allies gathered half a million signatures to delay a voter suppression law passed by the Ohio GOP. Now Republicans are using a different law to shut down early voting in some areas, because Democrats have gotten better at “banking votes”, or, getting our voters out prior to election day so it isn’t as crazy on election day.

I don’t know if we’re going to defeat John Kasich’s union-busting law, a law that was loudly endorsed last week by each and every GOP candidate for President, but I think this tactic will backfire. People love early voting, and they love convenient hours for voting, because those things make sense.

One really does have to wonder about a US political party who get all creative with directives and start putting the hammer down when people vote. Too much voting going on here, peons. Cut that out. This must be another brand-new, bed-rock principle of the ever-evolving Conservative Movement.

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Town Hall Attendees Heckle Paul Ryan and His Very Serious Budget (Again)

He haz a big sad.

Paul Ryan was booed (again) at a town hall meeting in Kenosha, Wisconsin last week, after one of his constituents pressed him about the GOP budget. As you may recall, Paul Ryan’s Very Serious Budget would turn Medicare into a voucher program, and amounts to little more than a decimation of the programs (Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security) on which the elderly and poor rely on to… you know… not die.

One audience member, David Drath, argued that he couldn’t survive on the proposals in Ryan’s policy, and that if those policy were enacted, “you might as well put a gun to my head.”

From Think Progress:

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) received a chilly reaction from audience members at a listening session in Kenosha, Wisconsin on Friday, as multiple constituents challenged the House Budget Chairman on the specifics of his budget and how it would affect current and future retirees. One audience member argued that Ryan’s proposal to push seniors out of traditional Medicare and into more-expensive private coverage is tantamount to murder:

More »

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Sudden Ascent

Has anyone become more of a blogging force in such a short time as Charles Pierce? At any rate, his latest victim, Paul Ryan, is drawn and quartered over at Esquire, and it is a wondrous read:

Sentence No. 2: an entire K-Tel collection of Golden Oldies. “A Safety net, not a hammock.” “Dependency.” “Complacency.” “The Draining of The Will.” (That last one sounds like a film on penile abscesses directed by Leni Riefenstahl.) Holy god, this stuff was old when Newt Gingrich was peddling it in his previous life. Tell us, congressman, when you were skating for a couple of years on your Social Security survivor’s benefits, and when your family stayed on the government dole for longer that that, “taking” from, among other people, my parents and me, how did you manage not to be “lulled” into a life of “complacency” and “dependency”? How were you not “drained” of your “incentive”? How was your “will to make the most of your life” not drained, as well. What’s the magic number? Two years on the dole? Three? Five? Let us know so we can stop pestering you and find our bootstraps.

I suspect it was because, after you left the family earth-moving business, you eventually went to work on a government paycheck for Senator Bob Kasten, and then you went to work on a government paycheck for Senator Sam Brownback, and then you went briefly into the private sector — as a speechwriter for the late Jack Kemp — before going back on a government paycheck when you were elected to the House, 13 years ago. At which point, you became the pet Big Thinker and point man for a bunch of rich people, including many — Was the wine to your liking, by the way? — of the same folks that crashed the economy in 2008, thereby creating the conditions that, much to your obvious pain and chagrin, are turning so many of your fellow citizens into dependent, complacent, will-lacking slobs, because they’re taking unemployment benefits. That pretty much guaranteed you wouldn’t be paying for your own dinners much any more.

If Paul Ryan had any shame, that would leave a mark. As we know, however, sociopaths don’t feel shame.

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Beating Three Nines With A Hand Full Of Jokers

Not to be outdone by Herman Cain’s awful 9-9-9 plan, Rick Perry shuffles the deck and draws an even more regressive mess of a tax scheme to transfer wealth to the top.  K-Drum takes a look at Perry’s cards.

The plan starts with giving Americans a choice between a new, flat tax rate of 20% or their current income tax rate. The new flat tax preserves mortgage interest, charitable and state and local tax exemptions for families earning less than $500,000 annually, and it increases the standard deduction to $12,500 for individuals and dependents….My plan also abolishes the death tax once and for all, providing needed certainty to American family farms and small businesses….To help older Americans, we will eliminate the tax on Social Security benefits….We will eliminate the tax on qualified dividends and long-term capital gains to free up the billions of dollars Americans are sitting on to avoid taxes on the gain.

It’s a “flat tax” that keeps many of the same deductions that the flat tax is supposed to get rid of.  Perry can’t even get that part right, it seems.  The choice of the old tax code or the new one is of course a terrible idea, assuring massive tax breaks for the rich and nothing for the poor.  It’s a propaganda tool.

What can you even say about this? It sounds less like a tax plan than a big ol’ stew pot of right-wing applause lines, all the way up to the inane insistence that eliminating the estate tax has nothing to do with rich people and is only designed to provide “needed certainty to American family farms and small businesses.” Should we laugh or cry? Perry has actually managed to combine two separate conservative memes (the estate tax is all about family farms, uncertainty is hobbling the economy) into one single sentence that makes even less sense than either of them separately. It’s hard not to be impressed.

Although the choice part will assure that if “you dumb broke liberals want to raise taxes dur hurr” why we can take Perry’s Hobson’s choice and pay more!  It gets Perry back in the game for a few more weeks heading into the end of the year and of course assures Romney will have his own awful “flat tax plan” soon, which is the real point of the measure.

Either way, the 1% wins by stacking the deck.

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Jobs Are Not My Job, Man

Ah, my senator Mitch McConnell once again showed a keen grasp on Sunday of what his constituents want from a Washington politician.

CNN’s Candy Crowley reminded the Kentucky Republican that a recent Gallup/USA Today poll found that 75 percent of Americans supported President Barack Obama’s plan to provide additional money for teachers, police and firefighters.

“Republicans helped not break a filibuster, if you will, in a procedural vote,” Crowley explained. “You basically got rid of that jobs bill which would have given money to the states, designed to hire or retain fireman, policeman and teachers. When we look at the polling, 75 percent of Americans supported that and yet, the Republicans were against it. So, how do you justify that in your mind?”

“Well, Candy, I’m sure that Americans do,” McConnell remarked. “I certainly do approve of firefighters and police. The question is whether the federal government ought to be raising taxes on 300,000 small businesses in order to send money down to bail out states for whom firefighters and police work. They’re local and state employees.”

“The question is whether the federal government can afford to be bailing out states. I think the answer is no.”

Sorry unemployed Kentuckians, your senator says we can’t afford to lift a finger to rehire teachers and firefighters, or to in fact do ANYTHING.  But we sure could afford a war in Iraq and to give the banks trillions, yes?  Unemployed here in the Bluegrass State?  Sorry, we’re broke.  Jobs are not Mitch McConnell’s job, you see.

And we’re broke because we can never, ever raise taxes on our precious job creators…only that’s not what the bill would have done, anyway.

“Yeah, these bills are designed on purpose not to pass,” McConnell asserted. “I mean, the president is deliberately trying to create an issue here. Look, the American people don’t think, I’m sure, that it’s a good idea. Four out of five of the so-called millionaires are business owners, over 300,000 small businesses in our country that hire people. I don’t think the American people think that raising taxes on business, small business in the middle of this economic situation we find ourselves in is a particularly good idea.”

On the contrary Mitch, they think it’s a great idea.  And the best part is that all these unemployed?  President Obama is “deliberately trying to create an issue” because the unemployed should apparently really be invisible or something.  Why, this unemployment issue wouldn’t exist if you know who would just keep his mouth shut, right?

If we eliminate taxes, it’ll create infinite jobs, you know.

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Herman Cain has some explaining to do on health care

Great piece by Ryan Cooper at the Washington Monthly on Herman Cain’s role in defeating the Clinton health care plan.

In a surprising swing in the Republican presidential field, Herman Cain has rocketed to second place, just behind Mitt Romney. Like all the other candidates, he has promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and even claimed (falsely) that he would have died from his liver cancer under Obamacare. Cain actually got his start in politics helping to defeat the 90’s health care reform plan. Organizations from several different areas attacked the Clinton effort, but some of the most effective opposition came from small business organizations, led by the National Restaurant Association and the National Federation of Independent Business. That effort to kill health care reform, coupled with the total failure of the right to pass (or even seriously propose) their own plans, ultimately hurt small businesses.

Cain is a lot clearer about what he is against that what he is for. He opposed the Clinton reform, Ted Kennedy’s Patient Bill of Rights of the late 90’s, Canada-style healthcare, and SCHIP (the children’s health insurance program). He opposed both the Medicare prescription drug benefit and the House proposal to allow negotiation with drug companies in order to control the program’s increasing costs. And, of course, he opposed the Affordable Care Act.

I live and work in a rural county in Ohio where lots and lots of low-wage and part-time working parents rely on S-CHIP to cover their children. The program is wildly popular. I would like Herman Cain to address his opposition to the state childrens health insurance plan, given that his entire claim to fame is that he ran a pizza chain, which is a low wage service sector employer.

Herman Cain, when he got cancer, could call up T. Boone Pickens to get him into a top-notch facility in Houston. But his efforts to defeat reform, in the end, did no such favors for small businesses or their employees, who were increasingly left twisting in the wind.

Health care for me, but not for thee, and not for the children of my low-wage employees, either. Cain was wrong about the Clinton plan, he’s wrong about the ACA, but he was also wrong about S-CHIP. The difference between S-CHIP and the Clinton plan and the Obama law is that we know S-CHIP is a great program that millions of children currently rely on. S-CHIP works. Parents love it. Covering millions of children was the right thing to do. In fact, the one and only reason we were able to pass and then expand S-CHIP over conservative opposition, including last-ditch vetoes by former President Bush, is because the public knew it was the right thing to do.

Herman Cain should have to address the parents of the millions of children covered under S-CHIP and explain why he opposed providing basic health care to their children, and whether he regrets that.

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