Early in the year, groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) announced that dozens of states were introducing legislation to repeal "Obamacare." Yet aside from a handful of states, they were defeated across the country. 26 states and counting have rejected health care nullification, while even the most right-wing state governments are moving forward on implementing the new law for the benefit of their citizens, as documented at alecfail.com. See the map of failure after the jump.

(States highlighted in blue have enacted health care nullification bills. States highlighted in gray have approved ballot measures attempting to nullify health care which require approval by voters later this year.)

ALEC style bills or proposed constitutional amendments have failed in Alabama,Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas,Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi,Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota,Tennessee, West Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

In Louisiana, Gov. Jindal signed into law a symbolic measure (HB 1474) that specifically states "No provision in this Section shall be interpreted or held to supercede any provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010... or any other federal law."

In other states where ALEC has claimed success, such as Montana and Texas, health care nullification bills have yet to even be introduced.

At the same time the right wing is focused on grandstanding and political gamesmanship, legislators and officials in all 50 states are moving forward with the hard work of planning the effective implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act at the state level. Many of these efforts began well before the passing and signing of federal reform, and will accelerate as responsible leaders in the states focus on delivering quality, affordable health care to their constituents.

ALEC and its allies claimed a goal of defeating Obamacare in 26 states where they've been defeated. If they are going to own victory in Missouri, they should own up to defeat in all the other states as well.

There is little question that Citizens United will be one of the major cases that defines this year's term--and in many ways will frame the legacy of the rise of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito whose presence on the court has led to the dismemberment of campaign finance regulation. "A Massive New Threat of Corruption and Corporate Control":  With Citizens United, the Supreme court has given corporations the same free speech rights as individuals and allowed unlimited election spending by corporations when not coordinated with candidates. U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island said recently,  The Citizens United decision -- yet another 5-4 decision [opens] our democratic system to a massive new threat of corruption and corporate control.  There is an unmistakable pattern.  For all the talk of umpires and balls and strikes at the Supreme Court, the strike zone for corporations gets better every day. To emphasize its hostility to restrictions on the power of the wealthy over our elections,  the Supreme Court ordered a freeze of Arizona's public financing matching funds system which gives candidates participating in public financing additional funds when opponents spend above benchmarked levels of spending.  This means that publicly-financed candidates will be eligible to receive only one-third of the money to which they'd otherwise be entitled. Letting Corporate Arbitrators Decide if Their Own Decisions are Unfair:  In Rent-A-Center, West v. Jackson, the Supreme Court - by the same pro-corporate 5-4 vote lineup of Justices - further closed the courthouse door for individuals abused by their employers.  The Court held that employees cannot only be forced to have complaints about racial discrimination or other employer abuses decided by private arbitrators (a reality decided in previous terms), but also that where an employee feels the terms of the arbitration agreement are unfair and unconscionable, it is up to the corporate-chosen arbitrator to decide if the arbitration agreement is unfair.  In this case, for example, the arbitration agreement limited claims an employee might bring against the employer, while exempting those claims that Rent-a-Center might raise, and restricted an employee's ability to gather evidence. Instead of allowing a judge to decide whether the agreement to arbitrate could be enforced, the Supreme Court majority leaves it to the arbitrator chosen by the agreement alleged to be unfair to decide the issue, cutting off access to the courts even for the most basic threshold issue of whether these arbitrators and the rules imposed are a fair substitute for a day in court. Privatizing Democracy:  So just as corporations now have unlimited rein to use their money without regulation to dominate elections, those same corporations now have de facto have authority to run private courts to decide the legal rights of their own employees without little or no judicial restraint.

However, beyond these pro-corporate decisions, the Supreme Court, often with surprising configurations of majorities, continued its trend in recent years of deferral to state authority in more cases where core corporate interests are not at stake. States and the Second Amendment:  The exception to the trend this year was McDonald v. City of Chicago, which extended the Second Amendment to restrict state gun regulations.  But even in that case, the majority went out of its way to affirm that many traditional gun control regulations will still be upheld even where an individual right to keep firearms for self-defense in the home is protected. Since most states have their own constitutional and statutory reasonableness test for gun regulations, the practical effects of McDonald may end up being relatively limited. Rejecting "Takings" Doctrine:  While right-wing constitutional lawyers for years hoped to create a majority to limit most local government land regulations as illegal "takings" under the Constitution, the Court in Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection not only rejected a property rights challenge to a state beach-erosion statute, but Justice Anthony Kennedy refused to even give a fifth vote to the proposition that a court ruling could ever constitute a "taking" of private property, a sign that most reasonable land use regulations will be protected from federal judicial second-guessing in the future. Universities and Groups Excluding Gay Students:  In Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, state universities retained their authority to deny funding to student groups that exclude certain students, such as gay and lesbian students, from membership.  The Court upheld the University of California-Hastings' policy of requiring student groups to take on "all comers" as a prerequisite to official school recognition as a reasonable and viewpoint neutral restriction. Public Disclosure of Ballot Initiative Signers:  Given increasing use of fraud by those promoting right-wing ballot initiatives, progressives won an important victory in Doe v. Reed, in which the Court held that disclosure of signers of political ballot initiatives did not generally violate the First Amendment (although they might be able to in the future argue that specific harms could lead to some restriction on disclosure in a future case).  In a strong argument for respecting state regulation of ballot initiatives, Justices Sotomayor, Stevens and Ginsburg wrote: These mechanisms of direct democracy are not compelled by the Federal Constitution.  It is instead up to the people of each State, acting in their sovereign capacity, to decide whether and how to permit legislation by popular action.  States enjoy "considerable leeway" to choose the subjects that are eligible for placement on the ballot and to specify the requirements for obtaining ballot access (e.g., the number of signatures required, the time for submission, and the method of verification). Reviewing Public Employee Text Messages:  In a slightly idiosyncratic case, the Court in City of Ontario v. Quon unanimously held that a police department's decision to review the text messages of employees who exceeded the monthly limit on their office pagers in order to determine whether the monthly limit should be raised was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.

Criminal justice decisions by the Supreme Court invariably combine a combination of invocation of individual rights, discussions of state authority and obscure procedural explorations.  While cases this term had few singular disruptions of previous principles, they had a number of clear incremental changes effecting state criminal proceedings. (See this ACLU writeup for an extended list of additional cases). State Convictions and Immigration:  Of import for current debates on the role of states in immigration policy, the court ruled in two cases that courts had to carefully weigh how state criminal statutes interact with federal deportation rules: In Padilla v. Kentucky, the Court  held that attorneys have an obligation to carefully advise their clients of the immigration consequences of pleading guilty.  In this case, the defendant- a lawful permanent resident for 40 years who pled guilty to drug trafficking - was incorrectly advised by his lawyer that he was unlikely to face deportation because of his long stay in the United States.  In Carchuri-Rosendo v. Holder, a unanimous Court ruled that defendant's conviction for possession of a single Xanax tablet without prescription, following an earlier state court conviction for possession of less than two ounces of marijuana, could not qualify as an aggravated felony under federal immigration law, and thus did not render the petitioner ineligible for potential discretionary relief from deportation. Restricting Miranda: The Court significantly limited restrictions the Miranda "right to remain silent" in a series of cases limiting the Miranda ruling: In the most critical case, in Berghuis, Warden v . Thompkins, a 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court affirmed that a suspect did not properly invoke his right to remain silent, so statements were properly admitted in court.  Justice Sotomayor, writing for four dissenters said, "the Court today creates an unworkable and conflicting set of presumptions that will undermine  Miranda's goal." In Florida v. Powell, the Court held that police warnings that a suspect had a right "to talk to a lawyer before answering any questions" adequately complied with Miranda, since the right does not require a particular set of words for police compliance. In a 6-3 Graham v. Florida decision authored by Justice Kennedy, the Supreme Court found a Florida law unconstitutional under the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause where juvenile offenders could be sentenced to life in prison without parole for a non-murder. In Maryland v. Shatzer, the Court held that police did not violate the law by collecting incriminating statements from a person who had invoked his Miranda rights two and a half years earlier, and that the right against interrogation lasts only 14 days after invocation. In other key decisions effecting state proceedings: In Bobby v. Van Hook, Wong v. Belmontes and Porter v. McCollum, the court created a series of new standards for when counsel is so ineffective as to warrant a new trial.   In Presley v. Georgia, the Court concluded that a defendant's Sixth Amendment right to a public trial had been violated when the public was excluded from the jury voir dire proceedings. In Holland v. Florida, a 7-2 decision authored by Justice Breyer, the Court agreed that an attorney could harm his client so badly that the defendant's time to seek habeas must be extended.

Elana Kagan's likely replacement of Justice Stevens on the Court is unlikely to change the broader trends on the Court and states will continue to face the challenge of reining in the corporate election spending unleashed by Citizens United and protecting access to justice in the courts eroded by the Rent-a-Center case.  As People for the American Way wrote in a recent report, Rise of the Corporate Court: How the Supreme Court is Putting Businesses First, "the conservative-tilting Court has reached out to enshrine and elevate the power of business corporations." 

While deferral to state authority has emerged as an increasing consensus among the Justices on a number of issues, lurking in the dissents of the most conservative Justices are even more extreme pro-corporate and right-wing views that with one more ally could push legal doctrine in ways that would completely erode democratic decision-making over economic and social policy.  So even the more positive trends on the Court warrant only partial relief, since small changes in personnel in the future could readily enable the more activist impulses of the block of the four most right-wing members of the Court.

Should your tax dollars be used to pay police to remove people from private businesses solely because the proprietor doesn't like the color of their skin?

Maybe Paul would agree to a truly limited government solution? Any business engaging in discrimination automatically loses all protection by the police or access to the courts to use state power to enforce its contracts. Now, that's limited government I could support.

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In order to provide you with the best Wi-Fi experience possible, AmtrakConnect blocks access to selected sites that are known to utilize high bandwidth or that may contain content that could be considered questionable by some of our passengers.

Now, while the Supreme Court has said libraries can install filters, but only because adult patrons have the ability to bypass them. SInce there is no clear way to bypass the Amtrak filter, it seems to me to be a clear violation of the First Amendment.

Anyone want to make an argument for how this survives a legal challenge if or when it comes?

Just to note that I'm not cherrypicking this number since I've thought it is the best labor data to track since the Bush years.

Now, we obviously want more than stability at a bad level of work available, but it's no coincidence that the numbers stabilized right about when the federal government began pumping recovery dollars into the economy. It wasn't enough for all the job creation we need -- which is why we need another round of job creation funding -- but given the economic collapse that was happening, it was a clear success in stabilizing what was a collapse moving towards Great Depression levels.

The federal bill by itself will not be the big-bang singular change many wanted in our health care system, but it will be a platform for innovation -- and money -- to support changes as people keep organizing.

But let me jump out of the debate on the merits of the bill and highlight the long-term politics. Which is that it will destroy the conservative movement (a point Bill Kristol made in 1993 when he argued for killing health reform at all costs). Why? Because trying to repeal it will tear the movement apart and it will be the platform to destroy conservative anti-tax politics.

Demand that those with preexisting conditions be denied coverage at the whim of insurance companies? That's a nonstarter.

How about going after the individual mandate? Well, if you leave the ban on denial due to preexisting conditions in place, such a campaign will pit the monied health care business interests in the GOP against the anti-mandate rightwing, a lovely chance for an intramural political car wreck.

How about wiping out the funding for Medicaid expansions? Well, that might be popular with the anti-poor Grinch rightwing, but aside from likely being unpopular with the public, such an attack on Medicaid funding will pit the D.C. wing of the rightwing against their state government counterparts. For years, the federal government will be paying 100% of that Medicaid expansion, disproportionately to red states with currently the worst Medicaid coverage, so going after Medicaid funds will mean taking dollars away from GOP governors and statehouses. A few might go along on principle but most will protect every dollar coming to their states, regardless of purpose.

How about going after the subsidies to working Americans up to 400% of the poverty line? Now, there's political suicide since that's taking money directly out of the pockets of swing voters across the country.

The Death of Conservatism: In fact, those subsidies, however inadequate, no- precisely because they are inadequate, will be the death of conservative anti-tax politics. The standard ploy of anti-tax politics had always been massive tax cuts for the wealthy combined with a token cut for the middle class. But with so many middle class families depending on monetary subsidies from the feds for health care, such token tax cuts will pale in comparison. In fact, progressives will easily be able to trump tax cut politics with promises of increased health care subsidies -- invariably more valuable to those families and cheaper to deliver since it won't need to be attached to massive cuts for the the wealthy.

As Bill Kristol said way back in 1993 when he urged conservatives to kill health care by any means necessary, successful passage of health care reform in almost any form would be the death knell for conservatism:

It will relegitimize middle-class dependence for "security" on government spending and regulation. It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class by restraining government.

If anything, demands for more action are just as likely to strengthen the progressive hand to increase affordability or enact some form of the public option -- especially since such financial changes to the bill could potentially be driven by majority vote through reconciliation in future years.

You have some bloggers treating the health care bill as a sell-out to the rightwing and many on the Right treating it as the slipperly slope to socialism. While the latter is probably a bit far, I actually side more with the political analysis of the right; while progressives didn't get as much as they wanted, they got enough to put in place a dynamic that will be almost impossible for the right to reverse. The working middle class will have a clear monetary stake in federal spending each year and participation in the broader welfare state. That reality will profoundly change both political rhetoric and budgetary politics in ways in which the modern conservative movement can not survive.

There will be a few stormy years to come but in two decades, this week's votes in the Senate I predict will come to be seen as a turning point in American history and the cementing of progressive power for decades to come.

While the ability of government to quickly replace those jobs is inherently a slow process, the one thing government can do is ease the financial burden on the unemployed going through that process. Unfortunately, in past recessions, budget cutbacks at both the federal and state level have often just increased the suffering of the unemployed.

But this recession is different. Because of massive progressive victories, as I highlighted quickly in this post yesterday, there have been unpredented funds dedicated to support the unemployed, from expanded unemployment insurance benefits to more health care available to basic support expansions for Food Stamps and expanded worker retraining funds. This post will go into a bit more detail on those changes compared to past recessions.

Unemployment Insurance Benefits:   Quietly, because of stimulus money committed at the beginning of the year, America has adopted unemployment insurance benefit periods that approach European levels, with many states facing the highest unemployment giving unemployed workers 99 weeks -- almost two full years -- of benefits.   The dollar level of benefits in states are still too low by international standards but they were beefed up by the stimulus by over $1000 per year.

Still, compared to the normal period of 26 weeks of unemployment insurance and eligibility periods, or slightly longer extensions in past recessions, the long-term unemployed are being guaranteed financial help that can help sustain them during a longer process of finding new work than ever in the past.

As importantly, many workers, whether low-income, part-time or in other classifications, have long been completely excluded from unemployment insurance help.  In fact, because of state rules, only 37% of the unemployed qualified for benefits in the past.  To deal with this problem, the recovery plan included $7 billion in incentive money for states to change their rules to cover low-income, part-time, workers leaving work for family reasons and helping those with dependant family members with additional financial help.

Largely with the leadership of the National Employment Law Project, states passed one of the most sweeping changes in unemployment insurance coverage in history. (The map below is a snapshot from June-- more states modernized their systems since then.)

Medical Coverage for the Unemployed:  While the unemployed have the right to maintain their old employer-based health coverage, they are required to pay the premiums themselves, usually financially prohibitive.  In a radical innovation, the stimulus dedicated  $25 billion in subsidies to help the unemployed afford the COBRA premiums by paying 65% of COBRA premiums for 9 months after a job is involuntarily terminated.   

And for many low-income working families, they also had the option of coverage under Medicaid or SCHIP for their children, help hardly existent in most past recessions.   Because of state reforms, many states now offer Medicaid coverage for parents up to 200% of the federal poverty line and for kids coverage up to 350% of the poverty line.  While other states are below that level, it's worth remembering that it was common for almost all states to provide Medicaid for no family higher than 40% of the poverty line as late as the early 90s.  State-by-state and with federal help such as the SCHIP program, help for low-income families including those facing unemployment has massively expanded in the last two decades.    And beyond Medicaid, a number of states have programs like Healthy NY or Washington State's Basic Health plan that provide additional help for families not qualifying for Medicaid.

To capture some sense of the difference in this recession versus past recessions, take this story saying:

The number of people on Medicaid and state spending on the program are climbing sharply as a result of the recession... according to a survey released today by the Kaiser Family Foundation's Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured.

In 2002, in contrast, the Center on Budget Policy Priorities reported in this press release in 2003:

"Some 1.2 million to 1.6 million low-income people -- including 490,000 to 650,000 children and large numbers of parents, seniors, and people with disabilities -- have lost publicly funded health coverage as a result."

Or back in 1982 from the Washington Post (no link available)

Medicaid Cuts Put Urban, Public Hospitals at the Crunch Point

Congress reduced the projected cost of the Medicaid program by $932 million, with $327 million to $347 million of that directly affecting hospitals, according to the American Hospital Association...A new survey by the Intergovernmental Health Policy Project in Washington shows that about 30 states have acted to cut services, eligibility or reimbursement to hospitals, doctors and clinics.

Instead of slashing Medicaid as in past recessions, the federal government stepped up and provided large amounts of cash to states so that not only were low-income folks not thrown off the rolls, but new funds allowed states to absorb the new unemployed needed health coverage as well.   Now states are still under financial pressure, but the federal recovery dollars made all the difference this year in assuring that medical coverage was there.

Food Stamps and Other Support:  Beyond unemployment insurance and medical coverage, we have seen a quite large reinvestment in the food stamps program, now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), with the recovery plan spending $20 billion to the program along with other nutrition help.    This is available to those at around 130% of the poverty line or less, but 36 million Americans, one in eight Americans and one in four children, now benefit from SNAP benefits.   A family of four meeting food stamp eligibility requirements, now receives $668 per month in food help, a lifesaver for many families.    Add in child care, TANF and billions in affordable houisng aid and many of the newly unemployed have help completely unavailable compared to many recent recessions.

Retraining Funds:  States received an additional $3.95 billion provided for the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) to fund job training and employment services, which includes a range of help from peer counseling to rapid-response help in fighting layoffs in the first place.   The recovery act also expanded coverage under the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), which specifically helps workers who lost their jobs because of increased competition from imports.  Instead of restricting help just to goods-producing firms, the new law extends eligibility to trade-affected workers in the service and public sectors, including secondary workers providing services to trade-impacted firms. It added $575 million in funding for training services in FY 2009 and 2010.  Those covered by the TAA receive much higher levels of unemployment support, health care and training benefits.

Claiming Victory:  While no one thinks such support is a good substitute for a job, it's far better than the alternative.   Progressives have fought for decades to strengthen the safety net for the unemployed and, combined with the massive spending support from the stimulus, we have made this recession far less brutal for the unemployed than recessions over the last few decades.

That is a victory we all should be proud of, even as we continue to fight for new programs to put all of the unemployed back to work as soon as possible.

Comments on my last post do seem to show that the old adage that a "billion dollars here and a billion dollars there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money" just doesn't hold for folks these days. But a $787 billion stimulus that funded schools for working and middle class parents, gave tax rebates to working and middle class parents, that is providing unemployment insurance relief for millions of middle class families facing job loss-- all of these are incredible gains.

Put this in perspective, Clinton couldn't get a $16 billion jobs bill passed over a filibuster in 1993. And remember, the stimulus money is not being handed out over decades but isn't being distributed over just a couple of years; literally, I don't think anyone can point to a larger domestic spending increase by the federal government on a per-year basis in American history.

Polls show the Democratic base is unmotivated to turnout in 2010-- and it's no wonder given all the rhetoric that Obama hasn't done much with his 2008 victory.  Those attacks from the rightwing are understandable from a partisan position, but many progressives seem to oddly be aping similar rhetoric-- wallowing in glass half-empty complaints of what Obama and Congress haven't delivered while failing to actually educate the public on the successes they have.  We should be able to demand more while publicly praising what we do achieve -- basic political walking and chewing gum at the same time -- but a lot of progressives seem not to have mastered the skill.

Maybe it helps that I had such low expectations of Obama's administration to begin with-- but then I thought significant federal reforms would fail due to the filibuster. So the progress actually made is a pleasant surprise.  And those successes are large and profound.   This post will summarize those gains, and even in summary form will be quite long, reflecting  the incredible victories involved.    Yes, we all wish for more, but the best way to get there is to educate the public -- and especially the progressive base -- about what we got in the last year and how replacing moderates and conservatives with more real progressives could deliver even more in the future. 

Quick Summary of 2009 Progressive Victories (more explanation below)

• Three major health bills (SCHIP, tobacco regulation, and stimulus funds for Medicaid, COBRA subsidies, health information technology and the National Institutes of Health) enacted even before comprehensive reform
• Stimulus contained myriad other individual policy victories, not only preventing a far worse depression but also:
  • Delivered key new funds for education
  • Expanded state energy conservation programs and new transit programs
  • Added new smart grid investments
  • Funded high-speed Internet broadband programs
  • Extended unemployment insurance for up to 99 weeks for the unemployed and  modernizing state UI programs to cover more of the unemployed
  • Made large new investments in the safety net, from food stamps (SNAP) to affordable housing to child care
• Clean cars victory to take gas mileage requirements to 35mpg
• Protection of 2 million acres of land against oil and gas drilling and other development 
• Executive orders protecting labor rights, from project labor agreements to protecting rights of contractor employees on federal jobs
• Stopping pay discrimination through Lilly Ledbetter and Equal Pay laws
• Making it easier for airline and railway workers to unionize, while appointing NLRB and other labor officials who will strengthen freedom to form unions
• Reversing Bush ban on funding overseas family planning clinics
• Passing hate crimes protections for gays and lesbians
• Protecting stem cell research research
• Strengthening state authority and restricting federal preemption to protect state consumer, environmental and labor laws
• Financial reforms to protect homeowners and credit card holders
• Bailing out the auto industry and protecting unionized retirees and workers

PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU HAVE OTHERS TO ADD!

Detailed-- Let's start with health care.   Even if the public option doesn't make it, we are on the verge of passing a federal reform bill that, at minimum, is projected to add health coverage for 31 million Americans in the next decade, devoting $347 billion to add 15 million people to Medicaid and CHIP programs and $447 billion to subsidize coverage for other working and middle class families. 

And remember, if passed, this will be the fourth major health care bill passed in Obama's first year in office. 

• The first was the passage of the Children's Health Insurance Bill , which itself will expand coverage for an additional 4 million uninsured children by 2013 on top of continuing coverage for 7 million currently enrolled in the program. And for the first time, it allowed states to cover many documented immigrant children who previously were not eligible
• And Congress passed its bill to give the government the power to regulate tobacco, something progressives had been seeking since the early 1990s.
• And then there was the stimulus money for health care, which dedicated more than $145 billion to investments and reform of health care systems,including
  • $87 billion to states in just the next couple of years to maintain Medicaid programs
  • $25 billion to help laid-off workers afford their previous employer's health care via COBRA
  • $19 billion for Health Information Technology (HIT) deployment and
  • $10 billion in additional funds for the National Institute of Health.

Really, you should count the COBRA subsidies, HIT expansion and NIH funding as three additional health care bills passed, since each in a normal year would have been considered a profound and singular legislative achievements. 

The Stimulus Plan as Multiple Progressive Achievements:  But that's was one problem with the stimulus bill-- it was so large that it's treated as one thing, instead of a whole array of legislative achievements pulled together to also help save the economy from depression and collapse.  So let's step back and pull the recovery plan apart into it's multiple progressive achievements.  The list of individual programs may seem long, but when you are talking about billions of dollars for each one handed out over a relatively short period, they are worth remembering for their individual progressive achievement and for the billions committed, especially for many programs starved for funds for decades.  I'll summarize some of these below, but you can see more details in Progressive States' Implementing the Recovery Plan.

• Stimulus Saving the Economy:  Before going into all the individual programs, let's talk about the overall achievement of the recovery plan in stabilizing the economy.  Most progressives will agree it should have been bigger, but key economists agree it was critical to staving off an economic collapse; as Paul Krugman wrote, without the stimulus plan, "we would have had a full Great Depression experience...Deficits, in other words, saved the world."  Including not only direct jobs created but the ripples of jobs created through indirect stimulus, the Economic Policy Institute confirms the stimulus' was responsible for creating or saving from 1.1 to 1.5 million jobs since its passage.   A large part of this effect was in preventing catastrophic layoffs of teachers, nurses and other state and local employees by offsetting revenue losses at the state and local level.  While there seems to be some kind of sexist media meme that only highway jobs, presumably manned by manly men, count as "real jobs", the stimulus however has kept hundreds of thousands of teachers and nurses and child care workers on the job-- one of the most important anti-recession government employment programs of the last half-century.

• Education Funding:  This emphasizes that along with being a major health care bill, the stimulus was one of the largest federal education bills in history.  It devoted $139.24 billion to education funding  over a couple of years, including:  
  • State Fiscal Stabilization Fund of $53.6 billion to help state and local governments avert budget cuts
  • $39.5 billion in educational block grants allocated by student and general population measures
  • $5 billion for incentive grants and other purposes. 
  • $24.8 billion for School Construction Bonds
  • $11.3 billion for special education
  • $10 billion for Local Educational Agencies
  • $3 billion for School Improvement Grants.
  • Higher education funding of approximately $30 billion was distributed directly to students and their families, but an estimated $15 billion for scientific research flowed partly to universities. 
    
• Clean Energy and Transportation Investments:  Estimates on potential green energy investments in the recovery package, including upgrading our transportation infrastructure, range from $70.6 billion to $113.5 billion depending on what is included, but the bottom-line is that this package is the largest investment in energy independence in American history. These included:
  • Over $14 billion for various State Energy Conservation Programs, including $5 billion for the chronically underfunded Weatherization Assistance Program to help low-income families reduce their energy costs by weatherizing their homes.
  • $11 billion for  smart grid technology aimed at improving the energy efficiency of electrical grids around the country, a key to making alternative energy production and distribution viable.
  • The recovery plan was also a key "down payment on a new transportation vision," in the words of the coalition Transportation for America, including $27.5 billion allocated to the traditional highway program, $8.4 billion for public transportation, $9.3 billion for intercity and high-speed passenger rail, and $825 million for projects that will make our streets safer for walking and biking. Significantly, the law included unprecedented flexibility in using "highway" funds on ports, transit, passenger and freight rail, or other projects.
    
• Broadband Investments: The recovery plan allocated $7.2 billion to promote high-speed Internet programs for rural, unserved and under-served areas and for initiatives that expand public community centers' capacity and for the development of a national broadband map.
  
• Unemployment Insurance Extension and Reform:  While the present recession is bad, one reason many unemployed workers and their families are better off than in past recessions is that help for the unemployed has been far more extensive due to the stimulus plan.
  • First, the stimulus plan included extended federal weeks of help for the unemployed (help which was recently further extended with a new law) to up to 99 weeks of help in the worst hit states -- compared to just 26 weeks normally available before the recession-based reforms and no more than 52 weeks in recessions over the last three decades. 
  • While benefits are still too meager by international standards, the stimulus, over 17.9 million Americans will receive a $25/week increase in their UI benefits.
  • As importantly, $7 billion in incentive money was provided to states to modernize their unemployment insurance systems to including low-income workers, part-time workers and workers who had to leave jobs for compelling family reasons-- workers previously completely excluded from UI help in most states.  The result has been what the National Employment Law Project calls an "unprecedented wave of state reforms" to expand access to state unemployment help.
  • Add in the 65% COBRA health care subsidies mentioned above and progressives have won broader and deeper relief for the unemployed than in any past recession.
    
• Supporting the Safety Net:  And for those already suffering in poverty -- or plunged into it because of the recession -- the stimulus bill extended additional help as well:
  • Nutrition  Programs: Over $20 billion was added to the Food Stamps program (now called SNAP), WIC and other food programs, and the law lifted restrictions on how long unemployed individuals without children can receive SNAP benefits.
  • Child Care:  Over $4 billion was added for child care block grants, Head Start and Early Head Start programs.
  • TANF:  $5 billion was added to basic TANF welfare programs. While not repealing the 1996 welfare law, provisions did roll back rigid rules that would have denied funds to states that couldn't find work for rapidly expanding caseloads of the poor.
  • Affordable Housing Aid: Added  $13.5 billion in funding for a range of affordable housing and homeless prevention programs.
    
• Expansion of science investments--  Notably, between the stimulus and other budget spending, no less than the Wall Street Journal calls Obama's investments in science, especially green technology, a "once-in-a-generation shift in U.S. science," reinvigorating 17 giant U.S.-funded research facilities, from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, as well as university research facilities .

So those are many of the myriad program gains from the recovery plan (there are more whose dollar amounts were less but who mattered greatly to those effected).   But there have also been additional policy gains outside the stimulus on the environment, labor rights, gay and abortion rights, and financial reforms.

Environmental Victories: Two notable victories promise to have long-lasting legacies for the nation, even before climate change legislation comes to a vote in the Senate:

• Victory on clean cars mileage rules--  For literally decades, automakers blocked higher federal gas mileage rules and the Bush administration blocked state laws seeking to establish higher standards in their states.  Obama engineered a new rule that by model year 2016, the average mandated fleet fuel efficiency standard will be 35.5 miles per gallon.  Add in the$2 billion in stimulus cash for advanced batteries systems and the nation should see significant fuel savings in the near future.
• Landmark U.S. conservation bill -  Signing a package of more than 160 bills, Obama designating roughly 2 million acres -- parks, rivers, streams, desert, forest and trails -- in nine states as new wilderness and render them off limits to oil and gas drilling and other development.

Labor Rights:    On labor rights, we haven't gotten the Employee Free Choice Act, but key Bush executive orders have been reversed, new personnel are being added to the National Labor Relations Board, and Congress has passed key new laws. These include

• Executive orders to allow use of project labor agreements on federal projects, requirements not to displace qualified (often unionized) workers when changing contractors, and require all federal contractors to notify their workers of their rights to form a union.
• Passage of the Lilly Leadbetter Law and  Equal-Pay Legislation to protect workers from pay discrimination.
• The Federal Mediation Board has moved to make it far easier for rail and airline workers to form unions.
• Obama's appointees at the Labor Department and NLRB are some of the strongest labor advocates possible, most of them drawn from pro-labor organizations.

Social Issues: Progressive mades a number of advances on hot button "culture war" issues this year:

• Family Planning: Obama reversed George W. Bush's funding cutoff to overseas family planning organizations -- probably saving millions of lives.
• Hate Crimes:  Congress passed a lawexpanding hate crimes protection to gays and lesbians.
• Stem cells: Obama signed an executive order removing research barriers.

Strengthening Authority of States to Build on Federal Reforms:  For years, states have increasingly seen their hands tied by a federal government declaring that preemption voids state consumer, environmental and labor rights laws.  The Bush administration in particular used its regulatory authority aggressively to block state law after state law.   In May, the White House emphasized its new commitment to respecting state regulatory rules by issuing a broad Memorandum on Preemption to all heads of executive departments and agencies, ordering them to avoid the preemption language routinely included in Bush-era regulatory preamble statements or in codified regulations unless there is "full consideration of the legitimate prerogatives of the States and with a sufficient legal basis for preemption." 

The administration's affirmation of state "clean car" authority, protection of higher state consumer health care protections, and ending Bush's war on medical marijuana in the states have all been part of this movement towards of collaborative federalism that will strengthen progressive power in the states for years into the future.

• Helping Families Save Their Homes Act and the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act -these pieces of legislation make it easier for homeowners to access financial help, established protections for renters living in foreclosed homes, and established the right of a homeowner to know who owns their mortgage, while giving the Department of Justice the ability to prosecute at virtually every step of the process from predatory lending on Main Street to the manipulation on Wall Street.

• Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act (or Credit CARD Act) of 2009-   limits when credit card interest rates can be increased on existing balances and allows consumers whose interest rates have been increased to reduce their annual percentage rates (APRs) to previous levels if they've been good and paid their bills on time for six months.  It also limits when interest rates can be increased, bans universal default and double-cycle billing, and restricts credit cards for minors.

Auto Bailout-  Saving a core industry of our economy and as many of its attendant jobs as we can should have been a no-brainer, especially as many construction and real estate jobs are inevitably disappearing forever. And the Obama rescue was done in an extremely progressive manner, liquidating the shareholders who tolerated terrible management while safeguarding retirees and preserving a strong union for workers remaining in the industry.  The "cash for clunkers" plan may have been a bit of a giveaway to the industry, but then since the U.S. government owns a chunk of the industry, reviving industry profits means returning some of the money to the government itself as a shareholder..

And More to Come:    Many more progressive achievements are within reach as well, moving through the meatgrinder political process too slowly for some progressives but still quite possible in the next few months. From fundamental student loan reforms to remaking banking regulations to climate change legislation to immigration reform to labor law reform, high profile progressive initiatives are still being promoted by both the administration and Congressional leaders.

Again, we should always be demanding more-- and planning electoral responses where possible against the Congressional repesentatives and Senators blocking better reforms -- but we also need to highlight what we've won, keep allies and the base of progressives excited so that they will have the energy to fight those fights.

Progressives have been winning in the last year.  We just need to keep reminding ourselves and the public of how full the cup is-- and planning to fill it the rest of the way as we win more elections in the future.  It's worth remembering that large parts of what we consider the New Deal were not enacted until many years into FDR's Presidency.  Social Security and the National Labor Relations Act were enacted only in 1935, three years into his term, while the federal minimum wage was enacted only in 1938, in FDR's sixth year in office.   But along the way, progressives won individual victories that continually fed progressive energy for the next fight.    That's the challenge now for progressives, to claim existing victories and build on that energy for fights to come.

Here's the good news from the Senate bill: of the 31 million uninsured projected to gain coverage under the Senate plan by 2018, the Congressional Budget Office projects that two-thirds of them will gain coverage via some form of public plan. Yes, the limited public option will enroll only a projected 4 million folks, but expansions in Medicaid and SCHIP will enroll 15 million more people than would be expected under current law. 54 million people will be covered by Medicaid, CHIP or the public option by 2018.

Step back from the mechanics and the dollars invested are impressive. $347 billion in additional funds will go directly to Medicaid and CHIP programs.

• By 2014, most nonelderly people with incomes below 133 percent of the federal poverty line would be made eligible for Medicaid. The government would pay for this whole expansion through 2016 and roughly 90% of the costs thereafter.
• Federal support for childrens health insurance plans (CHIP), which cover kids much farther above the poverty line, would expand to an average of 93% of costs under the bill.
• States would pay a total additional $25 billion over the ten-year period.

In both states, voters rejected so-called TABOR ("Taxpayer Bill of Rights") initiatives that would have created rigid tax raising formulas that would have crippled those states' capacity to provide services like education, health care, emergency services, and public safety. Voters in Maine also rejected a proposal to slash the excise tax on new and hybrid cars, which would have undermined local revenue around the state.

Across the country, over thirty state legislatures raised taxes to deal with deficits this year and a number have specifically targeted tax increases on the wealthy - a bugaboo of the rightwing. And at the ballot, the anti-tax right has just lost and lost.

Back in the early 90s, the rightwing managed to pass a TABOR system in Colorado at the ballot box, which led to  terrible results, including large declines in K-12 funding, higher education tuition rates, and hindering the state's ability to address the lack of medical insurance coverage for many children and adults (see a PSN Dispatch on "TABOR's Disastrous Record in Colorado").  Voters partially repudiated TABOR at the ballot in 2005; when the rightwing tried to enact TABOR-like initiatives in states across the country in 2006, progressives highlighted fraud in signature collecting in multiple states and issue was thrown off the ballot in Michigan, Montana, Nevada, Oklahoma and Missouri. On Election Day, voters in Maine, Nebraska and Oregon finished the job in voting down the remaining TABOR initiatives.  And in 2008, anti-government tax measures were defeated overwhelmingly in Massachusetts, North Dakota and Oregon.

Here's the dirty little secret.  The anti-tax movement is a paper tiger.  They force progressives to waste a lot of money and time fighting their initiatives, but when voters are informed of the details, they walk away, preferring needed public services to the rigid anti-tax nostrums of Norquist and his allies.

While Corzine may have lost the election last night, the New Jersey state legislature which has voted for multiple tax increases in recent years was hardly touched by voter action last night.  In fact, after the New Jersey legislature voted to raise taxes on the wealthy back in 2004, they expanded their legislative majority in 2005 to its present hefty margins.  There's almost zero evidence of elected officials being punished for tax increases alone in recent elections.

Facts on Taxes, Jobs and Economic Growth:  The public just recognizes that rightwing attacks tax increases as undermining economic growth are just rhetoric unsupported by facts. 

Earlier this year, Economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote state leaders in New York in support of proposed tax increases on wealthier New Yorkers, highlighting the short-term economic gains from shifting that money towards state spending for low- and moderate-income families.  But he also emphasized that such spending was crucial to long-term economic growth as well:

"Raising taxes and maintaining public expenditures (including investments) also helps America in meeting its long run needs.  America today faces two major problems -- inadequate investments, especially in infrastructure, and growing inequalty...Investments in infrastructure also increase the productivity of private investment -- another important spillover."

The Wealthy Don't Leave High-Income Tax States:  And despite rightwingers inevitably predicting economic doom, tax increases on the wealthy do not lead to wealthier residents leaving the state:

• From 2004 to 2006, following California's implementation of a new national top rate of 10.3% on income over $1,000,000, there was a 38% increase in the number of millionaires in the State.
• The number of half-millionaires in New Jersey grew by 70% since the state increased their highest rate from 6.37% to 8.97% in 2002, from 26,000 in 2002 to 44,000 in 2006.
• New York experienced a comparable increase in high-income tax returns
  after temporarily raising income tax rates earlier in the decade, from
  250,000 in 2003 to over 325,000 in 2005, representing a 30% growth.