Health care nullification forces scored a symbolic victory in Missouri yesterday as voters supported a ballot initiative to block the individual mandate portion of the federal health care law. But it was a primary electorate dominated by GOP primary voters-- and the real story is how isolated this victory has been for the repeal forces.

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.

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Seeing this piece at the Edge of the West, I couldn't help noting the complete absurdity of the distinction Rand Paul makes between opposing "public" segregation while opposing laws that stop "private segregation." Edge of the West suggests someone ask Rand Paul:

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?

This is the dirty secret of libertarians: they believe in the police state to enforce the rights they favor -- property rights -- but decry any use of the police to promote other values.

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.

While the Arizona legislature and Governor's decisions to pass a punitive, anti-immigrant bill - SB1070 -  is grabbing headlines, what's gotten less attention is how Arizona is an isolated case with increasingly anti-immigrant laws and policies advanced over the last few years. 

A handful of states have joined Arizona in its punitive approach to immigration, yet the often-ignored reality is that the vast majority of immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, live in states that have promoted far more humane and successful approaches emphasizing immigrant integration into local economies and communities.

Arizona has blazed its own (misguided) path on immigration, which reflects dysfunctional right-wing politics that have driven the state into an economic disaster of low wages, mass-foreclosures and a punishing fiscal crisis.  Grandstanding on race may be Arizona's substitute for grappling with its deep, systematic economic problems, but few other states have followed its lead in recent years, and even fewer seem likely to follow it on SB1070.

Join on the jump for more on the failed state of Arizona:

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As we celebrate a historic victory on health care, I want to place my bet on why this victory will lead to many others in the future. November 2010 may or may not be a bit bloody in partisan terms -- I am more optimistic than some that supporters of health reform will do better than expected -- but in the long run, this bill will set the stage for ongoing progressive gains.

Part of the raging debate is whether this bill would entrench the power of private insurance companies (as some on the left have argued) or be a slippery slope towards even more government control of health care-- as many on the right vociferously claim. I mostly side with the rightwing (and a few left voices) and Mark Steyn makes the point for me (on the flip):

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So I'm riding on the train taking advantage of Amtrak's wifi service. I'm doing some googling searches and get the following response:

Oops! You can't visit this site because it contains content belonging to the category of: Intolerance & Hate

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.

The irony was I was researching rightwing rhetoric against government elites -- search terms "government parasitic elites Democrats" -- and had a link to the racist group Stormfront. Which I can't read because the powers that be at Amtrak are censoring riders. Seems like it could be a First Amendment problem-- (see more on flip)

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The fight for comprehensive health care reform has long been waged in state legislatures across the nation. While continuing to support comprehensive federal reform, progressives in state capitols have also continued to fight for legislation in their own states to extend coverage to families, improve affordability and quality, and stop to the profiteering of the health insurance industry.

Denouncing the industry-backed attempts to astroturf anti-reform initiatives in the states, a group of state legislators representing more than 1000 of their progressive colleagues, working with Progressive States Network (where I work), signed a letter to President Obama stating both their support of "a robust and comprehensive health care proposal" coming out of Congress, and their support of the reconciliation process to achieve that goal.

The was done partly to counter the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which released a press release by a handful of state legislators from across the country, complaining about not being invited to President Obama's health care summit -- after having spent the last year actively engaged in attempts to obstruct reform. Like their rightwing colleagues in Washington D.C., ALEC and the state legislators they represent have also decided against proposing any substantive solutions on health care. Instead, they have put all their energies behind attempts to pre-emptively obstruct elements of any federal heath care reform bill that might emerge.

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The jobs number for December are hardly great news, but if you look at total aggregate hours of work in the economy -- a more stable number that better accounts for economic activity since it doesn't worry about the mix of part-time and over-time in the labor force -- you actually have clear information that total labor hours has been relatively stable for almost six months. (See graph in the jump)

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One reason I'm less negative on the Senate bill than some is that I know states will continue to build on its framework with improvements -- and most of those states need just majority vote in normally apportioned chambers, so public support for things like the public option actually have a chance to win. And as I mentioned in an earlier post, the bill's Sec. 1332 makes it possible for states to do even more -- combine all subsidies that would normally flow to individuals and businesses into their states into a more integrated alternative state system, even a single payer style approach that goes beyond merely a public option. While states couldn't implement such an approach until 2017 under the law, it still creates a path towards state-by-state movement towards quite radical changes in our health care system.

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Yeah, the filibuster and the Senate structure sucks-- but some of us knew that and had low expectations. Ignoring what we didn't get, expanding coverage to thirty million folks, including 15 million more in Medicaid, plus restrictions on insurance companies and subsidies for middle class families is a good start.

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.

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The collapse of the financial bubble means that a whole interlocking network of millions of construction, real estate and financial jobs will never return, and other industries have been sucked down under debt and bad assets generated by that collapse. Long-term unemployment is chronic in an economy where many of those jobs will never return and workers need to transition to whole new careers.

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.

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"Your list is a bunch of tiny victories."
"what's lacking is a broad-based benefit for the middle class."

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)

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- Hundreds of Billions of Dollars for State Public Plans in Bill

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.

On top of those directly in public plans, there will be $447 billion in federal funds to subsidize individuals buying into health insurance exchanges and $27 for small employers to subsidize employee health care.  The projection is that the average subsidized enrollee in the exchanges will receive $5500 per enrollee to help pay their health insurance costs.

But here's the better news, under Section 1332 of the bill, states could apply for waivers and convert their state residents' share of health insurance exchange credits and small employer credits into their own more comprehensive state health care program.

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A lot of folks are declaring Obama -- who wasn't on the ballot -- the loser of the night based on two state elections, but the defeat of three anti-tax initiatives that were on the ballot in Washington State and Maine should emphasize that Grover Norquist and the anti-tax movement were big losers of the night -- and this just continues a multi-year roll of defeats.

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.

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