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]]>"America, we've heard you. You have concerns about health care reform. You believe that it is too much, too fast; that it will make you lose your coverage, or force you to buy coverage you don't want; that it will bankrupt people, companies, and governments. We have tried to make the case to you, and we didn't do a good enough job.
But let me be clear, we still have a problem in this country of insufficient, expensive, or unattainable health care, for millions of Americans. And that problem will not go away unless we do something about it.
So today, we will begin working towards a new, simpler, scaled-back, but necessary reform. It has three simple parts, and here they are:
First, if you are poor, you will get Medicaid. That is simple, humane, and just. Right now, in many states, you can still be denied Medicaid even if you make below the poverty line, which is about $10k a year. In Arkansas, if you make $2000 a year, you can be considered too rich for Medicaid. Under this plan, the federal government will work with states to make sure that if you make less than the poverty line, you will be covered by Medicaid.
But what about other folks, who make more than the poverty line but still can't afford health care, or have been dropped due to preexisting conditions? Under the second part of my plan, these Americans will be able to buy into Medicare. There will not be an increase in taxes - where you used to cut a check to Blue Cross, you now cut a check to Medicare. People will be able to keep their coverage if they want it. But if they don't want it, or don't have it; if they've been hurt by their insurance company, or dropped due to preexisting conditions, they can buy the same Medicare coverage that has served their parents and grandparents for the last forty years. Nothing new would be created, and we won't have to worry about any of the logistics of setting up a new plan or a new bureaucracy. It's just allowing other people to buy the same health insurance their parents already have.
And if you're somewhere in the middle - if you're too rich for Medicaid but can't quite afford Medicare - we'll provide you with small subsidies with which to buy Medicare. These subsidies will be paid for by an extra tax of .5% on individuals who earn more than $10m a year. That's less than a cent on the dollar for people who are multimillionaires, and it will help everyone in America be healthier.
We think that these two simple goals will help millions of Americans get the healthcare they need. But we realize that people are concerned that it won't work, or that it will hurt more people, or that it will be too expensive. And while we don't think that's the case, we understand your concern, and we want to make sure nothing goes wrong.
That's why we're passing this bill as a budget measure, with a 10 year sunset window. This means that in 10 short years - in 2020 - this bill will automatically expire unless it is renewed by the Congress. So if we pass this bill, and it turns out that America doesn't like it, in 10 years, it just goes away, and we look for a new solution.
Now, there are other things we'd like to do. We'd like to ban discriminating based on preexisting conditions altogether, and set up some health care exchanges so that private insurance companies can compete against each other to lower prices and improve service. And we look forward to working with our Republican colleagues to do just that.
But as we've just seen, that's tough to work out, and Americans who are dying because they don't have health insurance need help now. So we're going to pass this very simple, very limited trial plan, and it is going to save a lot of lives without bankrupting individuals, companies, or the government."
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]]>Despite
Obama's campaign promises of renewed transparency and accountability in the
executive, his Department of Justice's motion did not withdraw the "state
secrets" defense promulgated by the Bush administration. In fact, it reiterated
and then expanded the argument, citing
"sovereign immunity" and claiming that the PATRIOT Act bars any lawsuits of any kind against government wiretapping programs unless the government
"willfully discloses" the intercepted material.
To be sure, a public promise by the Obama administration declaring never to leak recordings of one's phone sex to CNN Headline News is somewhat comforting. But it is a cold comfort, barren of credibility, credulity, and meaningfulness.
The
inauguration this January past was a legitimate cause célèbre. We have reason to be proud of our new leader, who,
by all accounts and appearances, is a thoughtful, intelligent, and diplomatic
gentleman. Americans, especially Americans who voted for him, may be inclined
to trust and support Obama, as he seems the consummate professional, especially
when compared to his predecessor.
But
the man matters not. The problems with warrantless wiretapping are not
personal, they are structural. Were Christ Himself to descend from the Heavens,
with manna in one hand and a wiretap in the other, a prudent public would still
recoil.
Wiretaps
are indispensable tools in this electronic age. A total ban would deafen our
defenses when we need to listen the most closely. Moreover, it is important
that the executive branch be given great latitude to act in the nation's
defense. Agility is a necessary condition for prevention, especially when the
enemy is so fleet of foot.
But
none of these general principles can be extended to justify these exceptional
claims. The structural separation between the branches was codified in the
Constitution for a reason. The FISA Court--a body of magistrates with security
clearances charged with approving warrants for wiretaps--is hardly an unfair
standard of review to require. Of the nearly 20,000 requests made since 1978,
only five were rejected for insufficient cause. Is it too much to require that
the government seek the easy approval of this profligate Court before invading
the privacy of millions of innocent Americans?
Some
proponents of warrantless wiretapping--perhaps including some newly converted Obama supporters--argue that
there is nothing wrong with these wiretaps as long as you have "nothing to
hide", and that if you do, you don't deserve the protections of privacy anyway.
But this excuse misses the point. The problem with warrantless wiretaps is not whether or not one has something to hide. The problem is that one branch of the government can do something that cannot be checked by any coequal branch, eliminating the carefully constructed Constitutional provisions of our Founders. The problem is that state surveillance has deleterious effects your liberty even if you have nothing to hide. If a police officer stood ceaselessly at your side while you were on your phone with your grandmother, your behavior would doubtlessly change, even if you were talking about nothing but knitting.
As the privacy theorists Daniel Solove and James Rachels (among others) have written, privacy protects the intimacy required to live life as we want to live it. Wiretapping wrecks not only this, but also the structure of oversight that both limits government power and (perhaps more importantly) the empowering autonomy that comes from being able to control who hears what you say.
Liberty and privacy are both sides of the same coin. Both are implicated here. Bush hacked away at them with an axe. We all thought Obama was going to come in and fix it, but instead he took one look and, in his perfectly practical way, decided a chainsaw would be more effective instead.
The
damage done by warrantless wiretaps is the same no matter who is listening.
President Obama won his support partly on the promise of a new era of
responsible governance. He would do well to reconsider this motion if he wishes
to keep it.
This is the first time [the DOJ] claimed sovereign immunity against Wiretap Act and Stored Communications Act claims. In other words, the administration is arguing that the U.S. can never be sued for spying that violates federal surveillance statutes, whether FISA, the Wiretap Act or the SCA.