NYTimes:

The United States economy shed 190,000 jobs in October, and the unemployment rate reached a 26-year high of 10.2 percent, up from 9.8 percent in September, the Department of Labor said Friday in its monthly economic appraisal.

U6 rose to 17.5%. Relatedly, Paul Krugman writes today:

[E]arly this year, President Obama came into office with a strong mandate and proclaimed the need to take bold action on the economy. His actual actions, however, were cautious rather than bold. They were enough to pull the economy back from the brink, but not enough to bring unemployment down. [. . .] Administration officials would presumably argue that they were constrained by political realities, that a bolder policy couldn’t have passed Congress. But they never tested that assumption, and they also never gave any public indication that they were doing less than they wanted. The official line was that policy was just right, making it hard to explain now why more is needed.

They wanted to please Olympia Snowe. How's that working out for them?

Speaking for me only

On Larry Kissell (D-NC):

Dear friends in Chapel Hill,

It seems like forever ago that I called so many of you, as I've done too many times, to help with a fundraising event in Chapel Hill. In this case, I wanted to introduce you to a new candidate in North Carolina's 8th District, Larry Kissell. After talking with Larry several times, I concluded that he was a thoughtful person worthy of your financial support. Not only that, but he had proved to me that he would listen. I had told him that he needed a more professional photograph for his website, and he took action on that immediately. [MORE . . .]

Brian Beutler reports:

[Speaker Nancy] Pelosi said afterward that there's a good chance that Congress will have a bill on the President's desk by Christmas. But asked by TPMDC whether she believed that, if given the choice, Obama would ultimately choose to endorse a bipartisan bill over a bill with a public option, Pelosi demurred. "You'll have to ask him," she said, "but I'll tell you what will pass the House: a bill with a public option."

(Emphasis supplied.) Speaker Pelosi is telling everyone what the House is gonna do. Any Dem that wants to kill the public option will have to do it openly.

Speaking for me only

The Congressional Budget Office (PDF) has preliminarily scored the Republican health care alternative proposal. Not surprisingly, the GOP plan is a joke. But it is also a sideshow. There is apparently only one Republican who might vote for health care reform. Her name is Olympia Snowe. What I would like to see is her plan submitted to the CBO for scoring.

Because the only plan competing with the current proposal might come from Snowe/Ben Nelson/Joe Lieberman and the gang. John Boehner is irrelevant. Democratic leadership, starting with President Obama, decided to make Olympia Snowe relevant. Let the CBO score her plan, whatever it might be. Then let's compare that to the current proposals. The Boehner Plan is a sideshow.

Speaking for me only

Matt Yglesias makes some sense:

I’m not really sure why Obama would lack the credibility necessary. [. . .] But does “credibility” really matter? Probably not. [. . . A]s far as I know, [the White House is] not actively trying to persuade anyone because the White House is afraid that if they try to persuade key legislators they might fail. That’s circular. There seems to be some feeling that the President has an obligation to act like he’s a Prime Minister and not bring proposals to the floor unless he’s sure they can pass [. . .] [T]here’s little reason to believe that trying and failing would somehow turn out much worse than simply refusing the try.

Indeed, Yglesias should go a step farther, NOT trying, or being perceived as not trying is now clearly much worse, for President Obama and all the Democrats in DC. I wonder if they realize that yet.

Speaking for me only

I found something worthwhile from last night's election results. TPM:

The NY-23 seat [. . .] went to Democrat Bill Owens [. . .] [a]nd the CA-10 seat [. . .] went to Democrat John Garamendi. That creates some simple arithmetic. Yesterday, Democrats had 256 voting members in the House. By week's end, they'll have 258. Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could afford to lose no more than 38 Democratic votes on a landmark health care reform bill. Next week, after Owens and Garamendi are sworn in, she can lose up to 40.

Garamendi is a liberal and Owens said about the [HCR] bill at a debate last week [. . .]: "I think moving towards this legislation is very appropriate. I think the type or the form of the public option included in this bill is reasonable. [. . .]"

(Emphasis supplied.) That's two more votes for a public option. That's the biggest story of the night.

Speaking for me only

Ezra Klein digs deeper:

[T]hose primary challenges also broke whatever historical or pragmatic attachment Lieberman and Specter had to their traditional political homes. [. . .] Lieberman endorsed McCain and will likely vote, and maybe even filibuster, against health-care reform. Heterodox as he was, neither was likely before Lamont's challenge.

(Emphasis supplied.) I'll ignore the disingenuous goal post moving by Ezra (he wrote this the first time - "Look at the Senate right now: If Democrats [. . .] fall short, it’s likely to be because liberal activists ran a primary challenge against Joe Lieberman."), and take on the wrongheadedness of his thinking - to wit, Joe Lieberman would be voting for a public option now if he had not been primaried. This is just nonsense. Joe Lieberman has been fighting against health care reform for 20 years. I know Ezra was just a kid when Lieberman started this behavior, but you can just look it up. But becoming a Village idiot is good business for Ezra.

Speaking for me only

Ezra Klein dives into the deep end of the Village pool:

Look at the Senate right now: If Democrats have 60 votes, it's because conservative activists kept running primary challengers against Arlen Specter. If they fall short, it's likely to be because liberal activists ran a primary challenge against Joe Lieberman.

Yep, ole Joe Lieberman was a down the line liberal Dem until the 2006 election. He was "with us on everything but the war." Ezra Klein -- now officially a Village idiot. See also Atrios ("[I]t'll be interesting to see how the Villagers will react. My guess is they'll portray [the NY-23 Teabaggers] as just folks exercising their patriotic duties, unlike those dirty f*cking hippie traitors who ran a primary against the greatest man in America, Joe Lieberman." (Emphasis mine.))

Speaking for me only

Ezra Klein writes:

There is a simple explanation for why American health care costs so much more than health care in any other country: because we pay so much more for each unit of care. As [Kaiser Permanente CEO] Halvorson explained, and academics and consultancies have repeatedly confirmed, if you leave everything else the same -- the volume of procedures, the days we spend in the hospital, the number of surgeries we need -- but plug in the prices Canadians pay, our health-care spending falls by about 50 percent.

In other countries, governments set the rates that will be paid for different treatments and drugs, even when private insurers are doing the actual purchasing. In our country, the government doesn't set those rates for private insurers, which is why the prices paid by Medicare, as you'll see on some of these graphs, are much lower than those paid by private insurers. [. . .] The health-care reform debate has done a good job avoiding the subject of prices. The argument over the Medicare-attached public plan was, in a way that most people didn't understand, an argument about prices [. . .] "A health-care debate in this country that isn't aware of the price differential is not an informed debate," says Halvorson.

(Emphasis supplied.) What's fascinating to me is Ezra Klein has been one of the Village wonkers pooh poohing the central point of a public health insurance option - that the government does better negotiating health care prices than private insurance companies (for whatever reason you may want to attribute.) His focus on the exchanges and the "regulations" and his attempts to diminish the public option demonstrate that the one of the main wonkers not getting the whole "government does better at cost containment in health care" thing is - Ezra Klein. The irony of his post is rich.

Speaking for me only

Opponents of the public option, both from the Right and from Village "progressive" wonks, have spent months trying to denigrate the potential of a public option to reform health care and insurance. Yesterday, Jeralyn linked to one of the latest of such articles. Only 2% (6 million souls)will use the public option they (and the CBO) say. Why fight for it they ask? It's the "rest of the bill" that matters. This is nonsense. Let me present 3 arguments why this is so.

The first, and to me the most telling, why is it the insurance industry and anti-reformers have drawn their line in the sand on the public option? Why are they not fighting against the "rest of the bill?" Why do they have no problem with the magic "exchange?" Or they "no denial for preexisting conditions" provision? Simply put, they know that these "regulations" are toothless and will do nothing to hurt them. They know that the public option is the threat to their profits.

Second, the Village "progressive" wonkers do not give a honest appraisal of the potential for the public option. They ignore the history of Medicaid, which began covering 4 million people and that covered, by 2004, 47 million people. The fact that eligibility for inclusion in the potential public option pool is likely to grow (indeed, the House bill contemplates such an expansion by as early as 2015) is completely ignored by Village progressive wonks, because of their belief in magic "exchanges" and "regulation." The fact that both have been proven to NOT work and that only public insurance programs have proved to be effective cost containers and providers of affordable insurance are inconvenient facts for the Village wonks. More . .

Earlier this week I was on a call with Senator Arlen Specter. My questions for him focused on the Supreme Court and antitrust law.

I asked Senator Specter about his long expressed concern about the Supreme Court's disdain for Congressional fact finding. In response, Specter noted that Supreme court nominees Roberts and Alito were less than forthright regarding their approach to Congressional fact finding. He noted that while Chief Justice Roberts expressed an attitude of respect and "modesty" on the subject when a nominee for the Court, his behavior as Chief Justice, as expressed particularly regarding the extension of the Voting Rights Act, was exactly the opposite. Roberts is a judicial activist, and though Specter did not use those words, that was the essence of his comments.

I asked Senator Specter if, given the activist role the Court has played in antitrust law, if it were not time for the Congress to revisit our existing antitrust laws. Specter agreed with my observation and stated he would consider acting on it. More . .

It's endgame on health care reform. Credit to President Obama for taking on the issue early in his tenure. While my own view is he has not played his cards correctly in the HCR debate, we must all acknowledge that he took the important step of putting it in play. Of course now, he is a bystander, and will sign whatever bill the Congress produces. In short, it is up to the Congress. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said:

I guess I'm just so busy with what I'm doing that I'm not worrying about what somebody else is doing, and I have confidence in the President of the United States. He wants the strongest best possible bill that will work for the American people. And we have to convince him that what will pass in the Congress is something similar to what we have in the House.

In my view Speaker Pelosi has done a great job on health care reform and I support the bill she has produced from the House. Senate Leader Reid is wokring hard and has signalled that an opt out public option will be in the Senate bill. It looks like that bill can not defeat a filibuster at this time. So in the end, Reid and Pelosi will have to either threaten to or actually, pass HCR with a public option through reconciliation. I want to be clear where I stand at least - health care reform without a public option is NOT worth passing. I do not believe in "reform" absent a public option. Paul Krugman writes: