The Daily Strike-2/20/09-Mayors, Markets, Burris and More

Good Friday evening. We've almost made it though a full week without Congress in session. They're back on Monday. Now, onto today's Daily Strike.

MAYORS COME TO THE WHITE HOUSE: Today, President Obama spoke to a group of mayors at the White House. He asked for accountability and responsibility in spending taxpayer money. He also said that stimulus money could be available to states and localities as early as next week. The best thing that can happen politically for the White House, is for governors and mayors to show tangible results from the funding. The more photo ops in front of new construction sites, the better.

From a non-political perspective, this money is badly needed to help states facing massive budget shortfalls. The audience was friendly, which is to be expected from a group of mayors representing big cities. He did give a shout out to the Strike's former mayor, San Francisco's Gavin Newsom, for spearheading an effort to insure health care for thousands of uninsured San Franciscans.

MARKETS: There has been a lot of talk this week about how the market is sliding because investors are not confident in Obama's plans to ease the banking and housing markets. The angst came to a head yesterday from a reporter on CNBC, who railed against "bailing out losers" in the housing plan, and freaking out about public "intrusion" into private markets. The crowd surrounding him at the Chicago Stock Exchange mostly cheered this guy. Watch it and weep:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APAD7537RN0

Robert Gibbs, the White House Press Secretary, responded sharply basically indicating that this guy is clueless. Luckily the "investor" class, at the ones like this guy, are a clear minority. Their power, however, lies in the market. Today when Gibbs indicated that the White House was not interested in nationalizing banks, the stocks stopped free-falling. The White House has indicated that they will not make policy based on the everyday fluctuations of the market. But it can be hard when the Dow drops 300 points whenever a new plan is introduced (Fox News and the Drudge Report are always happy to make the correlation). The administration needs to remember that the trusting the "market" in making policy decisions is part of what got us into this problem in the first place. Let's not forget that the Dow was at 13000 in 2007, and things weren't exactly going in the right direction.

BURRIS: I've been hesitating to talk about Roland Burris, the newly sworn Senator from Illinois, because it's such a stupid story. Apparently, Burris agreed to raise money for disgraced former governor Rod Blagojevich in exchange for being appointed to the Senate seat. Burris has gone back and forth in his explanation of these allegations, but he admitted that he did indeed try and fail to raise money for the governor. Now everyone, including the new governor, is calling on Burris to resign. As a Democrat, it's incredibly frustrating to not just shore up this seat with someone with minimal ethical integrity, enough to at least get us to the next election. If Burris resigns (or is expelled by 2/3rds of the Senate), the governor has the power to make an appointment, although he has indicated that he'd rather have a special election to fill the seat. Which means that the Democrats could be one vote further away from breaking Republican filibusters. Come on, Roland.

STIMULUS REJECTION: We talked yesterday about Mark Sanford and his "reluctant" acceptance of federal stimulus money. Today, one governor is heroically walking the walk. Meet Louisiana's Bobby Jindal, the young Indian-American Republican who is seen as a rising star. Despite representing a state still marred by the ills of Hurricane Katrina, massive poverty, and unemployment, Jindal has decided to reject some of the stimulus money "on principle." Specifically, Jindal does not want to widen the pool of people eligible for unemployment benefits, and he does not want to extend current unemployment benefits another 20 weeks. His reasoning? It eventually will cause a tax increase on Louisianans. Of course, that probably won't be true, and even if it is, the increase would only affect those making above $250,000. Even if the tax increase affected lower income earners, it would be a few years down the line. In the meantime, Jindal will single-handedly deprive Louisiana's most vulnerable citizens of much-needed help.

Ladies and Gentleman, the 2009 Republican Party.

HEALTH CARE: The New York Times has an interesting article this morning about a series of meetings, spearheaded by Senator Ted Kennedy, to come up with a multi-stakeholder consensus on health reform. The group consists of representatives of labor, drug companies, big business and others. Apparently, a consensus is emerging around mandating that every citizen buy health insurance. While there are sticking points on how this will be achieved and enforced, it is striking that a diverse group of health care stakeholders would unite around a concept like this. Health care costs are hurting businesses in a number of ways, so for a change, their interests are aligned with labor and consumers.

The group's work is promising. As much as we'd like to vilify drug companies and big business, having them on our side while trying to enact health care reform will be an important advantage. As we learned from the stimulus debate, we shouldn't give up too much before we find out exactly how sincere they are in their cooperation. Another issue, sure to be brought up by Republicans, is how the process is happening behind closed doors. Few details about these meetings have been released. Republicans have so far rejected overtures to attend. Obama has criticized the 1993 Clinton Health Reform effort for not being transparent, so it is in his interest to try and make the process more open to the public.

Here we have another example of a time we need to abandon our ideology. Michael Moore would not be happy with having drug companies and corporations sitting at the table. But if it helps people get affordable health care, we need to do it.

One thing I think we can NOT compromise on is the creation of a universal public health care system. This system, which would be a version of Medicare available to citizens of all ages, would set baseline standards for price and quality. Therefore, if private companies wanted to compete, they'd have to either lower costs or improve services. Any thoughts on this? We would love your comments.

See you tomorrow night!

The Daily Strike-2/17/09-Signed and Sealed...Now to Deliver

Good Tuesday and welcome to the Daily Strike. The stimulus bill has been signed into law, and the Obama agenda now moves forward.

STIMULUS SIGNING: The President signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law today in Denver, CO, right after touring solar panels at a science museum. The President was introduced by a young entrepreneur who started his own solar energy company. The man said that his business, because of stimulus funds, will be able to add jobs instead of subtract them. Also speaking were Colorado Governor Bill Ritter and Vice President Biden. Several lawmakers were in attendance, including new Colorado Senator Michael Bennet.

In his speech before signing the bill, the President said that this bill in no way will end the economic crisis, but it is the beginning of the recovery. He touted investments in clean energy, education and health care. He also called his tax cuts to working families, "the most progressive in our history."

The President's job in the coming weeks will be to show the American public what exactly the stimulus has done. It helps that he started a website, recovery.gov, which tracks spending of the money. But more importantly, Obama needs to exhibit cases in which the stimulus funds helped create or save jobs. I just watched a report on World News Tonight about states and localities who will now be able to start long-awaited construction projects. One mayor was talking about how he will now be able to hire 500 workers to fix failing heating systems in schools. These stories need to be the focus of Obama's campaign-style appearances. It's much easier to tout tangible results than to talk about vague economic theory. Imagine the contrast of Obama talking about the specific jobs his bill created while Republicans talk about the theoretical pitfalls of government spending and theoretical virtues of corporate tax cuts. This is especially appealing politically in the wake of 8 years of failed Bush policies.

The President goes on to Arizona tomorrow to start selling the other part of his economic vision, his plan to stem home foreclosures. We'll talk more about that tomorrow.

AFGHANISTAN: We haven't really talked about foreign policy for awhile, but today the President made a big decision to send an additional 17,000 troops to Afghanistan. In a statement, Obama mentioned the resurgence of the Taliban and the presence of Al Qaeda on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. He also says that the additional brigades are possible because of the draw down of forces in Iraq. This plan will probably meet some resistance from the grassroots on the left, but it shouldn't come as a surprise. Obama has talked about increasing troop presence in Afghanistan throughout the campaign. The goal should be, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates has articulated, a new strategy that emphasizes diplomatic and political efforts. Vote Vets, a liberal group of veterans who have opposed the War in Iraq, released a statement saying they support the plan.

POLITICAL SUCCOTASH: One item worth mentioning: It seems that new Illinois Senator Roland Burris, appointed by ousted governor Rod Blagojevich, is in deep trouble. After denying that he did any wrongdoing, he now admits to raising money for the embattled former governor after he was appointed to the seat. The matter is now being investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee (which takes forever to do anything). I don't see any way that Burris runs for reelection in 2010. Pretty soon, we might copy Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post and rank the Senate races for 2010.

HOUSE RACE UPDATE: When Hilda Solis is confirmed next Monday, there will be three vacancies in the House of Representatives, all in seats held by Democrats. The first election will be March 31st in the Strike's favorite upstate New York district to replace now Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. As we've talked about before, assembly minority leader James Tedisco is running for the Republicans against venture capitalist Scott Murphy. All of the bigwigs are out campaigning: Giuliani, Michael Steele and John Boehner for Tedisco, and Steny Hoyer and Gillibrand for Murphy. This will be a district the Republicans will heavily court, because they have a good chance with a well-known candidate in a conservative district.

The next race will be in Illinois to replace new White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. This seat will almost certainly stay in the Democratic column. The primary election will be on March 3rd, with the general coming on April 7th. The favorite based on fundraising seems to be state representative Sara Feigenholtz, who received the endorsement (and moo-la) from Emily's List, a prominent abortion rights group that gives money to Democratic candidates.

Solis' seat will also most likely stay Democratic. No date for the election has been set since Solis has not yet left the House.

There could be more vacancies if Obama nominates a Secretary of HHS or Commerce from the House or Senate.

That's it for us today. See you tomorrow! Remember to make yourself a follower of the blog if you have not already done so!!