Published for The Arena on Politico.com, August 30th, 2010:
While the general approach should be to let the voters decide, there are clearly cases where parties will try to keep out inappropriate candidates such as Nazis who could harm the party and the country. The problem is that people will differ on the definition of “inappropriate.” It sounds like Gov. Barbour would have parties intervene in only the rarest of cases, and he is probably wise to take that approach.
Published for The Washington Times, August 20th, 2010:
By Tevi Troy and Dr. Jason D. Fodeman
With federal checks for electronic health records only months away, our nation’s health care system is on the brink of an unprecedented digital makeover. The stage was set for this technological revolution when $20 billion in government money for health information technology found its way into the $787 billion stimulus bill. The stimulus package contains bonus payments to doctors and hospitals designed to encourage adoption of electronic health records starting in 2011. These payments are to be phased out gradually and replaced by penalties beginning in 2015. The stimulus legislation also created the Office of the NationalCoordinator for Health Information Technology and directed it to establish standards to attain interoperability and define key terms.
The government recently released its final definition of “meaningful use” of a certified electronic health record (EHR). Unsurprisingly, the new rule increased the expected government outlays in this area to $27 billion. On the policy front, compared to earlier versions, the final rules contain fewer requirements to demonstrate meaningful use and thus qualify for the adoption subsidies. The new regulations reduce the meaningful-use core requirements from 25 for doctors and 23 for hospitals to 15 and 14, respectively, and additional requirements can be delayed until a later stage. This added flexibility appears to have been in response to overwhelming sentiment expressed in about 2,000 comments that the initial requirements were too ambitious and needed to be scaled back. It seems as if the regulatory officials overreached and were therefore forced to reverse course.
While the scaled-back requirements are better, federal regulators are still expecting health care providers to do too much in too little time. This has the potential to undermine the administration’s efforts to secure wide-scale EHR adoption.
Published for The Arena on Politico.com, August 4th, 2010:
The Senate is designed to slow down the process and allow the passions of the people to cool. Democrats don’t like it when they’re in charge, and Republicans don’t like it when they run the Senate. The only way to get things done there is via bipartisan compromise. This does not mean passing Democratic-designed bills with a few Republican amendments tacked on, but coming up with bipartisan initiatives that have senators from both parties on board from the outset.
Published for The Arena on Politico.com, August 3rd, 2010:
Judge Henry Hudson’s decision to allow the lawsuit against the health care bill to proceed shows that the challenge is more serious than the Obama administration is taking it. Yesterday, Secretary Kathleen Sebelius held a press conference on Medicare spending reductions, and the first three reporters wanted to ask about the court’s decision. Expect questions about the suit, as well as the suit itself, to continue dogging the administration for the foreseeable future.
Published for The Arena on Politico.com, July 27th, 2010:
Earlier this decade, Congress passed the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, which was supposed to reduce the impact of money on politics. This clearly has not happened. New “527″ issue advocacy organizations have proliferated, taking the place of more direct expenditures. Similarly, candidate Obama, a supporter of campaign finance laws, ignored the option of public financing for his campaign, and instead broke every record for private fundraising at the presidential level. The lesson: money always seems to find a way into politics, and loophole-laden laws have a tendency to exacerbate rather than fix the problem.
Published for The Arena on Politico.com, July 26th, 2010:
White Houses often overreact to the publication aspect of leaks, allowing the self-righteous media to depict themselves as brave defenders of constitutional freedoms. The Pentagon Papers incident is the most famous example of this phenomenon, as the leaks were more embarrassing to people in power than damaging to national security. Nixon’s attempt to prevent the New York Times’ publication of the papers led to a judicial repudiation that has made it much harder to protect against leaks with real security implications. The best strategy for dealing with leaks is making it clear that those who leak classified information are breaking the law, and that they will be pursued and punished. Just because leaking happens all too frequently in “Top Secret America” does not mean that it should be ignored.
Published for The Arena on Politico.com, July 23rd, 2010:
Can House Democrats wrangle in Rep. Charles Rangel?:
Even if now, after two years of investigations, ex-Chairman Rangel were to step down quietly, it still would not change the problematic political dynamic for Democrats. Voters already associate the Democrats with the various scandals on their watch. And they won’t have a chance to forget, as the Republicans will be only too happy to continue to remind the public about Rangel – and Massa, and Edwards, and Blagojevich, et al – in the lead up to November.
Who are the rising stars in politics?
As Republicans gain congressional seats and perhaps the presidency over the next two election cycles, voters are going to be looking for Republicans with the skills to address our long-term deficit woes. For this reason, look for Republican budget experts to emerge as rising stars in the next few years. Two likely candidates: budget expert and Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, who has developed an ambitious “roadmap” to keep us from turning into Greece; and Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who has budget chops from his days as OMB director.
Published for Politico, July 22nd, 2010:
As the world hopes that good news about the BP oil spill cap continues, there already are worrisome signs about the oversight and management in the next phase of this oil spill fiasco.
No fewer than nine formal investigations into the Gulf oil spill are now under way, according to The Washington Post, which warns ominously, “more could be coming.” The executive branch initiated four, Congress called for three, BP has one and an outside organization set up another.
Unfortunately, this crazy-quilt approach to investigating the disaster is all too similar to the administration’s approach to managing the crisis — which is one reason it has been handled so badly.
Just as there are a variety of investigations, the administration originally named a variety of officials as response point people to the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. Former U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen is in charge in the Gulf.
But back in Washington, a variety of players are on point. According to an official statement on the White House blog early in the crisis, President Barack Obama sent Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, assistant to the president for energy and climate change policy Carol Browner and Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to the Gulf Coast “to ensure all is being done to respond to this oil spill.”
In addition, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus is overseeing long-term recovery. And Ken Feinberg is, as usual, the special master in charge of payments.
Published for The Arena on Politico.com, July 21st, 2010:
Shirley Sherrod’s firing highlights the distinction between civil servants and political appointees. Civil servants have civil service protections and can only be fired after going through a review process, which rarely happens. Political appointees serve at the pleasure of the president, and can be fired whenever they become inconvenient. Because of her comments to the NAACP, Shirley Sherrod became inconvenient, and Secretary Tom Vilsack fired her. Now that there appears to be more context to her comments, Vilsack may reconsider his action, but Sherrod should be under no illusions about the conditions under which she serves.
