Daily Loaf

Late last night the Congressional Budget Office released their scorecard on the Senate health care bill.  As the NY Times reports:

The official cost analysis released by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office shortly after 11 p.m. showed that Mr. Reid’s bill came in under the $900 billion goal suggested by Mr. Obama. But 24 million people would still be uninsured in 2019, the budget office said. About one-third of them would be illegal immigrants.

The Congressional Budget Office has said the House bill would reduce deficits by $109 billion over 10 years and cover 36 million people, but still leave 18 million uninsured in 2019.

Republicans and some independent budget analysts said, however, that the savings might not be fully achieved because they were based on unrealistic assumptions about a sustained increase in the productivity of health care providers and much slower growth in Medicare spending.

The Senate bill would include a public insurance plan – states could opt out of the plan by passing legislation (which Republicans in the Florida state legislature are already intending to do, via a Constitutional Amendment passed by the voters).

The bill does not go as far as the House did in limiting access to abortion.  As far as mandates, the Times reports that the bill would require most Americans to obtain health insurance, but would impose less onerous financial penalties on those who go without.

Major parts of the bill would not kick in until 2014, a year later than the House’s plan.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid now has a task equally if not more challenging than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: collect 60 votes in the 100 member chamber any way he can.

It doesn’t help when people like Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman are popping off about doing what ever’s necessary to reject it.

Incidentally, if you’re getting annoyed with the independent Senator from Connecticut, you must read Jonathan Alter’s column in the current Newsweek.  Two priceless paragraphs on the man Alter calls “a putz”:

The latest trouble started after Lieberman said on Fox that “as a matter of conscience,” he would filibuster any health-care bill with a public option. Flashback: when he ran for reelection in 2006, Lieberman bragged about his MediChoice plan. It would “allow anybody in our country to buy into a national health-insurance pool like the federal-insurance pool we federal employees and members of Congress have.” That sounds suspiciously like—ahem—the public option. What’s changed?

Lieberman says it’s the deficit. He now opposes any kind of public option because of cost. But the Congressional Budget Office reports the opposite—that a government-run option would save money by providing competition. Maybe the CBO is wrong. Maybe it won’t save money. Who knows? So let’s stipulate that we have no clue about how much any of this will cost, long term.

That sounds familiar. In Afghanistan we have no idea how much a “government takeover” will cost. Does that keep Lieberman from being gung-ho about escalation? No. Like other neocons, he thinks the deeper principle at stake trumps short-term cost calculations that are probably wrong anyway. But when it comes to health care, restraining hypothetical spending is suddenly a matter of conscience. Spare me. For Lieberman the only principle at stake is his stake in looking principled.

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This afternoon in Lakeland, State Senator Paula Dockery “officially” announces her candidacy for the Republican nomination for Governor.  (We put officially in quotation marks since she filed the paperwork to run a week ago).

The event begins at 5:30 p.m.at Munn park.

On Sunday, Dockery’s hometown newspaper, The Lakeland Ledger, hailed her entrance into the race with an editorial titled, “Dockery a Convincing Leader”.

The editorial hailed what she has become perhaps best known for in the past couple of years, her battle with CSX rail:

During the past two sessions, Dockery has shown just how effective she can be. She led the effort to defeat a move to provide the CSX railroad with millions of dollars in state money, in exchange for use of 61 miles of rail lines in Orange County for a commuter-rail system. The deal-breaker Dockery found was this: The taxpayers would assume full liability for all accidents on the rail line, even if CSX equipment or employees were negligent.

Yesterday Florida U.S. Senator Bill Nelson was in Tampa, where he urged lawmakers to get a deal finished up  with SunRail and CSX in a special session next month, saying it will pave the way to make it easier for the federal government to award monies to Florida for a Tampa to Orlando high speed rail line.

But Dockery says there’s no need for that special session, telling the Ledger last week that “There has been no change in the very bad terms that the Florida Department of Transportation and CSX agreed upon many years ago in a back-room deal.”

Her steadfast position has been consistent, and is one of the reasons she has garnered enough grass roots support to think she has a fighter’s chance in her uphill battle against Bill McCollum.  However, it will be interesting to see how that plays out in the coming weeks, with so much of the political establishment desperately hoping for the light rail proposal to come to fruition, and thinking that the only way that might happen is if the state is able to make a deal the SunRail proposal back on track.

CL interviewed Dockery briefly last week for our upcoming story on her getting into the race for Governor.  In that interview, she stressed that she is a passionate supporter of all forms of rail (light, commuter, high speed) but that she believes the CSX deal is a loser for the taxpayers in the state.

Florida U.S. Senator Bill Nelson said today that the Tampa Bay area has taken a big leap in attempting to get high-speed rail to the region, and he placed great hopes on the Florida Legislature conducting a special session on rail issues  next month to show Washington that it means business about a a $2.5 billion federal stimulus request for high speed rail.

Speaking at the Columbia Restaurant in Ybor City, at an event hastily put together by the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce, Florida’s senior Senator said that the state’s chances of acquiring the funding “improve enormously”  if it can successfully deal with the issues with SunRail and TriRail, which the legislature has contended with for the past couple of years, but has never reached a deal.

Nelson gave a shout-out to former Hillsborough County Commissioner Ed Turanchik and his ConnectUs organization that has been formed to try to bring a Tampa-to-Orlando high speed rail line to Florida (though he did mispronounce Turanchik’s name).

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The Florida Democratic Party hosted its annual state conference over the weekend at a Disney resort in Lake Buena Vista.  This reporter was there for some of the events, including a debate between Dan Gelber and Dave Aronberg, the aspiring candidates to be the Party’s nominee for Attorney General next year.  I’ll be writing a separate post on that later today.

Saturday, the conference was filled with speeches from some of the party’s leaders, including the woman that so many Dems have their hopes on for next year to be the next governor, Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink.  In her address Saturday night, she lit into her possible GOP opponent next year, Bill McCollum, saying, “”A career politician like Bill McCollum only talks about jobs and growth, but a leader like me creates jobs and growth. McCollum pretends to have all the answers, a leader asks the right questions.  He puts on a performance. A leader demands performance. He measures results by the polls he takes, I measure results by the progress we make.”

Download the report here.

That’s quite possibly the strongest rhetoric employed so far by the CFO in her campaign against the current Attorney General, but if you can’t get the grass roots of your party faithful up and cheering at your state party’s convention, when can you?

I didn’t arrive at the Conference until around noon on Saturday, which meant I missed appearances by Senator Bill Nelson and Congressman Alan Grayson, who has, pardon the cliche, become a rock star with Florida Democrats after having said Republicans want sick people to “die quickly” two weeks ago.

On Saturday, he said the GOP should be called “The Selfish Party,” and the 2,000 or so delegates in the hall ate it up.

Saturday morning Senator Bill Nelson addressed the crowd, and there were many in the audience who got up when he spoke, calling out “health care now! “  In the Senate Finance Committee, of which he is a member, Nelson did vote on an amendment sponsored by New York Senator Charles Schumer, and on Saturday he told the delegates and others in attendance that “I have heard you loud and clear” on the issue.  Nelson’s Committee votes on their bill tomorrow.

As a Quinnipiac Poll released last month revealed, Florida Democrats are solidly behind a government-sponsored public health care option in any bill that ultimately comes out of the Congress this year, so it’s perhaps no surprise Nelson is getting with the program.

Yet the Democrats’ potential standard-bearer, gubernatorial candidate Sink, still has not expressed her opinion on the matter.

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By Mitch Perry
PoHo contributor
Mitch Perry is the anchor of the WMNF Evening News on 88.5 FM community radio.

Hours after the country collectively woke up last Wednesday and learned that the legendary Ted Kennedy had died, Florida U.S. Senator Bill Nelson (right) met with reporters in a small room at his Tampa downtown district office.

Nelson hailed the liberal lion’s towering achievements in the Senate, crediting them in part to his knack for bipartisanship. Then this reporter asked him what, if anything, would Kennedy’s death mean for the troubled healthcare legislation that the late Senator had called “the cause of my life”?

“As we bring to closure this healthcare debate, there’s going to be a void, but at the same time, there’s a memory,” Nelson replied.  “And I think with a country that is increasingly having difficulty for people to obtain health insurance, and affordable,  I think this is just going to give an additional impetus in the memory to Senator Kennedy to pass legislation that will reform the system, and make it affordable.”

It was stirring stuff.  It was also something of a different tune than he was singing 24 hours before, when he addressed the Tiger Bay Club of Volusia County.  There he argued that attempting to push through a sweeping healthcare reform bill at this time would likely be doomed for failure. Read the rest of this entry »

What’s the buzz on the latest issues in the Green Community? Check out what you may have missed this last week:

Living with the land: Florida’s first Earthship (video) – Eric Stewart gives a firsthand look at Florida’s first Earthship in Manatee County, and gets his hands dirty while helping out.

Not getting a million-dollar bonus this year? Think local stimulus- Scott Milinder shows us a real stimulus package that will work for us: we all commit to “Buying Local First.” According to recent economic studies, shifting your buying habits to locally owned businesses creates more circulation of money, more economic activity and more jobs in the local economy.

Eco-friendly summertime fashion accessories- Are you searching for a unique and beautiful purse to enhance your summer wardrobe? Then why not consider one of these recycled handbags that are made from recycled items that help to promote a cleaner and healthier world, reports Jen Meier.
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I just participated in a panel discussion on offshore drilling of our Florida beaches, sponsored by the Tampa Bay Beaches Chamber of Commerce. Also joining me were Pinellas County Commissioner Ken Welch, Senator Nelson’s staff Shahra Anderson, and the Ocean Conservancy’s TJ Marshall, as well as two other panelists acting essentially as lobbyists for the oil industry from the Southern Strategies Group – the firm that came close last spring to getting our state legislature to okay oil drilling within three miles of our beaches.

Over and over, their message came across: “Trust us. The oil companies would never do anything to harm your beaches. Honest, we can drill and you’ll never see a spill, nary a drop nor a tar ball. Never mind that Texas beaches, naturally as nice as Florida’s, have almost zero tourism revenue because of the muck and tar balls that ruin a nice walk on the beach there. If we had anything to do with that, we’re sorry, but that would never happen here. We’re much more careful now. Trust us.”

Two problems with this argument:
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