Progressive Citizens for America

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Sahil Kapur

The Obama administration announced Wednesday that the Medicare Advantage program, which allows seniors to receive health coverage through a private insurer, is enjoying lower costs and more customers as a result of the health care reform law.
Medicare Advantage enrollment has risen 10 percent over the last year while average premiums have fallen by 7 percent, said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. She also pointed out that similar improvements were seen the previous year.

The figures bolster President Obama’s defense of his signature achievement, and for Democrats it has the added bonus of refuting earlier Republican warnings that “Obamacare” would gravely undermine the choice provisions in Medicare.

“At the time the Affordable Care Act was passed, Republicans in Congress said the bill would virtually end the Medicare Advantage program,” declared senior White House staffer Nancy-Ann DeParle. “Those predictions turned out to be wrong. Medicare Advantage is stronger than ever — offering more seniors better benefits, higher quality care and lower costs.”

The basis for this GOP claim during the health care reform debate was that the ACA’s $500 billion in Medicare provider cuts included $136 billion in pay reductions under Medicare Advantage. But, at least for now, those cuts — along with other payment reforms — appear to have made the program more competitive and efficient.

“The new law’s massive Medicare cuts will fall squarely on the backs of seniors, millions of whom will be forced off their current Medicare coverage,” House GOP leaders wrote in their 2010 “Pledge To America” manifesto. Screeds against the payment reductions were a regular feature of Republican speeches in Congress during the debate over the law.

The Medicare Advantage program, created in 1997, allows beneficiaries to opt out of the single-payer plan and instead receive government-subsidized private insurance at an extra cost to them. About one in four seniors are currently on it. The basis of the steep ACA cuts was research that showed Medicare was over-paying the private plans.

Congressional Republicans didn’t ultimately seem too troubled by health reform’s Medicare cuts: they overwhelmingly voted to retain them last year as part of the Paul Ryan budget.

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President Obama will call for “a return to American values” in his State of the Union address Tuesday as he lays out a vision for an economy that provides greater equity at a time of growing income disparities.

In a video message to campaign supporters released Saturday morning, the president said his speech before Congress should be viewed as his blueprint for an “economy that’s built to last.”

Obama cited his speech last month in Osawatomie, Kan., where he tried to channel the urgent populism of Theodore Roosevelt a century ago to cast himself as a champion of the middle class. The State of the Union address is a bookend to that speech, Obama said, as the country faces a crossroads.

“We can go in two directions. One is towards less opportunity and less fairness,” Obama said in the video, which was released by his reelection campaign. “Or we can fight for where I think we need to go: building an economy that works for everyone, not just a wealthy few. On Tuesday night, I’m going to talk about how we’ll get there.”

Obama’s third State of the Union comes as he ramps up for what is expected to be a difficult reelection campaign. His Republican presidential challengers have attacked his economic policies, holding his administration responsible for the slow recovery from the financial crash.

And GOP members of Congress have successfully blocked much of the president’s agenda, including most of the provisions of his $447 billion American Jobs Act. Obama has sought to raise taxes on higher-income Americans to help pay for new spending proposals aimed at creating jobs, but Republicans have balked during a time when the nation’s deficit is growing rapidly.

Last year, Obama called on the country to “win the future” through investments in infrastructure and education that would pay off in the long term.

This year, Obama said, he will focus his speech on several sectors in an effort to boost homegrown jobs at a time of 8.5 percent unemployment: Those areas are manufacturing, energy and training for workers.

In the video, the president said the themes he will discuss are part of the central mission of the nation.

“That’s rebuilding an economy where hard work pays off and responsibility is rewarded — and an America where everybody gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everybody plays by the same set of rules,” Obama said.

He added that “we’ve got to meet this moment. And this speech is going to be about how we do it.”

With three days remaining until he speaks in the House chamber at 9 p.m. Tuesday, Obama said he has yet to finish writing his address, “so there might be a few late nights between now and then.”

President Barack Obama ignored a warning from Republicans against proposing tax increases Monday and rolled out a plan to reduce the deficit consisting of a mix of spending cuts and revenue raisers in an combative speech designed to persuade the public to embrace a balanced approach to bringing down the nation's debt.

In remarks in the White House Rose Garden, Obama drew stark contrasts between Republican's penchant for backing "tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires" while requiring seniors, the middle class and the poor to tighten their belts and accept sacrifices.

"During this past decade, profligate spending in Washington, tax cuts into multi-millionaires and billionaires, and two wars have turned a record surplus into a massive deficit," Obama said. "If we don't act, the debt will eventually crowd out everything else, eventually affecting us from investing in things like education and Medicaid. We need to cut what we can't afford to pay for things we need."

Even before Obama delivered the speech, which clearly laid out the differences between both parties in the 2012 contest, Republican leaders were reacting angrily to early reports outlining the President's "go big" push, calling on Congress to cut deficits by $4 trillion over 12 years and institute automatic, across-the-board spending cuts and tax increases if a first target isn't reached by 2014.

Any reform plan must include revenue increases, he argued, because the tax system isn't fair, allowing billionaires such as Warren Buffett to have a lower tax rate than middle-class families.

"This plan eliminates tax loopholes that primarily go to the largest business and corporations--tax breaks that small businesses and middle class Americans don't have to pay," Obama said. "We can't afford these special lower rates for the wealthy, which by the way, were initially talked about as temporary measures."

"Either we have to ask the wealthy to pay their fair share, or we have to ask seniors to pay more for medicare, or gut education," he continued. "This is not class warfare. It's math."

 A legion of 1,600 newly-recruited Democratic campaign volunteers, armed with Tweet-producing smartphones and a contagious spirit of enthusiasm, are fanning out across 40 states today to begin laying the groundwork for the reelection of President Barack Obama.

The forces -- college students, recent graduates, teachers, and retirees -- will work unpaid through August, aides say, to grow and re-energize Obama's grassroots volunteer network that had remarkable success in 2008, and gather troves of voter data in the process.

Obama campaign managers hope the effort will give the president something of a head start over his yet-to-be-determined Republican rival, in what is expected to be a tough campaign.

The operation kicked-off Saturday at boot-camp-style training sessions held jointly by the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee in conference rooms and community centers across the country.

ABC News received exclusive access to one of the two-day sessions held at DNC headquarters, where 15 volunteers received a briefing on campaign strategies and ground operations for the summer ahead.

"As summer organizers, we're the face of the president," Jenn Brown, a DNC staffer leading the training, told attendees. "So, whether it's here or in our lives, we represent the president 24 hours a day, and that's a really big responsibility we take on."

The office occupies a reported 50,000 square feet of the Prudential Plaza office building, one block south of Obama's 2008 campaign headquarters. Today the Obama campaign kicked-off "boot camp" training sessions for 1,600 newly-recruited community organizers who will be dispersed Monday across 40 states, working full-time unpaid through August to build out a grassroots volunteer network and gather voter data in the process. Over coffee and bagels, sub sandwiches and pizza -- which Brown called "the diet of an organizer" -- the recruits shared personal stories, flipped through glossy official instruction manuals and studied up on the Obama's first term with a game of "POTUS Accomplishments Jeopardy."

They also received the so-called "Rules of the Road." Colorful posters on the wall exhorted the new organizers to "Be on time," "Be positive," obey the "chain of command" -- and talk to the media? "No, no."

Campaign aides emphasized a goal of running a "different campaign" than 2008, but stressed the renewed importance of using personal relationships and one-on-one conversations to drive participation.

It's also clear they believe 2012 will be defined by Twitter.

"This summer is about trying new things and testing our organizing methods," said campaign spokeswoman Katie Hogan. "But these volunteers are not just guinea pigs; they will be having real conversations that are laying the groundwork."

One large sign hung from the conference room wall encouraging the volunteers to Tweet: "The Summer Organizers who write the best tweets will be re-tweeted by campaign leadership," it reads.

With 8.4 Million followers on Twitter, Obama has more than any other American politician. He added more than 162,000 in the last week alone.

Among those new campaign volunteers is Gloria, a middle-aged professional woman from Washington, DC, who is between jobs and wanted to give her summer to help Obama.

"I feel like a dorm mom here!" she exclaimed during introductions. "I missed the campaign in '08 when I was overseas working for the U.N., so I am really excited to help out this time."

Sam Polstein, 20, a junior at the University of Wisconsin, said he was inspired to become an organizer after witnessing the union protests in Madison earlier this year.

"It was kind of a big moment in my life," he said. "It didn't really inspire me to work toward some particular policy goal as much as it inspired me towards a motivation to work harder for families and workers in general."   Many volunteers also seemed more inclined to blame Congress and Republicans than the president for any shortcomings in reform legislation related to education, immigration, and the environment. "It's not him [Obama], it's Congress," said Valentina Pereda, 22, who said she joined the organizing effort because of desire to see the DREAM Act enacted.

Campaign manager Jim Messina has said the campaign is going to keep metrics on everything the volunteers do. But aides have not revealed what those data points are.

As one campaign staffer at the training put it: "We have our data person who's going to come in and talk about the data, which obviously we're very militant about."

  

Five years ago a young politician who seemed wise beyond his years was asked by Tim Russert what makes a great president. It was the kind of question that Russert, who could prompt more news in a single interview than entire cable operations do in a year, was so good at.

The politician took a thought breath before proceeding: “Obviously, most of the time it seems that the president has maybe 10 percent of his agenda set by himself, and 90 percent of it set by circumstance.”

Barack Obama: meet your 90 percent. The senator who so accurately predicted how events make the leader now finds himself a president trying to lead through those events.

In the process, despite a largely incoherent chorus of second-guessers, Obama has settled into a groove of reflective dithering before making his decisions. For the most part, it has served him well.

Think back to … oh, all of one week ago. The mercenaries of Muammar el-Qaddafi were closing in for the slaughter of people trying to take a breath of the same Arab Spring air going around Tunisia and Egypt.

Had Obama done nothing, as the Dennis Kucinich fringe Democrats and the Ron Paul isolationist Republicans would have it, the blood of many civilians would be filling the streets of Benghazi. Don’t forget: the regime had promised to chase its own citizens into closets and butcher them.

Or, had Obama put U.S. troops on the ground, as the imperious former Bush “diplomat” John Bolton insisted, a humanitarian mission would now be seen as another superpower invasion of an oil-rich Arab nation.

In his deliberative fashion, Obama ultimately saved countless lives in the short term, and will allow the rebels in Libya to own their revolution in the long term, if they can push ahead — a big if, of course. In the meantime, the economic and diplomatic noose will tighten around Qaddafi and the people he pays to kill on his behalf.

What Obama wanted to avoid, as he discussed during that same Russert interview, was the “messianic certainty” that led President George W. Bush to start a disastrous, trillion-dollar occupation of Iraq. In putting together an international coalition, backed by a United Nations resolution and the Arab League — all in record time — Obama also pulled off a nice bit of statecraft. And, had he used another day to reach out to Congress, there would be much less criticism at home.

Still, Republicans can’t cope with a president who tries to think before he leaps. Mitt Romney, who wakes most mornings in a groggy scramble to find his principles, faults Obama for the nuance of his Libya policy. How dare the president see shades of gray instead of black and white!

Newt Gingrich first criticized Obama for not imposing a no-fly zone, but now hits him for imposing a no-fly zone. You read that right. “I would not have intervened,” Gingrich said a few days ago. This followed a statement, barely two weeks ago, where he said he would intervene “this evening.” And he now calls the air strikes over Libya the worst foreign policy blunder in his lifetime.

Overstatement and misjudgment are Gingrich’s stock in trade — two reasons why he’ll never be president. He can always be counted on to fulminate on demand, with consistency the only casualty; the subject doesn’t matter.

The real problem for Republicans is that they are perplexed over what position to take on an issue that defies partisanship. So, Obama’s least-thoughtful critics attack him for thinking.

Ponderous deliberation, which doesn’t sit well in an age when we all move information with our thumbs, has been a hallmark of the Obama presidency from the beginning. His 90 percent of circumstances started on Inauguration Day, when Bush handed him the worse recession since the Great Depression, and continued through an oil spill that nearly poisoned an entire ecosystem.

During the spill, it was liberal cable pundits who wanted a president who could shout, emote and point fingers. Instead, he quickly negotiated a $20 billion escrow fund from BP that attempts to make whole those hurt by the spill. Similar success followed with the auto bailout, which saved General Motors, but cost Obama much of his early political capital.

There are certainly inconsistencies in the Obama approach to Libya. Why not help the protesters who are clubbed and jailed by our ally in Bahrain? “Why invade Iraq and not North Korea or Burma?” Obama asked in one of his books. “We can’t arbitrate a civil war,” he argued. As president, those questions are no longer Hyde Park parlor debates.

A poll just published by Reuters/Ipsos found 48 percent of respondents describing Obama’s military leadership as “cautious and consultative.” Another 36 percent chose “indecisive and dithering.”

I would argue that the combined 84 percent are basically saying the same thing — that this president is anything but impulsive. And next year, with an improving economy in a world where the United States is held in much higher regard, most people will probably choose a president who takes time to get it right, rather than one who is afraid to dither for a good outcome. 

Just a few months into his first term, Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) appears to be immensely unpopular with his constituents, a clear majority of whom disapprove of his job performance, according to a PPP poll of registered voters. What's more, if a do-over election were held today Kasich would lose -- by a resounding 15-point margin.

Kasich barely defeated incumbent Gov. Ted Strickland (D) last November, winning by a slim 49% to 47%. But if they could do it all over again, 55% of voters now say they would vote for Strickland, while only 40% say they'd go with Kasich.

Kasich's short tenure has been marked by several mini-scandals, including an incident last month when he called a police officer who issued him a ticket an idiot -- three times, on camera. Then came the contentious budget debate, when he forcefully pushed for a bill to strip state employees of their collective bargaining rights. That bill goes even further than the one recently passed in Wisconsin, which prompted weeks of enormous protests and has sparked a recall petition for the state's republican senators.

Kasich's approval rating now appears to be deeply underwater. In the poll, only 35% of respondents said they approve of his job performance, while 54% sad they disapprove. In a University of Cincinnati poll released Monday, 30% approved of Kasich's job performance, compared to 52% who disapproved.

If there was any doubt that Kasich's showdown with unions irked his constituents, the PPP poll also addressed that issue, finding that voters overwhelmingly sided with the unions.

Nearly six in ten said they supported the unions in the budget battle, while 37% said they backed Kasich. And specifically, 54% said they would support repealing S.B. 5 -- the union-busting budget bill -- if it comes up for a vote next fall.

The PPP poll was conducted March 10-13 among 559 voters. It has a margin of error of 4.1%.

In a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room, President Barack Obama said he was "saddened and outraged" about the attack that took the lives of two Americans and wounded two others in Frankfurt, Germany, on Wednesday and said the U.S. would "spare no effort" to find out how the attack took place.

Two people were shot and killed on a U.S. military bus at the Frankfurt Airport on Wednesday and two others were wounded. The gunman was reportedly a 21-year-old Kosovo national, authorities said.

Obama said American people were united in expressing their gratitude for the sacrifice of those who loss their lives.

"I want everybody to understand that we will spare no effort in understanding how this act took place and working with the German authorities to make sure that all of the perpetrators are brought to justice," Obama said.

"We don't have all of the information yet, and you will be fully briefed as we get more information, but it is a stark reminder of the extraordinary sacrifices that our men and women are making all around the world to keep us safe and the dangers they face all around the globe."

Protests continued today at the state Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin, against Republican Gov. Scott Walker's budget proposal -- which in addition to requiring greater contributions from public employees to their benefits packages, would also strip public employees of most collective bargaining rights. And today, pro-Walker protesters turned out, as well -- but were seriously outnumbered by the continued throngs of pro-union demonstrators.

The pro-Walker Tea Party rally featured something of all-star cast: Andrew Breitbart, Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher, Herman Cain and more. However, every estimate in the media has shown that the pro-Walker demonstration was outnumbered several times over by the pro-union demonstrators.

Reuters reports: "Both sides drew thousands to the state capital Madison on Saturday -- unofficial estimates put the total near 40,000 -- but opponents appeared to have several times as many as those backed by Tea Party groups, the first appearance by members of the conservative, limited-government movement this week."

Separately, WisPolitics reports that the state Department of Administration has estimated 55,000 demonstrators -- 50,000 outside the Capitol, and 5,000 inside. They also add: "This is the first day there has been a significant number of people demonstrating in favor of Gov. Scott Walker's bill. The number of bill supporters, however, was dwarfed by the massive throng of bill opponents."

And amazingly, there have been no arrests or incidents reported. So as a former Madison resident, I must say: Wisconsin is a place where even the angry mobs are polite and friendly.

Wisconsin is currently in a political crisis, with the minority state Senate Democrats having left the state in order to block the three-fifths quorum necessary to pass the budget. In addition, many schools have closed across the state, due to teachers calling in sick in large numbers.

Under Walker's plan, as TPM has reported, most state workers would no longer be able to negotiate for better pensions or health benefits or anything other than higher salaries, which couldn't rise at a quicker pace than the Consumer Price Index. Walker and state Republican leaders have said the plan to limit the collective bargaining rights of state employees is necessary to deal with the state's budget shortfall.

The budget proposal includes other provisions to strip the public employee unions of power, as well -- notably getting rid of the state's process of automatically garnishing employees' wages to collect union dues. According to the Associated Press: "The proposal would effectively remove unions' right to negotiate in any meaningful way. Local law enforcement and fire employees, as well as state troopers and inspectors would be exempt."

As the Wisconsin State Journal reports, the union leaders are saying they are willing to negotiate with Walker on the financial concession regarding workers' contributions to their benefits packages -- but they want the collective bargaining and other anti-union provisions taken out. "We want to say loud and clear -- it is not about those concessions," said Mary Bell, head of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, in a conference call with reporters. "For my members, it's about retaining a voice in their professions."

But as the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports, Walker's office is insisting that he will not compromise on the budget's provisions against union powers. And in a statement from his spokesman Cullen Werwie, those same provisions are pitched as a favor to the public employees themselves:

"Gov. Walker has repeatedly said that we won't negotiate the budget and we can't balance the budget on a hope and a prayer," Werwie said in the statement. "That remains true. State and local government need the flexibility to manage this and future budget crises. In addition, as government workers pay a modest amount toward their pension and healthcare premium, about half the national average, it is fair to give them the choice of additional savings on their union dues."

President Barack Obama called on U.S. businesses on Saturday to do more to boost the economy by hiring more workers and making investments.

The government has an obligation to make the United States the best place to do business, by providing the best schools, incentives to innovate and the best infrastructure, he said, but added that businesses also have to do their part.

"If we make America the best place to do business, businesses should make their mark in America," Obama said in his weekly radio address. "They should set up shop here, and hire our workers, and pay decent wages and invest in the future of this nation. That's their obligation."

Obama had difficult relations with the U.S. corporate community during much of his first two years as president, as some businesses -- and the powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbying group -- balked at his initiatives to revamp Wall Street regulation and overhaul the healthcare industry and took umbrage at some of his sharp rhetoric on executive pay.

But the White House sought to mend relations of late, by toning down the presidential rhetoric and making staffing choices that appeal to the corporate community, such as making Bill Daley, formerly of JPMorgan Chase, the new White House chief of staff.

Obama heads into the lion's den on Monday by making his first address to the members of the Chamber.

In the weekly address, Obama said he would tell the Chamber that government and business have mutual responsibilities.

"If we fulfill these obligations together, it benefits us all. Our workers will succeed. Our nation will prosper," he said.

With the economy the central concern of U.S. voters, the White House has been promoting its push to support businesses, and generate more jobs, despite having its attention distracted by the crisis in Egypt.

Obama has been traveling around the country to tout initiatives including a program to increase the energy efficiency of commercial buildings and another to expand access to high-speed wireless.

"All we did for these companies was provide some tax credits and financing opportunities. And that's what we want to do going forward," Obama said.

His address aired the day after the Labor Department said U.S. employment rose by only 36,000 jobs in January, far fewer than economists had expected. But the jobless rate plummeted to 9.0 percent from 9.4 percent in December.

"This week, we received a report on jobs and unemployment that told us we're continuing to move in the right direction," Obama said. "But we need to get there faster."

President Obama on Monday will propose a 2012 federal budget that the White House says will cut deficits by $1.1 trillion over 10 years.

The president's request calls for a mix of strategic spending to boost U.S. competitiveness and selective belt-tightening intended as a "down payment" on serious deficit reduction, according to his budget director Jacob Lew, who spoke on CNN's "State of the Union."

Full details on the budget will be released on Monday morning.

So it's not clear yet where all of the estimated $1.1 trillion in deficit reduction will come from, or exactly how significant a swipe it makes at long-term deficit reduction.

But one chunk -- $400 billion in savings -- would result from the president's call for a five-year freeze on non-security discretionary spending.

Non-security domestic spending only makes up about 10% of all federal spending. Deficit hawks lament that both the White House and Republicans have focused all of their attention in this area rather than address the country's big debt drivers -- spending on the entitlement programs and defense.

Nevertheless, this piece of the president's budget is certain to generate some of the biggest outcry since it includes cuts to programs that Democrats fiercely defend, such as heating assistance to low-income people.

Lew said it was a "very difficult" budget. "We have to make tough trade-offs."

Obama may limit tax breaks for richEven where the president will propose investments in areas he deems important, such as education, there would also be cutbacks, Lew said.

For instance, Obama's budget will boost the Pell Grant program to ensure that 9 million students will be able to afford college, Lew said. But to pay for those proposals, Obama will call for eliminating the grants for summer school and limit their use to the regular school year.

He will also propose that interest on federal loans for graduate students accrue during school; currently, the interest tab doesn't start running until after graduation.

The changes would save $9 billion in the first year, Lew told CNN's Candy Crowley.

0:00 /1:59State of the Economy (in 2 mins)Lew defended the administration from turning its back on its own fiscal commission, which in December proposed $4 trillion in cuts. He listed three items that will appear in the budget that echo recommendations from the commission: a call for corporate tax reform, changes to rein in malpractice lawsuits against doctors and a freeze in pay on federal workers.

Nevertheless, such proposals will not save a significant amount of money relative to the deficits set to accrue. And from all indications, the president's budget will not address key elements needed to fix the major entitlement programs: Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Obama's budget request is essentially a blueprint of his fiscal policy priorities -- the programs he would like to fund or cut, the new investments he would make and how he would pay for it all.

Congress can accept, reject or modify the president's budget. And Republicans may well reject much of it out of hand, since its cuts are not nearly as deep as many conservatives have been demanding. 

Here are five actions each of us can take today, thanks to new benefits made available by the landmark Affordable Care Act.

1. Pick up the phone and schedule a free annual exam, and routine preventive tests for your age group (such as mammograms and colonoscopies). Under the ACA, preventive care is now free of charge or soon will be, without co-pays or deductibles. If you're on Medicare, these services were free as of Jan. 1. If you have private health insurance, they're either free now, or will be free at the start of your new health plan year. Check out more standard preventive services.

2. Insure yourself and all family members. Everyone is now eligible for health insurance. Having a pre-existing condition is no longer an excuse for insurance companies to deny coverage (can you believe how long our health care system has tried to exclude the sick?). If you have children under age 26, you can now insure them under your own plan. Your state should now offer a Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan, and if it doesn't, you can use the federal government's "PCIP." Check out healthcare.gov for options.

3. Log onto Healthcare.gov and get informed about the ACA, health insurance options, your health care rights and quality comparisons of your own local hospitals. I found the website refreshingly user-friendly and helpful. For example, its rankings of my own local hospitals seemed accurate and reflective of my opinions as a physician in the know.

4. Appeal the unfair decisions of your insurance company. Under the ACA, it's now illegal for health insurance companies to deny or cancel coverage, but they can still legally deny care. The ACA gives us new ways to appeal. Again, check out your options.

5. Consider going shopping. By choosing our health insurance carefully, we the people will determine which insurance companies survive, and which go out of business. Because the ACA leaves health insurance and health care in the free market, our choices will collectively shape the future of American health care.