The Passion Of The Newt

David Brody at CBN:

Newt Gingrich, who is expected to run for President tells The Brody File that he “felt compelled to seek God’s forgiveness” over his past marital infidelity and now that he’s at the grandfather stage he is “truly enjoying the depths of my life in ways that I never dreamed it was possible.”

The Brody File sat down with Gingrich Monday afternoon at The Machine Shed Restaurant in the suburbs of Des Moines before the big Iowa Faith and Freedom event.

We’re posting three clips from the interview below with transcriptions.

There will be those Evangelicals who can’t get past Gingrich’s transgressions from earlier in his life. But let’s remember. Evangelicals know all about grace and redemption too and if Gingrich can connect on issues important to Evangelicals (especially in Iowa and South Carolina) then look out. He has a path to the nomination. Don’t write him off. He can compete strongly for the Evangelical vote.

Newt Gingrich: “There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.  And what I can tell you is that when I did things that were wrong, I wasn’t trapped in situation ethics, I was doing things that were wrong, and yet, I was doing them.  I found that I felt compelled to seek God’s forgiveness.  Not God’s understanding, but God’s forgiveness.  I do believe in a forgiving God.  And I think most people, deep down in their hearts hope there’s a forgiving God.  Somebody once said that when we’re young, we seek justice, but as we get older, we seek mercy.  There’s something to that, I think.  I feel that I’m now 67 I’m a grandfather.  I have two wonderful grandchildren.  I have two wonderful daughters and two great sons in law.  Callista and I have a great marriage. I think that I’ve learned an immense amount. And I do feel, in that sense, that God has given me, has blessed me with an opportunity as a person.  Forget about all this political stuff.  As a person, I’ve had the opportunity to have a wonderful life, to find myself now, truly enjoying the depths of my life in ways that I never dreamed it was possible to have a life that was that nice.”

Doug Mataconis:

Newt Gingrich is out with a rather unique reinterpretation of his marital infidelities

Josh Green:

I have greatly enjoyed Donald Trump’s hilarious, boastful attempts to explain why his divorces should not trouble social conservatives. Last week, Trump told the Des Moines Register, “One of the reasons I was divorced is because I worked very hard. And, you know, that’s a good reason. But I worked very, very hard building up a great company.” So I guess that justifies it, right?

I had assumed that this said more about Trump’s Olympian self regard than it did anything about the Republican Party. But after watching David Brody’s interview with Newt Gingrich on the Christian Broadcasting Network, I’m starting to wonder. Here’s how Gingrich explained his divorces: “There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.”

That sounds an awful lot like Trump’s excuse, and shares the similarity of seeming more concerned with complimenting one’s own hard work, patriotism and overall greatness than with, you know, penitently explaining the reasons why one’s marriages keep falling apart.

John Podhoretz at Commentary:

See, he worked far too hard because he loved his country too much and then he acted wrongly, but fortunately God forgives, plus God blessed him with an opportunity as a person.

I’d spend some time parsing this, seeking to show how he simultaneously takes responsibility and doesn’t take responsibility and how he actually praises himself when he’s supposedly criticizing himself. But what’s the point? He’s a fascinating, and occasionally brilliant, political thinker, but one thing the merciful and forgiving God who has so blessed him did not bestow upon Newt Gingrich was a sense of when to stop talking.

Philip Klein at The American Spectator:

While he is admitting that he did something wrong, he’s also trying to justify his behavior by aggrandizing himself. My own view is, when you’re owning up to something, you own up to it fully. You don’t try to explain or justify it yourself. The problem Gingrich faces when it comes to his personal problems is that the best possible argument a politician can make in these cases is that people should separate personal indiscretions from performance in office. Yet as leader of the effort to impeach President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Gingrich is in the worst possible position to make that argument. So we’ll have to keep a close watch on how this goes over with the base.

In the meantime, I wouldn’t recommend any cheating guys tell their wives/girlfriends, “Sorry honey, I was just acting on my passion for my country.”

Jeffrey Goldberg:

I didn’t want it to happen, of course. No one does. When you take the marriage vows, you take them for life, right? So at first, I suppressed those unwanted feelings. Sure, I noticed her purple mountain majesties as soon as she walked in the room. I mean, who didn’t? Believe me, in a sweater, those purple mountains sure were majestic. And her amber waves of grain? I couldn’t pry my eyes away. So lush and, well, ambery. What was I to do? Maybe it’s because my defenses were down — I was working so hard at the time — that my mind soon wandered to her fruited plains. Bad, bad thoughts! But I just couldn’t help myself.

At first, of course, I didn’t say a word. I tried to confirm my soul in self-control. Oh, how I tried! And she played it straight, even when she caught me staring at her alabaster cities. But then I succumbed. I succumbed to sin. It was a business trip, of course. What a trip! It took us from the redwood forests all the way to the gulf stream waters. I was working so hard! Did I mention that I was working so very hard?

On that perilous night, when I first lifted my lamp by her golden door, she was dressed in broad stripes and bright stars. I was always a sucker for broad stripes and bright stars. It happened after a long day of exceedingly hard work. Boy, was I tired from all that hard work! She knew I wanted her. And I knew she wanted me. In a flash, our clothes fell to the floor, and she whispered huskily in my ear, “Give me your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,” and before I knew it, I saw that golden valley. Oh, the rockets’ red glare! The bombs bursting in air!  In that moment of indivisible union, I screamed out, “America, America! God shed His grace on thee!”

I was hopelessly, irretrievably in love. I guess that makes me a sinner. But it also makes me a patriot.

Wonkette:

“I hope you can forgive yourself, God, for making this country so damn fuckable. Jeez Louise, this country is fucking hot! It’s actually your fault I had sex with women outside my marriages, because you shouldn’t have dressed up the United States in those skimpy borders. What am I saying? It’s not even wearing any clothes!”

Many politicians say they love this country. But few have the strength to admit to the U.S. they want to take it in the back room and cum on its face. THOSE POLL NUMBERS ARE GONNA CLIMB NOW!

 

The Dean Is Dead

Adam Bernstein in the Washington Post:

David S. Broder, 81, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post and one of the most respected writers on national politics for four decades, died Wednesday at Capital Hospice in Arlington of complications from diabetes.

Mr. Broder was often called the dean of the Washington press corps – a nickname he earned in his late 30s in part for the clarity of his political analysis and the influence he wielded as a perceptive thinker on political trends in his books, articles and television appearances.

In 1973, Mr. Broder and The Post each won Pulitzers for coverage of the Watergate scandal that led to President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation. Mr. Broder’s citation was for explaining the importance of the Watergate fallout in a clear, compelling way.

As passionate about baseball as he was about politics, he likened Nixon’s political career to an often-traded pitcher who had “bounced around his league.”

He covered every presidential convention since 1956 and was widely regarded as the political journalist with the best-informed contacts, from the lowliest precinct to the highest rungs of government.

Joel Achenbach:

If there were a more decent and generous journalist in our business than David Broder, I’ve never met the person.

Broder (“David” to everyone in the hallway, the elevator, the campaign filing center, of course) remained the consummate collegial figure long after — decades after — earning the status of “dean of the Washington press corps.” He had no pretense in him. He was a big-name pundit, but, most of all, he was a thing we used to call “a newspaper reporter.” He knocked on doors to the very end of his career, interviewing voters, getting to know the local political organizers, never promoting himself to a rank too exalted to conduct shoe-leather reporting or pound out a deadline story in a cold gym in some remote corner of New Hampshire or Iowa.

Who am I kidding: He loved those gyms! And the tighter the deadline, the better.

He could turn his analytical eye on his own reporting: Read this story by Broder, in which he expresses doubts about his influential report of Ed Muskie becoming tearful in the snow outside the Union-Leader office in the 1972 New Hampshire primary. Maybe it was just melting snow!

Steve Benen:

Regular readers know that I was often critical of Broder’s columns, but my critiques were driven in part by high expectations — the man was a giant of political journalism.

And even when I disagreed with his analysis, it was impossible not to respect his tenacity and his decency.

Best wishes go out to his family and friends.

David Weigel:

Last September, I traveled to Delaware to interview Rep. Mike Castle and his challenger, Christine O’Donnell, about a soon-to-be-infamous primary election. Castle and I talked for a long while he shook hands with voters outside the Arden Fair.

“This is becoming a pretty big deal,” Castle said. “You just missed David Broder. He came up here to interview me about the race.”

Broder, at that point, was about to turn 81 years old. He hadn’t just beaten me to the story, he’d beaten me by a month, traveling up to Delaware to interview Castle and introduce readers to Chris Coons, a “worthy match” who could actually win. After Castle lost the primary, the political press — myself included, reluctantly — spent countless pixels covering O’Donnell. But Coons won. If you had read Broder’s reporting, you would have expected that.

I can think of nothing more satisfying than doing what you love, doing it well, and making your readers more informed about the world because of the information you’re gathering. I’m deeply grateful to Broder for doing that for so many people over such a long time.

Philip Klein at American Spectator:

Broder was working up until the very end, and anybody who covers politics for a living has probably bumped into him at one point or another. I remember covering the Rudy Giuliani campaign during a cold weekend in New Hampshire in November 2007, and Broder, then in his late 70s, was touring along. I noticed him at one event, standing in the back, his hand slightly shaking as he took notes the old fashioned way while younger reporters were running around with digital recorders and scrambling to upload video on their laptops.

I wondered whether I’d still find the campaign trail so alluring when I reached that age.

Jim Newell at Gawker:

A few quick facts about David Broder:

• He was only a car or two behind President Kennedy when he was assassinated in 1963. He was proud of his ability to show no human emotion during this traumatic episode for the country. This is probably how he secured “dean” status, by preventing himself from writing with any sort of sadness or sympathy during the assassination of a golden-boy president several yards away.
• He hated the Clintons and led the moralistic Beltway howl against President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. It was the angriest he’d ever been in his life, when he heard about Bill Clinton getting a hummer from Monica Lewinsky.
• He liked compromise and bipartisanship as ends in themselves, had no real interest in analyzing specific pieces of legislation, and was an original proponent of many other familiar Washington media traits, like “both sides do it.” For more, google High Broderism.
• He was an important figure in 1972’s The Boys on the Bus, one of the earliest media-centric books showcasing the depravity of “pack journalism” on the campaign trail.

David Dayen at Firedoglake:

The phrase “Broderism” became a signifier in the blogosphere for a certain type of self-regarding faux-centrism which always seemed to side with deficit peacocks over everyone else, and defaulted to the position that the midpoint between any two issues was always the wisest course.

Broder’s book “The System,” about the failure of the Clinton health care plan in the 1990s, is actually a highly regarded work. But for many years, he seemed to have been writing the same column over and over, attacking the extremes of political debate in favor of the sensible center.

Nevertheless, Broder had a very strong pull on national politics, and was considered within Washington as the dean of the national press corps. So his death changes that landscape, however subtly

 

No Orcs Were Harmed In The Making Of This Trailer

Steven Nelson at The Daily Caller:

FreedomWorks will host a premier of the trailer for the film adaption of Atlas Shrugged at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Since the novel by Ayn Rand was published in 1957, efforts to produce a film version have been attempted. All failed due to a variety of legal and editorial disputes.

Protagonist Dagny Taggart will be played by actress Taylor Schilling, who previously was the lead character in NBC medical drama Mercy.

Atlas Shrugged has been highly influential within conservative and libertarian circles for its support of laissez-faire economics.

David Weigel:

FreedomWorks has been distributing “Who Is John Galt?” signs and merchandise at CPAC, part of an advertisement for a faithful adaptation of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged.” Clips from the movie have been playing at CPAC. I haven’t watched them all. I have seen the trailer.

James Joyner:

Last night, the CPAC Bloggers Bash attendees were “treated” to an excruciatingly long preview of the forthcoming “Atlas Shrugged” movie, which will hit a theater near you on April 15. Actually, it’ll just be Part I.  Like the Lord of the Rings, this will be a trilogy.

Judging by the preview, I can fully understand why it took more than two decades to find a studio to produce the flick. This is quite possibly the most boring film ever made — and I include documentaries that are shown in grammar school so that children can request to view them backwards.

Put it this way: I simply do not know enough expletives to adequately express how truly horrible this film was. I would rather be subjected to the “Clockwork Orange” treatment than sit through one part of this. I might well prefer death to enduring the trilogy.

Philip Klein at The American Spectator:

As a long-time fan of the novel and a very discriminating movie viewer, I’ll admit that I’ve had my doubts about this project all along, given its low budget and rushed production schedule. Viewing the scenes that I did – albeit a small sample size – did not assuage my early concerns.

Like the book, the film is set in the near future, though now it’s given the date of 2016. The filmmakers went for a “ripped from the headlines” type vibe, with images of the economy tanking, the country’s infrastructure collapsing, protests raging in the streets, Congress passing statist legislation, and a TV news anchor leading a panel discussion between some of the book’s characters.

The dramatic scenes were true to the book. The problem is that Rand’s characters don’t really speak like normal people, and this can be particularly jarring on film if not handled correctly. I found the dialogue in the parts between Dagny Taggart and Hank Reardon to be unnatural and their acting subpar.

I spoke with some fellow bloggers afterword who thought I was being too harsh and others who were outright enthusiastic about what they saw. I felt compelled to write something given the immense interest in this film, but I’ll withhold further judgment until I see the entire movie, which is the first of a planned three-part series.

Allah Pundit:

If anything, to me it feels too generic, like a promo for some new Fox primetime soap about young, beautiful businesspeople. Think “Melrose Place” meets “Wall Street.” Or isn’t that what “Atlas Shrugged” basically is, plus some loooooooong didactic passages about libertarianism? (Haven’t read it!)

Cole Abaius at Film School Rejects:

Who is John Galt, and does anyone care?

For all I know, “meh” is not actually a word, but somehow it perfectly describes the new Atlas Shrugged trailer. This movie has been through true development hell – detailing every incarnation would be a long, strange trip, but for some reason, no one’s ever pulled the trigger on it until now.

Its 40 year ride through development, through Brad Pitt and Russell Crowe, through Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron, has deposited it here – without any big stars and split up into three films.

Tbogg:

Before I begin, no post about Atlas Shrugged is complete if it does not include this:

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.- KF Monkey

So, for your Friday evening’s viewing pleasure (courtesy of DougJ  aka A Writer At Balloon Juice, LLC) and pretty much everyone else who has stumbled across this youtube nugget: Atlas Shrugged: The Movie, coming soon to cinema emporium hopefully nearer to you than me.

Trains. Who in America doesn’t want to see more movies with lots and lots of trains in them? And industrialists talking about money and profits. And trains. Let’s go to the imdb description:

A powerful railroad executive, Dagny Taggart, struggles to keep her business alive while society is crumbling around her.

As we can see from the preview, Dagny is going to shut down her train business and that will make America fail. Because America’s trains …. well, I guess they power iPhones or make porn or something. And we all know that America cannot live without those things.

According to someone at imdb who seems to be in the know:

Rand’s dramatic classic comes to the screen after decades of endeavor. Although on a tight budget, it is well cast, and the story is given a modern setting to appeal more to today’s audiences.

If they wanted to update it to appeal to modern audiences then the trains would change into big robots are start fighting each other amidst shit blowing up. Then they could have gotten Michael Bay to make this film. It would still be shitty, but at least it would make money.

2.5 Is The Number, Baby!

Jon Ward at The Daily Caller:

A number of the House GOP’s leading conservative members on Thursday will announce legislation that would cut $2.5 trillion over 10 years, which will be by far the most ambitious and far-reaching proposal by the new majority to cut federal government spending.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, will unveil the bill in a speech at the Heritage Foundation on Thursday morning.

Jordan’s bill, which will have a companion bill introduced in the Senate by Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, would impose deep and broad cuts across the federal government. It includes both budget-wide cuts on non-defense discretionary spending back to 2006 levels and proposes the elimination or drastic reduction of more than 50 government programs.

Uri Friedman at The Atlantic with a round-up

Tina Korbe at Heritage:

Jordan, who serves as chairman of the Republican Study Committee, said the SRA would immediately return spending to 2008 levels and eventually cut non-defense discretionary spending to 2006 levels, as well as implement a hard freeze through 2021.

“I have never seen the American people more ready for the tough-love measures needed to put our country back on a sustainable path,” Jordan said. “The question today is: Will the political class rise to the standard the American people have set the last year and a half? … I think the answer is yes.”

Jordan authored a Washington Examiner op-ed with Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) detailing the proposal, which also eliminates unused stimulus money and severs the government’s ties to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

It’s one of several priorities for the RSC this year. Jordan reminded the Heritage audience that the RSC exists to ensure that Republicans act like Republicans.

Following shortly after the spending proposal, the RSC plans to unveil a Welfare Reform Act — something Jordan said he feels especially strongly about, as he ran for office in large part to strengthen the institution he considers the country’s bedrock: the family.

Jim DeMint, Jim Jordan, and Scott Garrett at The Washington Examiner:

Known as the Spending Reduction Act, this bill makes major strides toward resolving the debt crisis by cutting $2.5 trillion of spending between now and 2021. Here’s how it works:

In the short term, the Spending Reduction Act makes $125 billion of immediate rescissions, which target money already approved by Congress, by cutting current spending back to 2008 levels and repealing the remaining funds from Obama’s failed “stimulus” package.

The largest step toward spending reduction begins with the start of the next fiscal year on Oct. 1. On that day, the bill further cuts non-defense discretionary spending to 2006 levels and implements a hard freeze through 2021.

This alone will save taxpayers $2.3 trillion. A portion of these savings come from reducing the size and cost of the civilian federal work force. Attrition will trim the work force by 15 percent, while salaries will go without automatic pay increases for the next five years.

Our plan’s overall reduction specifically targets more than 100 separate budget items and spending reforms, ranging from the elimination of duplicative education programs (saving $1.3 billion annually) to a 50 percent reduction of the federal travel budget (saving $7.5 billion annually).

These specific savings, when combined with additional reforms like ending Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s taxpayer bailout, total approximately $376 billion over the next decade.

America’s debt problem wasn’t created overnight, and implementing a complete solution will take both time and perseverance. With a healthy dose of courage from elected leaders, however, we can get America moving on the right track again.

Over the long term, balancing the budget will require lasting private sector job creation and robust reforms to entitlement programs that still operate on outdated demographic assumptions.

After passing the Spending Reduction Act, Congress must work to tear down barriers to job creation and make our safety-net programs sustainable for the 21st century. Only when all Americans have ample opportunity to earn success and build prosperity on their own will we enjoy lasting fiscal and economic stability.

David Weigel:

The proposal does what Republicans have been talking about for two years — “repeal” of remaining stimulus funds (now $45 billion), privatizing Fannie and Freddie ($30 billion), repealing Medicaid’ FMAP increase ($16.1 billion), and what they estimate at $330 billion in discretionary spending cuts. Highlights of these projected annual savings:

– Cutting the federal workforce by 15 percent through attrition, and do this by allowing only one new federal worker for every two who quit.
– Killing the “fund for Obamacare administrative costs” for $900 million
– Ending Amtrak subsidies for $1.565 billion
– Ending intercity and high speed rail grants for $2.5 billion
– Repealing Davis-Bacon for $1 billion
– Cutting annual general assistance to the District of Columbia by $210 million, and cutting the subsidy for DC’s transit authority by $150 million.

Reforms that go after their own perks:
– Cutting the Federal Travel Budget in half, for $7.5 billion
– Cutting the Federal Vehicle Budget by 1/5, for $600 million
– Halve funding for congressional printing – $47 million annual savings
– Ending the death gratuity for members of Congress

And cuts that get revenge for Juan Williams: $445 million from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, $167.5 million from the NEA, and $167.5 million from the NEH.

“Everything on this list pales in importance to saving the country,” said Rep. John Campbell (R-Ca.). “We are much closer to the Greece-Ireland-Spain precipice than any of us would like to believe.”

Philip Klein at The American Spectator:

I’m still awaiting a more detailed breakdown of the proposal, which the RSC tells me won’t be released until later today or tomorrow, but in a press release and an op-ed by Sen. Jim DeMint, and Reps. Jim Jordan and Scott Garrett, they claim the proposal would save $2.5 trillion over 10 years. It’s not clear how they get to that number, but I would imagine it’s largely a result of the spending freeze, which would lower discretionary spending relative to projections. The problem with relying on spending freezes is that you still have to figure out down the road where the actual savings are coming from, especially as time goes by and inflation makes it more challenging to meet those annual spending targets. And as we know, we won’t get the long-term debt under control without a serious effort to reform entitlements. That said, at first blush, I don’t see anything in the above list that would not be worthwhile to cut.

As the authors acknowledge, “On its own, passing the Spending Reduction Act will not get us over the finish line — but we will get a $2.5 trillion head start.”

Nick Gillespie at Reason:

If you want to get serious about cutting spending, you can’t be talking about going back to 2008 levels, a favorite GOP ploy since it focuses attention on the Obama years. Yet as readers of this site well know, the ramp up started with George W. Bush and the GOP Congress.

Doug Mataconis:

The fact that the plan doesn’t even touch to two biggest items on the budget is troublesome, and it’s worth noting that $2.5 trillion over ten years amounts to no more than 6.5% of the total amount of anticipated Federal spending over that period. Nothing to sneeze at, but hardly the solution to our problems. Nonethless, it’s a good start. Let’s see them put this in legislative action, get it passed, and dare the Senate not to be fiscally responsible.

Today We’re Gonna Party Like It’s 2009

Elspeth Reeve at The Atlantic with a round-up. Reeve:

House Republicans will vote to repeal the health care law Wednesday–a vote widely expected to go nowhere, because the Senate won’t pass repeal, and if it did, President Obama would repeal it. But is the vote more than symbolic? It certainly won’t be the last we hear of the health care debate, The New York Times’ David M. Herszenhorn and Robert Pear report. Not by a long shot. Lawmakers will be fighting for the next two years over the government’s proper role in the health care system, and so will 2012’s presidential candidates.

The House began debating repeal Tuesday. Republicans argue that the Congressional Budget Office is underestimating the future cost of the law. Democrats say the CBO might be overestimating the price tag, because the law is meant to improve the delivery of care and thus slow the growth of its expense. Another major point of contention is whether the law will create or destroy jobs.

Andrew Stiles at The Corner:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) continues to challenge Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) to take up the Republican repeal of health care reform in the Senate once it (presumably) passes the House, where a vote is currently scheduled for 6:30 this evening.

“We have [s]aid that we are going to be a results driven Congress,” Cantor told reporters this morning. “So I have a problem with the assumption here that somehow the Senate can be a place for legislation to go into a cul-de-sac or a dead-end.”

“The American people deserve a full hearing,” he continued. “Let’s see the votes.”

Reid has said he has no plans to bring repeal to the Senate floor, in part because it has no hope of passing. Cantor has urged the Democratic leader to put his money where his mouth is. “If Harry Reid is so confident that the repeal vote should die in the Senate, then he should bring it up for a vote, if he’s so confident he’s got the votes,” Cantor said Tuesday.

Jennifer Rubin:

The conventional wisdom (i.e. the consensus of wishful-thinking, generally liberal elite opinion makers) is that it then goes nowhere. But don’t be so sure. Senate leadership advisers tell me there is always a way, through amendments and other procedural efforts, to get votes. They point out that filibusters also can be mounted. That is precisely why filibuster reform is going nowhere.

The Republican Senate leadership does not expect any Senate Democrats to flip sides on the vote for an out-and-out repeal. The consolation prize is that Democratic senators such as Jim Webb, Claire McCaskill, Ben Nelson and Bill Nelson will have to defend those votes in 2012.

On votes on discrete issues, there is a high likelihood that some provisions — e.g. the massive paperwork burdens on business — will draw Democratic votes. Likewise, there may be difficult votes for Democrats on everything from Medicare Advantage to the individual mandate.

Red state Democrats up for re-election in 2012 will have a very tough time of it — back the president or help their own re-election prospects? And as this goes on, the House will be holding hearing after hearing on ObamaCare to, in Nancy Pelosi’s words, find out what is in it.

Jimmie Bise:

For reasons I can’t quite fathom, progressives have decided that one of the big stories this week should be whether or not Speaker Boehner will change the name of the “Repealing The Job Killing Health Care Law Act”. Apparently, “job killing” is now verboten speech, lest some barely-hinged right winger mistake a Democrats for a job and kill…wait…mistake a Democrat for Obamacare and…

…okay, I’m baffled here. I don’t know why this is a story except that it involves the word “killing”, which is violent rhetoric, and violent rhetoric is wrong.

To Boehner’s credit, he toyed around with a few alternate phrasings, such as “job crushing” and “job destroying”, but they didn’t send the requisite tingle down Chris Matthews leg so he went back to the original name.

However, I am in possession of a super secret, ultra-classified list of names the GOP had considered to replace the “Repealing The Job Killing Health Care Law Act”. At the risk of running afoul of Dick Cheney’s Haliburton Ninja Death Squads, I will share them with you now.

5) The “We’re Not Going to Grind Gramma Into An Edible but Nutritious Slurry Act”.
4) The “Sarah Was Right; There Really Are Death Panels Act”.
3) The “Dear God in Heaven, What Were We Thinking Act”.
2) The “We’re In Charge, So How Do You Like Us Now Act”.
1) The “Happy Cuddle Puppies Nuzzle Wuzzle Act”.

I’m glad they stuck with the original.

Philip Klein at The American Spectator:

Of all the arguments liberals have been making during the health care debate, among the most tenuous is the idea that Republican members of Congress who accept government sponsored health insurance are being hypocrites for favoring repeal of government-sponsored health insurance for other Americans. Today, bloggers over at Think Progress post what they evidently think is a clever video of them challenging Republican members to explain why they accept government health care benefits.

The explanation for this is quite simple. Most Americans receive their health insurance through their employers, and members of Congress are employees of the government. Hence, the government helps pay for their coverage.

To extend the logic being used by liberals would mean that if Democrats were to propose a law in which the federal government sends $100,000 checks to every lower-income American, any Republican members who still collected their salaries would be hypocrites for opposing it.

Peter Suderman at Reason:

Here’s Health and Human Service Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s latest defense of the administration’s health care overhaul: If it were repealed, according to the headline from an HHS press release yesterday, “129 million Americans with a pre-existing condition could be denied coverage.” That’s roughly half of all Americans under 65 who might “be at risk of losing health insurance when they need it most, or be denied coverage altogether,” according to the release.

Or maybe it’s a little less. OK, perhaps even a lot less. The release quickly qualifies the headline estimate to indicate that it may be that as few as 50 million Americans—just 19 percent of the non-elderly population, rather than half—under 65 have “some type of pre-existing condition,” which apparently means everything from cancer to high blood pressure. It’s all rather hard to pin down, you see. 50 million. 129 million. It’s somewhere in there. With precision estimates like these, you know they’ve got the goods.

Fine. 50 million is still a big number. Should we seriously worry that almost 20 percent of Americans will lose their health coverage without the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act?

Not really. As the Cato Institute’s Michael Cannon points out, a 2001 study by none other than HHS noted that only 1 percent of Americans have ever been denied health coverage for any reason. And according to a just-published study in the health policy journal Health Affairs, “the fraction of nonelderly uninsured persons…who would be rated as actuarially uninsurable is generally estimated to be very small, less than 1 percent of the population.”

Scott Johnson at Powerline:

Putting Obamacare out of its misery is the critical mission that must be carried out be Republicans in the coming years. It seems to me to raise in a profound form the question Lincoln asked regarding Douglas’s professed indifference to slavery: “I ask you in all soberness, if all these things, if indulged in, if ratified, if confirmed and endorsed, if taught to our children, and repeated to them, do not tend to rub out the sentiment of liberty in the country, and to transform this Government into a government of some other form.” The form of the question suggests that the answer is yes, as I believe it to be in both cases.

In “Buck up and stop Obamacare,” Dr Milton Wolf asserts: “Obamacare has become ground zero in the fight for America’s future.” And that’s the spirit in which the task of killing Obamcare must be approached.

“Wait Until That Deal Come Round”

Jon Ward at The Daily Caller:

President Obama and congressional Republicans have reached a tentative deal to extend the Bush tax cuts for all income levels and are presenting the proposal to congressional Democrats Monday afternoon, The Daily Caller has learned.

The deal will extend the current tax levels for two more years, preventing taxes from going up on any income levels, despite the wishes of many liberal Democrats — including Obama — that individuals making more than $200,000 a year and families with more than $250,000 a year in income see their rates go up.

In exchange, Republicans have agreed to extend unemployment insurance benefits for an additional 13 months.

Obama presented the proposal to Democratic congressional leaders at the White House Monday afternoon, seeking to obtain their approval for the deal.

Philip Klein at The American Spectator:

This year’s Republican landslide was rooted in the party’s ability to forge a coalition of independents and more conservative Tea Party voters, even though these groups don’t always neatly overlap. The clear strategy of the White House in the coming two years is to try and force Republicans to take stances on issues that would highlight the differences between these groups and drive them apart. One potential issue for the White House to exploit is extending unemployment benefits, a measure which many conservatives (rightly, in my view) object to, but which is more popular among the broader population. Republicans were likely to eventually cave on this issue anyway, because they’re wary of being portrayed as uncompassionate and extreme, a caricature that haunted Newt Gingrich and House Republicans after the 1994 GOP takeover. Under normal circumstances, Republicans’ caving on unemployment benefits would probably trigger a backlash on the right, but now that Republicans seem to have agreed to an extension as part of a larger deal to extend the Bush tax cuts, that criticism is likely to be a lot more muted. Now, instead of the attention being on Republicans, all of the focus is going to be on Obama’s more significant capitulation. Basically, one way or another, there was going to be an unemployment extension, but Obama has now made it a lot easier for Republicans to justify it to their base.

Michelle Malkin

Chris Good at The Atlantic:

The tax cuts were an issue in the 2010 midterms, but not by any means the biggest. The economy and health care reform took center stage, even as Tea Partiers and anti-tax groups criticized Obama for wanting to let the higher-income cuts expire.

That said, a presidential election is hotter and brighter than anything else. Everything is magnified. Americans for Tax Reform presently keeps a “Countdown to the Biggest Tax Increase in American History” clock on its website, and such rhetoric will only intensify as November 2012 approaches. Obama and his GOP opponent will discuss the tax cuts during debates. Third-party groups will spam their constituencies. The tax cuts will be a thing.

A reasonable question, then, is: If Democrats are losing this debate now, poised to give in to GOP demands, why would they think the situation will be any different in two years? There are no compromises in a presidential election, only winners and losers.

Obama isn’t actually losing this debate, it’s important to remember, in terms of public opinion. While Obama appears to be losing on the tax cuts, it mostly appears that way because he’s not going to get his way over the GOP, and because the left is angry at him, voicing discontent with his willingness to compromise. But Obama is winning the broader popularity contest. People support his stance on the Bush tax cuts, according to recent polls.

CBS (Nov. 29 – Dec. 1) shows 53 percent wanting only the sub-$250K cuts extended, with 26 percent supporting a full extension. Gallup (Nov. 19-21) shows 44 percent supporting some income threshold (different figures were polled) and 40 percent supporting the GOP’s plan. AP/CNBC (Nov. 18-22) shows 50 percent supporting Obama’s plan and 34 percent supporting the GOP’s.

So, while Obama appears to be losing this debate right now, it could be a winning issue for him in the 2012 presidential race.

Ezra Klein:

The compromise the White House is negotiating on the Bush tax cut is looking more and more like the White House’s opening gambit in the 2012 campaign.

The White House has stopped negotiating for ideal — or even acceptable — tax policy and moved to negotiating stimulus policy. The tax cuts for income over $250,000 will pump about $100 billion into the economy over the next two years. It’s not the most stimulative way to spend $100 billion, but it’s more stimulative than not spending it, or than raising taxes. And it won’t be alone.

The deal isn’t done, but right now, Democrats look likely to get a 13-month extension of both unemployment insurance and many of the tax breaks built into the stimulus (Making Work Pay, the bump in the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, the business tax breaks and so on). That totals about $180 billion over two years. So if the White House gets the deal that the early reports suggest are close — and that they seem to think they’ll be able to get — this is a two-year stimulus package that approaches $300 billion. [Update: Just to be clear, that’s $300 billion for tax cuts for income over $250,000, and tax extenders. Add in the rest of the tax cuts — which I left out because they’re already at consensus — and it’s closer to $750 billion. So the $300 billion is the marginal cost over the tax cuts for income under $250,000.]

In other words, rather than paring the tax cuts and the deficit back, they’re making both larger. If you’re of the mind that the economy needs all the extra help it can get right now — and you should be — this is a lot more extra help than anyone expected Republicans and Democrats would agree to give it. And from a political perspective, if you believe that what matters for elections is the economy — and you should — then it’s worth it for the White House to lose news cycles in 2010 if it means adding jobs by 2012.

Digby:

So it’s done. Would it be unseemly for me to say I told you so? (My miscalculation was that they would also be able to hold unemployment insurance hostage along with the middle class tax cuts, which was really brilliant considering that it’s Christmas and they can all go home now warm in the knowledge that God blesses us one and all. Damn.)

Ezra sets forth what I would imagine is the thinking among Democratic insiders, namely that tax cuts for the rich are a form of stimulus and since we can’t get any kind of real stimulus, they have to extend them. The problem here is that while tax cuts are often used for stimulus, it doesn’t seem to have worked all that well in this recession, although it may have mitigated the worst of it at its depth. But tax cuts for the wealthy have been shown over and over again to be the least effective form of stimulus and coming as they are at a time when the wealthy have recovered very well and their investments are booming (while the rest of the country is still swimming in debt and suffering from lack of jobs, the housing slump and underemployment) they are likely to be even less stimulative than usual. I really don’t think even they believe this rationale.

So why? I think it’s a basic belief in “markets” as the savior of all economic problems and a broader fear of further angering the business community and the financial sector: they hear the threats loud and clear — “unless you give us our tax cuts, the country gets it.” The corporations and Wall Street are already sitting on a boatload of cash which they have no need to distribute as long as they are making big profits anyway. They simply do not believe they should have to pay higher taxes so they are holding a metaphorical gun to the head of the government and daring it to thwart them.

Jon Bernstein:

Part of the confusion is that everyone is so used to seeing Republican rejectionism that they don’t recognize accommodation (that is, willingness to make a deal that gives both sides policy gains) when they see it.  Perhaps another part of that confusion is that this may be an issue in which liberal activists really do part ways with the bulk of Democratic voters.  It’s surely the case that among liberal activists, climate/energy, immigration, and several other issues are a much higher priority than the tax cut pledge.  But for many Obama voters, that’s probably not true.

I’d also say that I agree with those who believe that the Democrats’ spin on this issue has been far from impressive, although as usual it probably made little difference.  Still, it’s made no sense at all for Barack Obama and the Democrats to publicly support anything called “the Bush tax cuts.”  From the start, or even from summer 2010, it sure seems that it would have been a lot smarter to invent something called “the Obama middle class tax cuts” and supported that as an alternative to Bush tax cuts (or, even better, Bush tax increases).  Indeed, Obama could have outbid the Republicans on the “middle class” portion of the tax cuts, opposed tax cuts for the rich, and still had plenty of money left over.  Framing the whole thing along GOP lines never made any sense.  On the other hand, at the end of the day the Democrats’ position was still popular, so it’s not easy to see what was lost in losing the spin war.

Back to the analysis…the case rests on four assumptions: that Republicans care a lot about upper level tax rates; that Republicans are basically indifferent about tax rates for everyone else; that Democrats care quite a bit about tax rates for everyone outside of the wealthiest Americans; and that neither side has the votes to impose their preferred policy on their own.  We don’t really know whether any of those assumptions is correct — we get to hear everyone’s rhetoric, but that doesn’t always match with their real intent.  However, if these assumptions are correct, then the way this issue has played out makes lots of sense.

Allah Pundit:

One question to bear in mind as you watch: Where does this temporary fix leave him during campaign 2012? He’s going to swear up and down that there’ll be no more tax-cut extensions for the wealthy, come hell or high water, but of course he made the same promise during campaign 2008 and yet here we are. His base will have every reason to believe that he’s lying to them — and with good reason, given Ben Bernanke’s dire warning that it’ll be four or five years at least until unemployment returns to “normal” levels. If Obama’s willing to compromise now in the name of stimulus, why not again in 2013? Stand by for updates.

We All Get Punched In The Gut

Chart from Calculated Risk

Calculated Risk:

From the BLS:

The unemployment rate edged up to 9.8 percent in November, and nonfarm payroll employment was little changed (+39,000), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.

David Leonhardt at NYT:

Overall employment growth fell to 39,000, from 172,000. Private-sector hiring fell to 50,000 — which isn’t nearly enough to keep up with normal population — from more than 100,000 in each of the previous four months. Average hourly pay rose just 1 cent, to $22.75, the smallest gain in five months. The average length of the workweek remained stuck at 34.3 hours.

What’s causing this? No one knows, to be honest. But the most likely suspect is the same one that has been hurting the economy for much of this year. Financial crises do terrible damage, and the economic aftershocks from them tend to last longer and be worse than people initially expect.

Steve Benen:

I realize that economists tend to emphasize that it’s unwise to overreact to any one report, but this one feels like a punch to the gut. For all the indications that the job market was starting to pick up a little steam, this morning’s jobs report suggests the exact opposite.

Ryan Avent at Free Exchange at The Economist:

There is little to be happy about in this report, in other words. But there are some indications that the November numbers may be an aberration. September’s job losses were revised down to 24,000 in this report, while October’s job gains were revised upward, from 151,000 to 172,000. Through November, weekly data on initial jobless claims showed significant improvement. And of course, many other indicators have been flashing positive signs in recent weeks.

It’s likely, then, that the November figures will be revised up in future months to show a better performance more in keeping with broader trends. And it’s important to remember that monthly data are noisy. America’s labour markets have yet to generate job growth sufficient to bring down the unemployment rate. But the pace of recovery has been improving. There is good reason to suspect that when all is said and done this report will appear as a blip marring a strengthening upward employment trend. All the same, policymakers in Washington weighing whether to extend unemployment benefits and tax cuts should heed the obvious weakness in labour markets. They can and should make sure that November’s number remains an anomaly.

Don Suber:

Unemployment rose to 9.8% in November — or a full two points higher than what Barack Obama said it would be if we had done nothing.

One year ago, unemployment was at 10%, which proves Obamanomics has stalled the economy, as there was a net gain of only 39,000 jobs this November.

President Obama can no longer blame President Bush for this mess. Obama has spent record amounts of money and increased the size of the federal government from being 20% of the economy under Bush to now 25% of the economy as he increased the budget from $2.8 trillion a year to $4 trillion.

He has failed.

He is a failure, America.

Nice guy, but a failure none the less.

But he did ban Four Loko.

Philip Klein at the American Spectator

John Cole:

Just a reminder. The Republicans, energized over their November victories, went to Washington and immediately went about securing tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires as priority #1, all while blocking any attempts at job growth legislation and continuation of unemployment benefits. Meanwhile, this is happening:

[…]

A competent political party would be able to make the Republicans pay a political price for this and be forced to make very uncomfortable votes. Does anyone know where I can find a competent political party?

Baby, It’s Freezing Outside

Katherine Mangu-Ward at Reason used the same pic as us.

Peter Baker at The NYT:

President Obama announced a two-year pay freeze for civilian federal workers on Monday as he sought to address concerns over sky-high deficit spending and appeal to Republican leaders to find a common approach to restoring the nation’s economic and fiscal health.

“The hard truth is that getting this deficit under control is going to require some broad sacrifice and that sacrifice must be shared by employees of the federal government,” Mr. Obama said at a White House news conference.

“I did not reach this decision easily,” he said. “This is not just a line item on a federal ledger. These are people’s lives.”

Ed Morrissey:

Give the President some credit.  This mainly empty gesture will net a lot more than Barack Obama’s earlier exhaustive budget trimming that saved all of $100 million after running up a $1.3 trillion deficit.

Philip Klein at The American Spectator:

In his press conference, Obama claimed that the move would save the government $28 billion over five years. Taking that number at face value, that would represent a sixth-tenths of one percent reduction in the projected $4.52 trillion deficit over that same period (2011 through 2015). It would be the equivalent of a person who expects to rack up $10,000 of of credit card debt over the next five years touting the fact that he’s found a way to reduce his expenses by $60 over that time period. In football terms, it would be like a kickoff return that gains about a half of a yard.

James Joyner:

This will of course be very popular politically, since non-military federal employees are widely believed to be overpaid and underworked.  And, frankly, given that we have near-zero inflation, there shouldn’t be any cost of living hikes, anyway.

Indeed, it’s not clear how this proposal actually saves any money.  It’s not like this would roll back already-enacted pay increases.  Presumably, this is “saving” in the federal government sense of not getting a spending hike that you had previously mentioned wanting to have.

Scarecrow at Firedoglake:

For the umpteenth time, the Obama White House has made the foolish mistake of confusing efforts to “boost economic growth and spur job creation” with the need for near-term deficit reduction. Even his economic team tried to keep the two different time frames — short run vs long-run — separate. And for the umpteenth time, this President has repeated discredited Republican gibberish that when households are having to cut back spending during a recession, government should do the same thing.

That’s just wrong. Foolishly wrong. Depressingly (literally), tragically wrong.

The economy is suffering from, among other things, the collapse of the housing market and it’s relationship to a massively fraudulent, rapacious financial system. When housing prices collapsed — and they’re not done yet — households lost over $6 trillion in wealth and families lost trillions in retirement savings. With 15 million unemployed and millions more living in job and health insecurity, typical non-wealthy households have no choice but to cut back. So private spending cannot pull the economy out of the ditch as it has in the past. But that is not true of the federal government.

Government spending can pull the economy up from the bottom. And only government has the resources and the power to fill in the gap in aggregate demand to bring the economy and jobs back.

Atrios

Jonathan Chait at TNR:

There’s a certain class of moderate Democratic strategist that thinks symbolic moves like this brilliantly capture the center, but I’m not sure it really works like that. Instead, it will be reported on the evening news, with a complaining comment from a liberal, a sneering comment from a conservative, and a dismissive comment from a Centrist Budget Wonk who says you have to cut entitlement spending. If you’re going to do something like this, at least do it during the State of the Union address so you can get the message out unfiltered.

Jonathan Zasloff:

Mr. President, it is not park rangers’ fault that Wall Street decided to gamble with the global financial system and lost.

It is not FBI agents’ fault that the Republican Party wants to give tax breaks to billionaires and get them to pay for it.

It is not USDA food inspectors’ fault that you and your advisors have not bothered to tell the American people why your program is good and have gone out of your way to alienate your base.

It is not VA nurses’ assistants and caregivers’ fault that Larry Summers was so infatuated with his own economic models that he didn’t give you the right options for the stimulus or that Tim Geithner can’t figure out that this unemployment is cyclical.

Mr. President, you said at your news conference today that “this is not just a line item on a federal ledger. These are people’s lives.”  You are right.  They just happen to be lives that you don’t really care about.

This Summer Is Hot, Full Of Oil, And Jobless

Daniel Indiviglio at The Atlantic:

The job market has been stagnant so far this summer. Although the U.S. economy lost 131,000 net jobs in July, that was due in large part to a loss of 143,000 temporary government Census workers. The net number was worse than the 60,000 lost economists expected. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate was unchanged in July at 9.5%, reports the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number of unemployed Americans also remained at 14.6 million. Today’s report shows just how week the job market has been over the past few months, with a significant downward revision to June’s jobs number.

Calculated Risk:

For the current employment recession, employment peaked in December 2007, and this recession is by far the worst recession since WWII in percentage terms, and 2nd worst in terms of the unemployment rate (only early ’80s recession with a peak of 10.8 percent was worse).

This is a very weak report, especially considering the downward revision to June. The participation rate declined again, and that is why the unemployment rate was steady – and that is bad news. I’ll have much more soon .

Mark Thoma:

Many observers are looking for “glimmers of hope” in the report and pointing to private sector job growth of 71,000, which is higher than in previous months and thus evidence of acceleration in job growth, to an increase in hours worked, an increase in wages, and a fall in workers involuntarily working part-time.

However, as noted in the “glimmers of hope” link, and as I have noted many, many times, we need 100,000-150,000 jobs per month just to keep up with population growth, and even more than that if we want to make up for past losses. That is, we need faster growth than 100,000-150,000 per month if we want the economy to do more than just keep up with population growth and reemploy the millions and millions of people who are now out of work. So job growth of 71,000 still represents a declining labor market, and does nothing to offset past losses.

Philip Klein at The American Spectator:

Politically speaking, the difficulty for Democrats is that there are only two more job reports between now and the November elections, so they’re running out of time to change minds about their stewardship of the economy. And at this point, it’s increasingly unlikely that even one gangbusters report would change public attitudes — it would probably take a series of several months, or even quarters, of economic data.

Ryan Avent at Free Exchange at The Economist:

THERE is no getting around it—today is a bad day for the White House. They lose one of their top economic staffers, have the Senate reject one of their Fed nominees, and suffer a gut-wrenching employment report. Of course, the news is worse for the nation’s 14.6 million unemployed workers. In July, payroll employment fell by 131,000, while the unemployment rate held steady at 9.5%. Economists had expected a negative number in July, due to the continued decline in temporary employment associated with the decennial census. The loss of census jobs amounted to a hit to payrolls of 143,000. But the forecast was for other employment categories to perform better.

The real bright spot in the report is the increase in private payroll employment, of 71,000 jobs. Private payrolls have risen in every month of 2010, adding over 600,000 workers all told. Growth there undercuts the argument that economic uncertainty is proving an obstacle to private hiring. But that private payroll growth was largely offset by the loss of 48,000 jobs at the state and local government level. One recent estimate indicated that state and local governments could shed 500,000 workers over the next two years. Democratic leadership has sought to reduce the negative impact of these cuts with aid to states, but has faced stiff opposition. A $26 billion state aid bill passed out of the Senate yesterday only made it through the body after tweaks were made to pay for the cost of the bill—by cutting funding for food stamps.

There were other positive signs in the report. Hours worked and earnings ticked upward for the month. Both the mean and median duration of unemployment declined, as did the number of long-term unemployed. Of course, some of that shift is likely due to the exit of long-term unemployed workers from the labour force. The labour force shrank by 181,000 workers in July, and both the participation rate and the employment-population ratio edged down slightly. And meanwhile, the June payroll figure was revised from a loss of 125,000 jobs to a decline of 221,000 jobs.

Ed Morrissesy:

This isn’t a Recovery Summer.  It’s a slow slide, certainly better than the rapid disintegration of 2009, but we haven’t replaced those jobs yet, either.  Job losses are cumulative.  In a normal recovery with proper economic policies of lower barriers to investor entry, we would see a rapid replacement of jobs in this time frame that would take us back to somewhere around 80% of what was lost, with the remaining 20% being the most difficult to recover.  We have not yet even begun that ascent.  I’ll update this with a couple of slides later this morning to demonstrate the problem.

Expect the White House to hail the best private-sector job creation numbers since March, but economists won’t get fooled.  We’re still descending, and will until we get job creation solidly above 100,000 new additions per month.

And So, It Begins…

Ashby Jones at WSJ:

This just in: Virginia federal judge Henry Hudson on Monday ruled that he’ll let the state of Virginia’s challenge to the landmark health care law passed in March go forward, at least for the time being. Click here for the early Reuters story; here for the 32-page opinion.

The Department of Health and Human Services had moved to dismiss the lawsuit, which was filed in March (click here for the complaint), shortly after the passage of the law. But Judge Hudson on Monday denied the motion.

The ruling represents a setback that will force the Obama administration to mount a lengthy legal defense of the law. The suit, filed by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (pictured), alleges that the law’s requirement that its residents have health insurance violates the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.

Virginia’s lawsuit is one of several trying to undo the health-care law. Another large one was filed in a Florida federal court by a handful of state attorneys general.

Christopher Weber at Politics Daily:

Cucinelli argues on his website that “buying health insurance can be said to be an act in commerce. However, if someone doesn’t buy insurance, they are by definition not engaging in commerce. This legislation greatly oversteps the Commerce Clause.”

[…]

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius minimized the importance of the judge’s decision, calling it just a “procedural step,” according to the Associated Press.

SCOTUSBlog:

The new law, the judge commented, “radically changes” health care coverage in the country.  In passing it, he added, Congress broke new ground and extended “Commerce Clause powers beyone its current high watermark.”  Both sides, the decision said, have turned up prior rulings, but they are “short of definitive.”

“While this case raises a host of complex constitutional issues,” the judge wrote, “all seem to distill to the single question of whether or not Congress has the power to regulate — and tax — a citizen’s decison not to participate in interstate commerce” — that is, a private decision not to buy health insurance.  “Neither the U.S. Supreme Court nor any circuit court of appeals has squarely addressed this issue…Given the presence of some authority arguably supporting the theory underlying each side’s position, this Court cannot conclude at this stage that the [Virginia] complaint fails to state a cause of action….Resolution of the controlling issues in this case must await a hearing on the merits.”

Philip Klein at The American Spectator

Todd Gaziano and Robert Alt at Heritage:

On the merits, we are surprised the judge took as much space to conclude that Virginia stated a valid cause of action, namely, that Congress had exceeded its constitutional authority with the individual mandate.  At this stage in the litigation and on the particular motion that was filed (a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss for the legal wonks), the judge need not and could not rule on who will win or even if one side is more likely to win.  The only question is whether Virginia stated a legal cause of action (or legal theory) that is cognizable in law.  Virginia certainly has at least a valid substantive theory to challenge the law, because someone with standing is always able to challenge the constitutionality of a statute on the ground that Congress has no constitutional authority to enact it, QED.  Indeed, we think Virginia ultimately should win on the merits, but it is even easier to show that the correct form of the argument was set forth in the complaint.  Nevertheless, unless the district court’s jurisdictional rulings are overturned, Judge Hudson’s discussion of the constitutional issues is somewhat instructive.  It shows he is not hostile or dismissive of Virginia’s claims, which is surely good for liberty.

Michelle Malkin

Ed Morrissey:

Expect the Left to go after Judge Hudson.  George W. Bush appointed him to the federal bench in 2002, following a career in the state bench and also in the US Marshal Service as director during Bush 41’s administration.  The Right showed no reluctance to point out Susan Bolton’s appointment by Bill Clinton, and turnabout is not just fair play but de rigueur by now.

It matters little, anyway.  Virginia wasn’t the only state preparing a challenge to this law, nor was it even first to file a challenge.  This law will go to the Supreme Court from many directions, and there are more than enough constitutional grounds for judges to allow hearings on it, regardless of what Pete Stark thinks.

Besides, Hudson only refused to dismiss the lawsuit.  He hasn’t yet ruled on any of the arguments in the case, except to rule that Virginia has a case to argue that the federal government overreached.  What we know now is that at least one court will hear that case — and that’s the first step to checking the power of Washington.