Like clockwork the continued obstructionism of Senate Republicans has got Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to start vaguely threatening to fix the Senate, possibly in July. From Greg Sargent:

Reid has privately consulted with President Obama on the need to revisit filibuster reform, and the President has told the Majority Leader that he will support the exercising of the nuclear option if Reid opts for it, the aide says, adding that senior Democrats expect the President to publicly push for it as well. “If Senator Reid decides to do something on nominations, the president has said he’ll be there to support him,” the aide says.

Reid is eyeing a change to the rules that would do away with the 60-vote threshold on all judicial and executive branch nominations, the aide says, on the theory that this is a good way to immediately break an important logjam in Washington — without changing the rules when it comes to legislation.

It is important to point out we have already seen this show played out before with zero results. At the beginning of 2011 Reid was talking about fixing the filibuster but at the last minute come to a toothless gentlemen’s agreement with Mitch McConnell (R-KY). Reid then threatened to do something at the start of this year but came to an agree with McConnell that included only meaningless temporary changes. Reid has a habit of talking a good game then backing down at the last minute.

If Reid did take this step it would be a big deal and go a long way toward  fixing our comically dysfunctional Senate. It would make it possible for the President to actually govern as the Constitution intended. More importantly, it would prove that the 60 vote threshold is not an insurmountable obstacle but merely an idiotic procedural issue the majority can easily eliminate at anytime.

Given Reid’s history though, at this point it is best to remain highly skeptical.

Americans are not expecting to retire until much later in life according to a new Gallup poll. Since the recession started the number of people who don’t think they will retire until they are past age 65 has increased significant. From Gallup:

I look at this trends and see a sad expression of the breakdown of the American dream. Traditional pension are disappearing, 401(k)s have been a policy failure, and the promise of ever-rising home prices left many Americans burned over the past decade.

Even though the country is technically much richer than it was two decades ago a comfortable retirement is becoming much rarer. Instead, most regular people are forced to work harder for longer and with less security.

I look at these numbers and see a serious crisis with our retirement system. The “deficit hawks” look at this trend and think the only problem is that the trend is not moving fast enough.

There has been a slow steady drip of indicators that President Obama will approve the Keystone XL pipeline. Recently there was Obama’s statements at a fundraiser and Biden claiming that he is “in the minority” in the administration who opposes the pipeline. Now the Huffington Post is reporting that Obama campaign spin-off Organizing for Action is refusing to do anything about the pipeline despite pleas from its members. From Huffington Post:

Top officials from President Barack Obama’s campaign arm, which was recently rechristened as Organizing for Action, are working to dampen the passionate grassroots opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, just as the organization launches its campaign against climate change, according to donors and OFA members.

Leaders of the group have on multiple occasions told gatherings of activists and donors that OFA will not pressure the White House on Keystone regardless of its members’ interest in the project, a 1,700-mile pipeline that would move heavy crude from the Canadian tar sands to the Gulf.

No one piece is a smoking gun, but they all point in the same direction. It would seem that the Obama administration is, at the very least, leaning towards approving the pipeline in the near future.

One of the biggest developments from Attorney General Eric Holder’s grilling yesterday is that he apparently only orally recused himself from the controversial case involving the AP phone records. While Holder claims he believes he recused himself around June, during examination he admitted he never did so in writing with an explanation for his action. He doesn’t even remember the exact day.

I will leave it to others with more expertise to determine if he may have technically broken any laws or allowed his subordinates to break the las by assuming the powers of the AG without documentation officially giving that authority. What I do know is that this is a shocking violation of the principles of both good governance and basic management.

The point of a bureaucratic hierarchy is to have clear lines of responsibility. It is to know where the buck stops. It is to know who should and should not be held accountable if something goes wrong.

If the head of a government agency is going to remove themselves from this chain of responsibility on what is supposedly a “very serious” matter; it should in writing, dated, with a clear explanation of why, and explicit instruction about who responsibility has been handed off to. Otherwise proper accountability becomes impossible.

For the sake of argument, what if the DOJ violated the law in late June. There is no way to prove if it was before or after Holder recused himself. Memories are hazy and it would just be Holder’s word against someone else.

Without recusals being in writing there is nothing to stop someone from claiming, after the fact, that they had earlier “orally” recused themselves to avoid responsibility. Similarly, what is stopping subordinates who are caught assuming the powers of a superior from claiming they had the authority thanks to an undocumented “oral” recusal.

Holder is the head of America’s law enforcement,  not the assistant manager at a ice cream shop. Transfers of important responsibility need to be in writing, you don’t just shout “I’m recused” three times as the waning moon sets over the horizon.

It is absurd that I apparently did more paperwork to transfer legal authority over my broken 1997 Nissan than Holder did to transfer control of what he called one of the most important leak investigations of his tenure.

The best part about Washington’s new obsession with scandals is that it seems to have killed any hopes for a grand bargain in the near future. Congress has only so much bandwidth to deal with issues and it looks like most of that time will be consumed by “investigations.” In addition, while Republican are in all out war mode against the administration it is basically impossible to take part in complex compromise negotiations.

There is a history of this happening, as Greg Sargent recently reminded everyone. Bill Clinton’s push for a bipartisan reform to Social Security in 1998 was derailed by the Republican’s push for impeachment. Clinton needed to rally Democrats behind him so he had no room to cut a deal rank and file Democrats would oppose.

While we are only a few days into the current firestorms over the IRS and AP there are signs that same dynamic will come into play here. Republicans senators are already saying these issue will make the grand bargain too difficult. From Politico:

“I can’t imagine that this IRS scandal and the controversy surrounding the overreach and intimidation by the IRS will do anything but pour cold water on the president’s attempt to raise taxes as part of a grand bargain,” [Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss)] said on MSNBC. “So yes, it will hurt the president in that respect.”

While immigration reform seems to have already developed its own momentum, it is going to be very hard for President Obama to get Republicans behind any other new actions will they are still out for blood. Republicans think they have a winning issue right now, so they are going to be in no mood to help Obama by giving him a big bipartisan victory on the deficit.

The push to cut Social Security under Obama is never permanently defeated just temporarily set back, but this could be a big setback.

The most amazing part of the press conference yesterday is when Attorney General Eric Holder turned the fear mongering up to 11 while trying to defend the way his department went after the AP’s phone records. From Holder (via WSJ)

Well, you know, as I said, I don’t know all that went into the formulation of the subpoena. This was a very serious — a very serious leak, a very, very serious leak. I’ve been a prosecutor since 1976 and I have to say that this is among — if not the most serious, it is within the top two or three most serious leaks that I’ve ever seen. It put the American people at risk. And that is not hyperbole. It put the American people at risk. And trying to determine who was responsible for that, I think, required very aggressive action.

That is five “very” and five “serious” in just two sentences. Apparently, our constitutional protections don’t apply if something passes the three “very” mark.

The problem is that according to the AP the leak was not nearly as serious as Holder is now trying to claim. From the AP:

We believe it is related to AP’s May 2012 reporting that the U.S. government had foiled a plot to put a bomb on an airliner to the United States. We held that story until the government assured us that the national security concerns had passed. Indeed, the White House was preparing to publicly announce that the bomb plot had been foiled.

The White House had said there was no credible threat to the American people in May of 2012.

Holder proves the Bush administration isn’t the only one capable of using baseless fear mongering to justify violating the principles of our Constitution.

According to a new Pew Research poll, 75 percent of Americans think our immigration system either needs major changes or a complete redesign. From Pew:

No other part of our government’s bureaucracy, including our tax system and health care system, is seen as more broken than our immigration system. It is viewed as almost uniquely dysfunctional.

While it is true that Gallup found Americans don’t think immigration is the most pressing issue right now during a weak economy, they still see it as an issue that is in serious need of big reform.

Congress might not be focused on what Americans feel is most important right now, but it is unlikely voters think Congress is wasting its time on immigration.

In a disappointing but sadly expected move, Jared Bernstein’s tries to use the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) newly released data on hospital prices to argue for Obamacare even though the law does almost nothing to solve the underlying problem. Bernstein writes:

You go to buy a Snicker’s bar, you a) face a similar price across the nation, and b) pay that price at the register.  Of course, health care provision is far more complex and varied, but the variation in price goes well beyond legitimate bounds, into “rent seeking” by hospitals and providers.

That’s not their fault–the current system incentivizes it.  And in fact, the more costs are controlled in the covered sector, the more they’ll try to gauge those on the uncovered side.  All of which should remind you of the urgency of getting everyone covered and into the pool.  In other words, the best medicine to treat this diagnosis is the implementation of the ACA.

The real problem is that “the pool” doesn’t exist and the Affordable Care Act won’t create one. There is no one pool. Medicare has a pool, there are 50 different Medicaid pools, each large company has its own pool, some unions are their own pools, insurance companies sometimes have several pools.

We have literally hundreds of different pools who need to separately negotiate with thousands of different providers for every single price. This is why health care financing in America is an inconsistent bureaucratic nightmare full of completely made up prices, discounts, endless negotiations with massive administrative overhead.

The way to solve this problem is to actually get everyone into a true single pool. This can be done either directly adopting single-payer or indirectly using all-payer.

The ACA doesn’t put everyone “into the pool,” all it does is simply move some uninsured people into over a hundred different pools.

House Republicans have a problem. They have trapped themselves in a no man’s land of political hostage taking.

The GOP leadership has basically admitted they can’t really play chicken with the debt limit again, but at the same time many in the rank and file refuse to give up on the idea that voting on the limit somehow gives them leverage. As a result they are looking around for modest demands they think they can get away with even though they basically admitted they won’t ever shoot the hostage. From Politico:

Speaker John Boehner’s leadership team is looking to squeeze out of an ideologically diverse House Republican Conference anything that can pass. Ahead of a members-only, two-hour meeting next Tuesday, the top idea bouncing around GOP leadership is casually being referred to as a catch-all, kitchen sink plan. [...]

Options being floated internally include language approving the Keystone XL pipeline, slashing regulations with the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act and additional spending cuts — perhaps even a framework for tax reform.

You can’t try to take a huge hostage and only demand a modest ransom, it shows everyone you are not serious. Your only options in legislative fights are asking for either a huge demand or sneaking in a small token, but nothing in between.

If you are going to threaten default it better be for a huge and principled reason. The type of big demand you should be willing to risk not just your career over but the entire economic health of the country. The previous Republican demand for a massive reduction in government spending seemed to qualify.

On the other hand, you can also use huge must-pass bills to slip in very tiny provisions. This works only because it is often not worth the time fighting over something incredibly minor when there is a deadline. The silly “no budget, no pay” provision in the last debt limit vote is a good example.

What you can’t do is threaten to wreck the economy just to get some modest changes, like eliminating some regulation. Your base won’t rally around it. The media will mock you and no one will take your threat serious.

Unfortunately for Speaker Boehner, his members still don’t seem to get the situation they are now in. Making half-hearted threats won’t give you half leverage. It is an all or nothing game.

I would like to take a moment to praise the Obama administration for having the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) release this huge database of what different hospitals charge for common procedures. The New York Times was given a preview of the data and put together a few examples of the widely divergent and frankly random prices hospitals charge. From NYT:

A hospital in Livingston, N.J., charged $70,712 on average to implant a pacemaker, while a hospital in nearby Rahway, N.J., charged $101,945.

In Saint Augustine, Fla., one hospital typically billed nearly $40,000 to remove a gallbladder using minimally invasive surgery, while one in Orange Park, Fla., charged $91,000.

In one hospital in Dallas, the average bill for treating simple pneumonia was $14,610, while another there charged over $38,000.

There are few such glaring examples of how horribly broken our health care system is than this bureaucratic insanity. By making the data public and easy to access it should help draw attention to the problem.

It is important to note that almost no one pays these prices but they are still what the hospitals officially charge anyway. The prices also have almost nothing to do with what anything costs. They are made up numbers based on what a hospital roughly thinks it can get away with to serve as an opening bid. Every single insurance company then needs to negotiate a “discounted” price separately with every single hospital on every procedure down to what is closer to what the procedure actually costs.

This is a large part of the reason why administration waste and hospital prices in American health care dwarf any other country’s. Even other first world countries that technically use private insurance companies almost always have some form of all-payer system, a single organization or government entity to set standardized prices. Instead, in America every hospital has dozens of different prices based on who is paying. This creates an ocean of paperwork and an army of private bureaucrats to track claims, errors and counterclaims.

Amazingly, despite this clear proof of a problem and with many other countries providing decades long examples of how to easily fix it, there is still no mention of all-payer today.