Following up on my review of news from the first half of last year, I’ve posted links to Bleeding Heartland’s coverage of Iowa politics from July through December 2009 after the jump.

Hot topics on this blog during the second half of the year included the governor’s race, the special election in Iowa House district 90, candidates announcing plans to run for the state legislature next year, the growing number of Republicans ready to challenge Representative Leonard Boswell, state budget constraints, and a scandal involving the tax credit for film-making.

Last night the U.S. Senate voted 60 to 40 to move forward with debate on the health insurance reform bill. All senators who caucus with Democrats voted for cloture, and all Republicans voted against. The breakthrough came on Saturday, when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid secured Senator Ben Nelson’s support with extra money for Medicaid in Nebraska and new language on abortion.

At Daily Kos mcjoan published a good summary of what’s in the latest version of the bill.

Reid reportedly promised Nelson a “limited conference” on this bill, meaning that very few changes will be made to the Senate version. However, it’s far from clear that the House of Representatives will approve the Senate’s compromise. About two dozen House Democrats plan to vote against health care reform no matter what, meaning that it will only take 15-20 more no votes to prevent supporters from reaching 218 in the House.

Bart Stupak, lead sponsor of the amendment restricting abortion coverage in the House bill, has been working with Republicans against the Senate’s abortion language. Meanwhile, the leaders of the House pro-choice caucus have suggested the Senate language may be unconstitutional.

Even before Reid struck the final deal with Nelson, Representative Bruce Braley told the Des Moines Register, “I think the real test is going to be at the conference committee and if it doesn’t improve significantly, I think health care reform is very remote based on what I’m hearing in the House.”

Senator Tom Harkin has done several media appearances in recent days defending the Senate compromise. He seems especially pleased with the Medicaid deal for Nebraska:

The federal government is paying for the entire Medicaid expansion through 2017 for every state.

“In 2017, as you know, when we have to start phasing back from 100 percent, and going down to 98 percent, they are going to say, ‘Wait, there is one state that stays at 100?’ And every governor in the country is going to say, ‘Why doesn’t our state stay there?’” Harkin said. “When you look at it, I thought well, god, good, it is going to be the impetus for all the states to stay at 100 percent. So he might have done all of us a favor.”

Ezra Klein has posted some amazing spin this morning about how the Senate bill is “not very close to the health-care bill most liberals want. But it is very close to the health-care bill that Barack Obama promised.” Sorry, no. Obama campaigned on a health care plan that would control costs and include a public insurance option, drug re-importation, and letting Medicare negotiate for lower drug prices. Obama campaigned against an individual mandate to purchase insurance and an excise tax on insurance benefits.

Those of you still making excuses for Obama should listen to what Senator Russ Feingold said yesterday:

“I’ve been fighting all year for a strong public option to compete with the insurance industry and bring health care spending down,” Feingold said Sunday in a statement. “Unfortunately, the lack of support from the administration made keeping the public option in the bill an uphill struggle.”

Republican Senator Olympia Snowe was about as unprincipled and two-faced during this process as White House officials were. She voted for the Senate Finance Committee’s bill in October and had suggested her main objection to Reid’s compromise was the inclusion of a public health insurance option. Yet Snowe remained opposed to the bill even after the public option was removed last week. Because of her stance, Reid cut the deal with Nelson. The supposedly pro-choice Snowe could have prevented the restrictions on abortion coverage from getting into the bill if she had signed on instead.

Speaking of Republicans, the Iowa Republican posted this rant by TEApublican: “Nebraska And Huckabee Respond To Ben ‘Benedict’ Nelson’s Christmas Senate Sellout.” If you click over, be prepared to encounter mixed metaphors and misunderstandings about what this “reform” does. Still, the rant is a good reminder of how Republicans will still scream about government takeovers even though corporate interests got everything they wanted out of the bill.

I have had it with e-mail blasts like the one I got over the weekend from J.B. Poersch of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee:

Republicans tried every trick in the book to block us, but Senate Democrats scored important health care reform wins in the past two weeks. We passed the Mikulski Amendment, to make sure every woman gets crucial cancer screenings. And we defeated the Senate’s version of the Stupak Amendment – one of the biggest attacks on choice in a generation.

But these wins didn’t faze the Republicans. A lot of what they are doing to kill the Senate’s bill isn’t making the headlines – but that doesn’t make it any less insidious. We’ve pulled together facts on their latest heinous tactics in our new Obstruction Report.

Last night a group of Senate Democrats reached some kind of compromise on the health care reform bill. Senator Tom Harkin “told reporters he didn’t like the agreement but would support it to the hilt” in order to get a bill through the Senate. Reports on the nature of the compromise varied, but Talking Points Memo seems to have the most details:

If this trade-off carries the day, the opt out public option is gone. […]

As has been widely reported, one of the trade-offs will be to extend a version of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan to consumers in the exchanges. Insurance companies will have the option of creating nationally-based non-profit insurance plans that would offered on the exchanges in every state. However, according to the aide, if insurance companies don’t step up to the plate to offer such plans, that will trigger a national public option.

Beyond that, the group agreed–contingent upon CBO analysis–to a Medicare buy in.

That buy-in option would initially be made available to uninsured people aged 55-64 in 2011, three years before the exchanges open. For the period between 2011 and 2014, when the exchanges do open, the Medicare option will not be subsidized–people will have to pay in without federal premium assistance–and so will likely be quite expensive, the aide noted. However, after the exchanges launch, the Medicare option would be offered in the exchanges, where people could pay into it with their subsidies.

It appears as if liberals lost out on a Medicaid expansion that would have opened the program up to everybody under 150 percent of the poverty line. That ceiling will likely remain at 133 percent, as is called for in the current bill.

In addition to the new insurance options, the group has tentatively agreed to new, and strengthened, insurance regulations, which the aide could not divulge at this time.

Those unspecified insurance regulations might refer to this:

Additionally, there was consensus support for a requirement long backed by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and other liberals for insurance companies to spend at least 90 percent of their premium income providing benefits, a step that supporters argue effectively limits their spending on advertising, salaries, promotional efforts and profits.

The health care bill approved by the House would require insurers to spend 85 percent of premium income on providing benefits. Upping that to 90 percent is even better; my concern is that if enforcement is left to state insurance commissioners, evasion will be widespread.

Chris Bowers is excited about three “meaningful concessions” Senate progressives received in exchange for dropping the (already weak) public option.

I’m off the bus, however, unless further details come to light about very good provisions buried in this compromise. This bill creates millions more customers for private insurers but doesn’t give Americans enough choices, doesn’t create a government plan to keep private insurers honest, and therefore is unlikely to reduce costs or solve the various problems of our current health care delivery system.

In the good news column, last night the Senate tabled (killed) Ben Nelson’s abortion amendment modeled on the Stupak language in the House health care bill. The vote was 54-45, with seven Democrats from conservative states voting with all but two Republicans (roll call here). Harkin voted to table this amendment, like most Democrats, while Chuck Grassley was on the other side.

UPDATE: Can any Obama fans defend this kind of action from his administration?

A proposal to enable the importation of cheaper prescription drugs could endanger the U.S. medicine supply and would be difficult to implement, the Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday. […]

But the Obama administration’s declaration on the eve of the vote could derail the amendment despite the fact that Obama co-sponsored Dorgan’s drug imports bill while a member of the Senate and that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was a vocal proponent of the House version of the bill when he served as a member of the lower chamber.

Feel the hope and change!

SECOND UDPATE: The compromise still may not be enough for Joe Lieberman. They shouldn’t have given up on using the budget reconciliation process to pass a better bill with 51 votes.

Developing a line of attack he has used before, Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats asserted yesterday that Terry Branstad’s past support for Democratic Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska makes Branstad partly responsible for any health care reform bill Congress passes this year.  

From the Vander Plaats campaign press release of November 23:

“Ben Nelson gave Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid the vote he needed to get the 60 votes to steamroll Republican opposition. It means the Democrats will be able to proceed with legislation that will effectively destroy our private health care system while saddling businesses and working families with hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes and limiting our access to care,” said Vander Plaats, who is seeking the 2010 Iowa Republican gubernatorial nomination. “Whatever happens from here on out, Terry Branstad is going to have to accept some responsibility because he was a very active supporter of Ben Nelson in his first campaign for the Senate.”

A few thoughts on this line of attack are after the jump.

Congress will begin making important decisions on health care policy very soon. The Senate Finance Committee began drafting a health care bill a few days ago.

I was glad to see two Iowans among the representatives and senators who urged colleagues this week to include a strong public option in any health care reform plan.

After the jump I have more on where Congressman Dave Loebsack and Senator Tom Harkin stand on health care, as well as the benefits of creating a public health insurance option.

UPDATE: Thanks to Populista for reminding me that all Iowa Democrats in Congress (Bruce Braley, Dave Loebsack, Leonard Boswell and Tom Harkin) have signed on to support Health Care for America Now’s core principles for health care reform.

Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana announced plans in December to form an equivalent of the Blue Dog caucus in the Senate. Today his office rolled out the Moderate Dems Working Group.

Should Democrats be worried, or is this a non-story? A few thoughts are after the jump.

As always, post a comment if you know of any important event I have left out.

Democratic candidates, send me your public schedules (desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com) so I can include your events on my calendar.

The Iowa State Fair runs through Sunday. Admission is half-price on the last day. We were there yesterday, and my kids really liked the dog frisbee-catching and stunt show, the Animal Learning Center (where you can see animals with very young babies), the “Little Hands on the Farm” demonstration/play area, and the butterfly exhibit, which I think is new to the fair.

Thursday, August 14:

From the Obama campaign:

Dana Singiser, the campaign’s Senior Adviser for the Women’s Vote, will campaign for Senator Obama in Iowa on Thursday, August 14th and Friday, August 15th, 2008.  On Thursday, Singiser will hold a Women’s Coffee in Sioux City and a Women for Obama event in Council Bluffs.  On Friday, she will hold a Women’s Coffee in Clive and a Women’s Lunch in Boone.  Singiser will discuss Senator Obama’s plan to provide economic security for America’s working women.  

Singiser serves as Senior Adviser to the Obama for America where she advises Senator Obama on the national political landscape for women and leads the campaign’s efforts to reach women voters across the country. Most recently, she served as Director of Women’s Outreach for the Hillary Clinton 2008 campaign.

The details of the events are:

THURSDAY, AUGUST 14TH, 2008

1:00 PM CDT

Women’s Coffee with Dana Singiser

Sioux City Art Center

255 Nebraska St

Sioux City, Iowa

7:00 PM CDT

Women for Obama event with Dana Singiser

Council Bluffs Library

400 Willow Ave

Council Bluffs, Iowa

Also, the Obama campaign will continue its series of “rural roundtable discussions” across Iowa to highlight Senator Obama’s plan to strengthen rural communities and support rural economic development:

THURSDAY, AUGUST 14TH, 2008

Atlantic

6:15 PM CDT

Obama Iowa Campaign for Change Rural Roundtable Discussion with Senator Ben Nelson

Farmer’s Kitchen

319 Walnut Street

Atlantic, Iowa

At 3:30 pm, Senator Nelson will speak on Senator Obama’s behalf at the Des Moines Register’s Soap Box at the Iowa State Fair.

Becky Greenwald, candidate for Congress, will appear at the Wing Ding event at the Surf Ballroom, 460 North Shore Drive in Clear Lake. The Wing Ding starts at 5:00 pm and is a Democratic fundraiser for three northern Iowa counties, Cerro Gordo, Winnebago and Hancock. If you hear Becky’s speech, please post a diary here afterwards to let us know how the event went.

Congressman Leonard Boswell, who represents Iowa’s third district, will be speaking at the Des Moines Register’s Soap Box (outside the Register’s Service Center on the Grand Concourse) at 1:30 pm. As part of this new Iowa State Fair tradition, the Congressman will be speaking on the challenges facing our country in these uncertain times and about his work to put us back on the road to peace and prosperity.

Friday, August 15:

The Obama campaign’s Senior Adviser for the Women’s Vote is holding two more events in Iowa:

10:00 AM CDT

Women’s Coffee with Dana Singiser

Home of Sue Simons

1433 NW 105th St.

Clive, Iowa

12:30 PM CDT

Women’s Lunch with Dana Singiser

Home of Becky Lyon

1416 SE Linn St.

Boone, Iowa

Also, Senator Tom Harkin is holding an Obama campaign “rural roundtable” event at 4:00 pm in Carroll at Depot Plaza, 407 W 5th St.

Dr. Steven and Jill Kraus will be hosting a reception at their home for Tom Harkin in Carroll on Friday at 5:30 PM.  Hors d’oeuvres and refreshments will be provided and valet parking is available.  For the full details on this event, please click here.

Also on Friday, Congressman Steve King is holding two town-hall meetings. Bring along your camera to capitalize on any “macaca moments”:

9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.

King to host Sioux Center Town Hall Meeting

American State Bank – enter through West entrance (town hall meeting is downstairs)

525 North Main Avenue

Sioux Center, Iowa

4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

King to host Sioux City Town Hall Meeting

Main Library 529 Pierce St. – Gleeson Room

Sioux City, Iowa

Saturday, August 16:

Rob Hubler will be at AtlanticFest. Contact his campaign HQ at (712) 352-2077 for more details.

Senator Harkin and Mayor Jerry Sullivan, candidate for Statehouse (HD-59), will attend a fundraiser for Sullivan’s campaign from 3:00 to 4:30 pm at the Great Midwestern Café, 1250 NW 128th St in Clive. Catering provided by Great Midwestern Café. Suggested donation $50 (host levels higher). Checks can be made payable to Sullivan for State Representative, 7018 Franklin Ave, Windsor Heights, IA  50322. RSVP to Mike at mmccall@iowademocrats.org or call (614) 561-9117.

1000 Friends of Iowa is holding its 10th anniversary celebration and annual meeting at the Griffieon family farm near Ankeny. The event starts at 9:00 am and runs all day. Click here to register for the meeting or find more details about the event, including a schedule and directions to the farm. Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey will be the keynote speaker. Registration costs $30, and that includes an “Iowa grown lunch.” Other events of the day include:

Presentation – Connie Mutel author of The Emerald Horizon: The History of  Nature in Iowa  Mutel will describe her new book, which offers an opportunity to understand,  reconnect with, and nurture Iowa’s precious natural world. She’ll also discuss  the functions (such as flood-resistance) provided by healthy native communities,  and offer a challenge to restore these functions through reintegrating nature into  Iowa’s working landscape.      1:30     Presentation – Erv Klaas  Dr. Klaas will discuss how reserving valuable cropland for growing corn and  soybeans creates difficult challenges to livestock owners who use riparian zones  for pasture. He will use the Griffieon pasture to illustrate problems livestock  owners face, the technique LaVon is using to remedy the problem and how  improvements to water quality and to our streams depends on a total watershed  approach.       2:00     Tour de Sprawl – Guides: LaVon Griffieon & Stephanie Weisenbach  In the past decade development has encroached upon the farmland next to the  Griffieon’s farm.  We will tour the neighborhood by bus to see the changes made  upon some of the world’s most prime soils.

I am involved with 1000 Friends of Iowa and will attend this meeting, but not in my capacity as desmoinesdem, so don’t expect any talk about partisan politics!

Sunday, August 17:

The Hubler campaign is organizing canvassing all over the fifth district:

Sunday marks our first large door-to-door operation and we need your help to talk to friends and neighbors about Rob’s vision for the future.  Nothing is more effective than having a neighbor drop-by their door with a piece of literature about Rob.  King will be pushing the same tired messages- but with your help we can show Iowa that there is a clear choice in this election and that Rob Hubler is the candidate who will best represent us in Washington; but we can’t win without your help!

Please contact Beth at our Council Bluffs office (712) 352-2077 or email her at beth@hublercongress.com to meet up with supporters near you. Don’t forget to bring two friends to join you!

We will be having canvass parties in the following towns:

Council Bluffs                                   Creston              

Clarinda                                           Sioux City

Spencer                                           Spirit Lake

Onawa                                             Storm Lake

Le Mars                                           Lamoni

Carroll

If you don’t see your town listed, we will be coming your way soon; contact us to help set up a joint canvass in your area.