Nate Silver thinks that thinks any Democrat who opposes it is “batflippin’ crazy.” He posts a chart showing how a family of four earning $54,000 a year would get much more in subsidies if the bill goes through than if no bill passes.

I discuss a few problems with the bill and Silver’s analysis after the jump.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to give in to all of Joe Lieberman’s demands.

So Reid did. We have a “health insurance reform” bill with no public option, no trigger, no Medicare buy-in. And it will probably continue to get worse from here.

There is no point in pretending that President Obama wanted any comprehensive bill to pass. There was zero pressure on Lieberman to cave, no talk of using the budget reconciliation process–only pressure on Reid to give Lieberman everything.

Emanuel didn’t just leave it to Reid to find a solution. Emanuel specifically suggested Reid give Lieberman the concessions he seeks on issues like the Medicare buy-in and triggers.

“It was all about ‘do what you’ve got to do to get it done. Drop whatever you’ve got to drop to get it done,” the aide said. All of Emanuel’s prescriptions, the source said, were aimed at appeasing Lieberman–not twisting his arm.

Organizing for America will get a rude awakening when they try to round up canvassers and phone bankers. All the volunteers and donors and voters who brought Obama where he is turned out to be less important than one senator from Connecticut who campaigned for John McCain.

Yes, you early Obama supporters out there have every right to be furious. My candidate before the caucuses turned out to be a jerk in his personal life, but he was right to warn against replacing “a group of corporate Republicans with a group of corporate Democrats.”

UPDATE: Darcy Burner explains why the Senate bill is worse than doing nothing on health care.

The Constitution does not contain a supermajority requirement for ordinary legislation to pass the Senate, but the filibuster has evolved into a means to kill any bill unless 60 senators support it.

The current use of the filibuster is not “traditional.” This memo from December 1964 shows that no one imagined Medicare would need more than a simple majority in the Senate. There was no expectation that Lyndon Johnson’s reform efforts would fail if Medicare couldn’t command a filibuster-proof majority.

Senator Tom Harkin tried to change Senate rules on the filibuster in 1995, and the Burlington Hawk Eye reports that he may try again, “Given what he sees as the abuse of power by a couple members of his own party whom he said are threatening to join the minority party if their every demand is not met.”

UPDATE: Proposed excise tax on insurance looking like a very bad idea too.

One key goal of “health insurance reform” was to prohibit insurance companies from limiting how many dollars they would spend on a patient’s care during a year. This makes sense if you want to eliminate medical bankruptcies, which are unknown in most of the developed world.

But the merged Senate health care bill gives insurance companies an out.

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.

Many Iowans will be leaving work or school early today, or perhaps not going in at all, as the season’s first big winter blast rolls in. Here’s plenty of reading to keep you busy if you are stuck at home.

Global news first: The United National Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen opened yesterday. To follow news from the proceedings, I’m reading the team of Mother Jones bloggers in Copenhagen. The Open Left blog will also post regular updates from Natasha Chart and Friends of the Earth staff who are on the ground. If you prefer a mainstream media perspective, check out The Climate Pool on Facebook, which is a collaboration among major news organizations.

Also on Monday, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson signed off on two findings that will pave the way to regulate carbon dioxide emissions under the Clean Air Act. This action follows from a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA. More background and details can be found on the EPA’s site. Environment Iowa explains the significance of the EPA’s action here. An expert panel surveyed by Grist disagreed on whether the EPA’s “endangerment finding” would affect the Copenhagen talks.

The most important reason I oppose the current draft bills on climate change kicking around Congress is that they would revoke the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide. Chris Bowers explains why that would be disastrous here.

Uganda is considering a horrific law that would subject homosexuals to long prison terms or even the death penalty. One Iowa is collecting signatures on a petition to Senator Chuck Grassley, asking him to speak out against this law. Grassley’s never going to be a gay rights advocate, but he should agree that criminalizing homosexuality is wrong. Grassley is involved with “The Family,” which is connected to the proposed bill in Uganda.

On the economic front, President Obama is expected to announce plans to use about $200 billion allocated for the Wall Street bailout to fund a jobs bill Congress will consider soon.. The Hill previewed some of the measures that may end up in that bill.

Some economists who met with Governor Chet Culver yesterday think Iowa has already reached the bottom of this recession. I hope they are right, but either way, policy-makers should listen to their ideas for reforming Iowa’s budget process. I’ll write a separate post on this important development soon. Here is the short take:

The state could base its spending on a multi-year average, such as the previous three years, or five years or seven years, said Jon Muller, president of Muller Consulting Inc., a public policy and business development consulting firm based in Des Moines.

“The way it’s always worked, when times are really good, we increase spending and we cut taxes,” Muller said. “And when times are bad, there’s pressure to increase taxes and decrease spending. And that all happens when the demand for government is at its highest,” Muller said.

The multi-year idea would flip, he said.

“In good times you would be squirreling money at way a little at a time. And in bad times, you could continue to increase spending to service the growing demands of a recession.”

It would require state lawmakers to not touch the reserves, even in times of plenty. But it would also reduce the need to tap into reserves just to get by during rainy days, the advisers said.

Regarding budget cuts, the Newton Independent reports here on a “plan to reorganize the Iowa Department of Human Services operations under two deputy directors, six rather than nine divisions, five rather than eight service areas, more part-time offices and the elimination of 78 currently vacant positions” (hat tip to Iowa Independent). Click this link for more details about the proposed restructuring.

On the political front, John Deeth analyzes possible changes the Democratic National Committee is considering for the presidential nomination process. Jerome Armstrong had a good idea the DNC won’t implement: ban caucuses everywhere but Iowa. No other state derives the party-building benefits of caucuses, but just about every state that uses caucuses for presidential selection has lower voter participation than would occur in a primary.

I haven’t written much on health care reform lately, because recent developments are so depressing. Our best hope was using the budget reconciliation process to pass a strong bill in the Senate with 51 votes (or 50 plus Joe Biden). Now that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has taken reconciliation off the table, we’re left with a variety of bad compromises to get to 60 votes in the Senate. I am not convinced the final product will be any improvement over the status quo. It will certainly be worse for millions of Americans required to buy overpriced private health insurance. If there’s a quicker way to neutralize the Democrats’ advantage with young voters, I don’t know what it is.

Speaking of health care reform, Steve Benen wrote a good piece about Grassley’s latest grandstanding on the issue.

Speaking of things that are depressing, John Lennon was shot dead 29 years ago today.  Daily Kos user noweasels remembers him and that night. Although Paul’s always been my favorite Beatle, I love a lot of John’s work too. Here’s one of his all-time best:

Share any relevant thoughts or your own favorite Lennon songs in the comments.

So many campaign stories the past few days, so little time.

After the jump you’ll find lots of links about various campaigns for U.S. Senate, House, governor and state treasurer.

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.

I’m heading to the Iowa Democratic Party’s Jefferson-Jackson Dinner. I won’t be blogging there, but I will update this post with some highlights when I get home.

If you’d like to watch online, the IDP will be livestreaming the proceedings here, beginning at 6:30 pm central.

Senator Tom Harkin has taped a video greeting for the event, because he’s in Washington as the Senate begins to debate the health care reform bill. Democrats have all 60 votes they need to bring the bill to the floor, but several members of the caucus have not ruled out backing a Republican filibuster before the final vote. I won’t be supporting the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee this cycle, because I don’t want a penny going to a dishonest tool like Blanche Lincoln. She’s probably going to lose anyway.

In addition to any comments about health care reform or the JJ Dinner, please consider this an open thread for anything that’s on your mind this weekend.

For comic relief: in the middle of this afternoon’s Senate proceedings, Chuck Grassley tweeted,

Can somebody tell me why Wall st Journal no longer list Des Moines in its weather cities list. Iowa still exists

UPDATE: I hadn’t been to the JJ dinner in a few years and had a great time. Iowa House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Iowa Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal were making fun of each other when the bucket was passed around for extra donations.

McCarthy: What’s the difference between God and a state senator? God doesn’t think he’s a state senator.

Gronstal: What’s the difference between House representatives and boy scouts? Boy scouts have adult supervision.

Speakers: Bruce Braley, Leonard Boswell, Patty Judge, Chet Culver, and Tom Harkin’s recorded video before Biden. (Dave Loebsack is out of the country.)

Huge ovation shortly after 8 pm when IDP chair Michael Kiernan came on stage to announce that the U.S. Senate defeated a filibuster of the motion to bring the health care reform bill to the floor, 60-39. Harkin promised in his video that they will get a health care reform bill bassed before the end of the year, and it will contain a public health insurance option.

Biden gave a great speech, with plenty of jokes, Irish poetry, quiet moments and a few lines that got the crowd on their feet. He apologized for being a little late; he had been on the phone with some unnamed senators whose votes he had helped sway on health care reform.

I had to leave right after Biden’s speech, so I missed the after-party, where U.S. Senate candidates Bob Krause, Roxanne Conlin and Tom Fiegen were set to speak. If you were there, post a comment or a diary to let us know how those speeches were.

SECOND UPDATE: After the jump I’ve posted Kiernan’s remarks and excerpts from Culver’s speech.

FINAL UPDATE: The Iowa Democratic Party posted a slideshow from the event here.  

Few problems require federal action more urgently than global warming. I admire the members of Congress who have been trying to address this issue. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman tried to get the best deal he could. Senator John Kerry has tried to keep things moving in the upper chamber. Senator Lindsey Graham is getting tons of grief from fellow Republicans because he admits that climate change is a problem.

I want to support these people and their efforts to get a bill on the president’s desk. Unfortunately, the time has come to accept that Congress is too influenced by corporate interests to deal with climate change in any serious way. Pretending to fight global warming won’t solve the problem and may even be counter-productive.

This depressing post continues after the jump.

The Des Moines Register released more results from its latest Iowa poll by Selzer and Co., and Senator Chuck Grassley’s approval rating was 57 percent, the same as in the Register’s September poll. Only 32 percent of respondents said they disapproved of Grassley’s work.

Grassley’s 57 percent approval figure remains well short of the 75 percent he began the year with. […]

Political independents and Democrats have been responsible for much of Grassley’s slide since January. He made up little ground with them this fall. […]

More than half of Republicans say he did an excellent or good job on health care, while only about a quarter of Democrats and 39 percent of independents rate his work positively.

In a head to head matchup against Roxanne Conlin, Grassley led 57 percent to 30 percent. Last month’s Research 2000 poll of Iowans found Grassley leading Conlin by a much narrower margin, 51 percent to 39 percent. I’d like to see more polling of this race, but given Selzer’s track record in Iowa, I’m going to assume that the Register poll is close to the mark.

Since the media won’t be as focused on health care reform in the autumn of 2010, Democrats will need to build a case against Grassley that goes beyond his double-dealing on that issue. Even if Democrats run a near-perfect campaign against Grassley, he is very likely to be re-elected unless he makes some unforced errors.

On the other hand, it’s worth remembering that Grassley’s never been re-elected with less than 66 percent of the vote before. Holding him below 60 percent, or better yet below 55 percent, would greatly help down-ticket Democratic candidates next November.

Incidentally, Selzer’s poll for the Register found Senator Tom Harkin’s approve/disapprove numbers at 54/33, which is fairly strong but down from the 70 percent approval rating Harkin had in the Register’s January poll.  

Health Care for America NOW and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees are running television ads this week thanking 20 Democrats in relatively tough districts who voted for the House health care reform bill last Saturday. If you live in the Des Moines viewing area, you may have seen this commercial about Congressman Leonard Boswell:

Corporate-funded conservative groups have targeted Boswell in negative ads this year because of his vote for the climate-change bill in June. Ads attacking the health care reform project (many funded by insurance industry fronts or the Chamber of Commerce) have been plentiful this summer and fall too. It makes sense for reform advocates to thank Boswell, as Iowa Republicans are gearing up to challenge him with State Senator Brad Zaun or some other well-known figure.  

In other health care reform news, Tom Harkin is among the Senate Democrats trying to keep the "Stupak amendment" language on abortion out of the Senate's version of health care reform. He's absolutely right that some people pushing amendments are trying to kill the bill rather than make it better. A lot of questions have been raised about whether defeating the bill was Representative Bart Stupak's main goal. Since 1992, Stupak has been involved with the fundamentalist Christian "Family" group and has lived in their house on C Street in Washington.  

Stupak claims that as many as 40 House Democrats would reject health care reform without his amendment, but yesterday House Whip James Clyburn said the Stupak amendment only gained 10 votes for the bill. Meanwhile, more than 40 House liberals are threatening to vote down the final bill out of conference if it contains the Stupak language.  

Final note: MyDD user Bruce Webb wrote an interesting piece about what he views as "the most important and overlooked sentence" in the House health care reform bill:  

Most of the criticism of HR3962 coming from the left revolves around the belief that the House bill has no premium and so no profit controls, that it in effect delivers millions of Americans into the hands of insurance companies who can continue to raise premiums at will while denying care by managing the risk pool in favor of those unlikely to make claims. This just is not true, not if the provision in this one sentence is properly implemented. In a stroke it guts the entire current business model of the insurance companies, based as it is on predation and selective coverage, and replaces it with a model where you can only make money by extending coverage to the widest range of customers and or delivering that coverage in a more efficient way.

 Like they say, go read the whole thing.
 

Roxanne Conlin made her candidacy for U.S. Senate official today, releasing this two-minute video:

Conlin narrates the video herself, and it’s mostly a biographical piece. Her parents lived paycheck to paycheck. She worked her way through college and law school.

Conlin was U.S. Attorney for Iowa’s southern district from 1977 to 1981. In this video, she says that as a prosecutor, she “took on drug dealers, corrupt politicians, and corporations who violated the public trust.” She then started a small law firm “to give a voice to everyday people who had none, like taking on the big banks to help family farms at risk of foreclosure.”

Conlin tells viewers, “Taking on the special interests has been the cause of my life,” and she is running for U.S. Senate “to take this fight to Washington.” She promises to help small business and promote renewable energy and other strategies for creating jobs in Iowa.

She doesn’t mention Senator Chuck Grassley directly, but she outlines the case she will make against him. Career politicians in Washington have lost their independence. Iowans were left behind when banks got bailed out and their top executives got huge bonuses. Grassley voted for the Wall Street bailout, which Conlin mentions twice in this video. No doubt we’ll hear more in the coming months about Grassley’s ties to various special interests and his votes for tax breaks companies use when they ship jobs overseas.

Conlin looks at the camera as she delivers her closing line: “Join me in taking on this fight, because the special interests have had their turn. Now, it’s our turn.”

Her campaign logo reads, “Roxanne for Iowa.” I would like to hear from campaign professionals on the merits of branding women candidates with their first names, like the Hillary for president signs and bumper stickers.

I like that we hear her own voice, instead of an actor’s voice-over, and her life experiences that many Iowans can relate to. (Republicans are already referring to Conlin as a “liberal, millionaire trial attorney” from Des Moines.)

What do you think?

UPDATE: The video transcript and further biographical information are after the jump.

Last month was so busy that I didn’t manage to post any event calendars here, but I am back on duty now. The highlight of this month for Democrats is the Iowa Democratic Party’s Jefferson-Jackson Dinner on Saturday, November 21, featuring Vice President Joe Biden. You can buy tickets online.

Please note that November 10 is the deadline for public comments to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources about protecting our Outstanding Iowa Waters. The Farm Bureau is mobilizing public comments against these regulations. The DNR needs to hear from Iowans committed to preserving our highest-quality waterways. Click here for background and an easy to use comment form.

State Senator Staci Appel will officially announce her re-election campaign on November 12, and I’ve posted details about a fundraiser for her campaign below the fold. Appel’s Republican opponent, State Representative Kent Sorenson, is already gearing up for next year’s election. He spent the weekend in Texas attending the WallBuilders ProFamily Legislators Conference. Here’s some background on David Barton’s vision for America, chock full of Biblical interpretations supporting right-wing public policies. Barton spoke to the Iowa Christian Alliance not long ago (click that link to watch videos). Former presidential candidate Ron Paul is headlining a fundraiser for Sorenson on November 14, by the way.

Many more event details are after the jump. As always, please post a comment about anything I’ve left out, or send me an e-mail (desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com).

The Quad-City Times reports today that Roxanne Conlin is “in the midst of putting together a [U.S. Senate] campaign” and will file papers with the Federal Election Commission next week. She seems to have hired at least one campaign staffer already; the newspaper quotes Mark Daley as Conlin’s spokesman.

I expect Conlin to raise large sums of money quickly once she has formed a campaign committee, but she has a ways to go to become competitive with Senator Chuck Grassley. He had $4.4 million cash on hand at the end of the third quarter, and there will be plenty more where that came from. During this election cycle alone, Grassley has raised more than $1.6 million in individual contributions and $1.9 million from political action committees. Health care and insurance interests have generously supported him:

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley (R) has raised $154,350 in campaign donations in the 3rd quarter of 2009 from health care interests, including $43,590 from health insurance interests, according to research conducted by the campaign finance watchdog Public Campaign Action Fund. Grassley serves as the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, which voted out a health care reform bill earlier this year.

Over his career, Grassley has raised at least $3.3 million from the health care and insurance industries during his time in Washington, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

“Sen. Grassley was showered with health industry contributions while the Finance Committee was meeting to discuss health care legislation,” said David Donnelly, national programs director for Public Campaign Action Fund. “Insurance PACs and executives wanted Grassley to oppose health care reform, and that’s what they got.”

Last week Cityview’s Civic Skinny expressed doubts that Conlin can raise $10 million without taking any money from lobbyists or PACs. $10 million might be a tall order, but Conlin has plenty of major donor contacts around the country, not to mention potential support from small donors who got fed up with Grassley this summer. Conlin probably won’t be able to match Grassley dollar for dollar, but she certainly will raise enough to stage a credible statewide campaign.

Senate HELP Committee Chairman Tom Harkin told reporters yesterday that he does not expect Senator Joe Lieberman to join a Republican filibuster to block the health care reform bill. He also hinted that Lieberman has a lot to lose by sinking this bill.

Good news, part 1: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced yesterday that the health care bill he’ll bring up on the Senate floor will have a public health insurance option. That means opponents of the public option will have to try to strip out the measure with amendments on the Senate floor. They don’t have 60 votes to do that.

Good news, part 2: at yesterday’s press conference, Reid “definitively stated that a trigger bill wouldn’t get a [Congressional Budget Office] score – effectively taking it off the table as a legislative option.” The insurance industry and its allies in Congress, including Republican Senator Olympia Snowe, have pushed the “trigger” idea because it would virtually guarantee that the public option would never go into effect.

Bad news, part 1: Reid’s compromise would allow states to opt out of the public health insurance option, and limits participation in the public plan in many other ways too.

Bad news, part 2: At crunch time, President Barack Obama did nothing to help progressives fighting to strengthen the health care bill. On the contrary, he urged Reid to drop the public option in favor of a “trigger.”

More thoughts on that betrayal are after the jump.

Former First Lady Christie Vilsack released a statement today confirming that she will not challenge Senator Chuck Grassley next year. Excerpt:

Commiting to a campaign for the US Senate next year requires more than the confidence that I have the right experience, the necessary support and the resources to be successful. It must come with an understanding that it is the best way for me serve our State and my fellow Iowans in the most effective way possible at this time. I have decided not to run for the United States Senate in 2010. I will continue my work with the Iowa Initiative to Prevent Unintended Pregnancy and will be active in our Party and across the state in issues that affect the quality of life for all Iowans. […]

While I will not be a candidate for office in 2010, never doubt I am committed to a life of service and to Iowa.

So, the mystery challenger Iowa Democratic Party chair Michael Kiernan promised for Grassley is almost certainly Roxanne Conlin, who has said she’s leaning toward running.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see former Governor Tom Vilsack run for the U.S. Senate in the future. I expect Christie Vilsack to run for Congress when Leonard Boswell’s seat (IA-03) becomes open.

Speaking of Boswell’s district, I saw at Iowa Independent that CQ Politics is calling it a “safe Democratic” seat in the House.

According to Bleeding Heartland user mirage, State Senator Brad Zaun is planning to run against Boswell next year. (I am trying to confirm that rumor.) Zaun was mayor of Urbandale, a heavily Republican suburb of Des Moines, before getting elected to represent Iowa Senate district 32 in 2004. He was re-elected to a four-year term in 2008, so he wouldn’t risk losing his seat in the upper chamber by running against Boswell.

UPDATE: Kiernan approached Conlin way back in January about running against Grassley.

Prominent attorney Roxanne Conlin spoke to the Des Moines Register on Thursday about a possible Senate bid next year:

“I never thought I’d run again,” Conlin said at her home in Des Moines. “But in my lifetime, I don’t ever want to say, ‘If only I had followed my dream or followed my heart.’ ”

“What has changed for me is Grassley.”

Conlin said she is “more likely than not” running, but first needs to iron out how she would staff a campaign and handle her law practice before making a final decision, which she expects to announce by next month.

She said she talked about running at length with state party chairman Michael Kiernan, who said last month a well-known Democrat was planning to enter the race. “I don’t know how this is going to come together, but I have reached the point where I would like to do it,” she said. […]

Conlin said Grassley’s tone on health care reform at public appearances in Iowa last summer pushed her toward running. […]

Conlin accused Grassley of being disingenuous, noting that he circulated a fundraising brochure stating he was working to defeat “Obama-care,” while continuing to participate in bipartisan negotiations.

“That’s not the Chuck Grassley I thought this state elected, and it really was a watershed moment for me,” Conlin said.

Conlin was the Democratic nominee for governor in 1982, the first year Terry Branstad was elected. Before that, she ran the civil rights division of the Iowa Attorney General’s Office and was the U.S. attorney for the southern district of Iowa.

She’s been a highly successful plaintiff’s attorney since 1983 and was the first woman president of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America. In addition,

She founded and was the first chair of the Iowa Women’s Political caucus, and was president and general counsel of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund. Most recently, she has been named by the National Law Journal as one of the fifty most influential women lawyers in America, one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America and one of the top 10 litigators.

If Conlin runs, she will be a lightning rod for attacks from Republicans and corporate-funded political organizations. On the plus side, she is a powerful public speaker and may be able to drive up turnout, especially among women voters. She will also be able to raise more than enough money to run a serious campaign against Grassley. Earlier this month, Research 2000 found Grassley leading Conlin by 51 percent to 39 percent among Iowa voters.

What do you think, Bleeding Heartland readers?

UPDATE: Declared candidates Tom Fiegen and Bob Krause don’t think Conlin will play well outside Polk County:

Krause called the speculation about Conlin being the mystery candidate promised by Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Michael Kiernan as political theater.

“It’s easy to play political games in Des Moines that might not play as well around the state,” he said.

A key to defeating Grassley, who has rolled up more than 60 percent of the vote in winning re-election four times, is a candidate who appeals to voters outside Polk County, Iowa State University political scientist Steffen Schmidt said.

“Polk County is a nice place, but you have to have someone who can connect other places,” he said.

The folks in “other places” aren’t all that excited about her, Fiegen said late Thursday while driving home from meeting with Winneshiek County Democrats. A Clarence bankruptcy attorney, he said he’s logged 7,000 miles in the past month meeting with Iowans. Those discussions included rumors either Conlin or former Iowa First Lady Christie Vilsack might join the race.

“Frankly, they’re not that interested,” he said. While her campaign activity is impressive, “it’s yesterday’s news to many Democrats. People look at her and say, ‘been there, done that,’” a reference to her failed 1982 bid for governor.

“One analogy I heard is that she’s our party’s Doug Gross – rich, intelligent, well-connected, but can’t talk to rural Iowans,” Fiegen said. “People say she’s already proved that.”

In all fairness, Conlin didn’t lose by that much in 1982 (53 percent to 47 percent). During the Senate primary, Krause and Fiegen will need to show their road map for giving Grassley a competitive race. Iowa Democrats will decide who is the best candidate.

A new Iowa poll confirms that Terry Branstad is the toughest challenger for Chet Culver and that next year’s U.S. Senate race could become competitive. Research 2000 surveyed 600 “likely voters who vote regularly in state elections.” The poll was in the field from October 12 through 14, and you’ll find full results and crosstabs here.

Republicans may dismiss this as a “Democratic poll” because it was commissioned by the Daily Kos blog. However, Research 2000 is not a partisan firm, and the sample for this poll included 32 percent Democrats, 31 percent Republicans and 37 percent independents. That’s a smaller advantage for Democrats than the current Iowa voter registration numbers reflect. The proportion of independents in the sample might be a bit high for an off-year election, but that doesn’t necessarily skew against the Republican candidates.

I’ll highlight some of the key findings after the jump.

Senator Chuck Grassley complained this week that he is not being included in negotiations to merge the health care reform bills passed by the Senate Finance Committee and Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

Finance Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, “assured us that Republicans would be at the table through the process of negotiating a single bill,” Grassley said. “And obviously that’s kind of ruled out now by the fact that I am not a part of a bipartisan agreement.”

Look, the HELP Committee adopted about 160 Republican-proposed amendments to the health care bill during the markup process, yet not a single Republican voted to send that bill out of committee. Then Baucus bent over backwards to include Grassley in negotiations all summer, but he joined all the Finance Committee Republicans except for Olympia Snowe in voting against the health care bill. Why should Grassley have a say in how the HELP and Finance bills are combined?

Now Steve Benen catches Grassley “going around the bend” in his criticism of health care reform:

This week, Grassley appears to have completely lost it, offering at least tacit support for radical “Tenther” theories that insist that health care reform may be unconstitutional.

    “I’m not a lawyer, but let me tell you, I’ve listened to some lawyers speak on this. And you know, it’s a relatively new issue. I don’t think we’ve ever had this issue before of having to buy something. And a lot of constitutional lawyers, saying it is unconstitutional or at least in violation of the 10th Amendment. Now maybe states can do this, but can the federal government? So, I have my doubts.”

This was specifically responding to a question about individual mandates — a measure he’s already endorsed as a good idea that he supports.

Obvious inconsistencies notwithstanding, the notion that health care reform is “in violation of the 10th Amendment” is demonstrably ridiculous. The idea that “a lot of constitutional lawyers” see health care reform as unconstitutional is absurd.

For more details on Grassley’s previous public support for an individual mandate to purchase health insurance, read this post by Benen or this one by Jason Hancock.

Grassley’s misleading and inconsistent comments about health care reform have greatly harmed his reputation with Iowa Democrats and independents this year. It will be interesting to see whether he can repair the damage before next November. I don’t see him getting nearly as large a crossover vote as he has in his previous elections.

“Sources close to [former Governor Terry] Branstad” tell WHO-TV’s Dave Price that Branstad will announce his candidacy for a fifth term as governor this Friday. Whatever the date, it’s obvious Branstad has committed to the race.

Join me after the jump for recent news and unintentional comedy from the Branstad camp. You’ll also find a Bleeding Heartland reader poll at the bottom of this post.

The Senate Finance Committee approved its health care reform bill on a 14-9 vote yesterday, with all Democrats and Republican Olympia Snowe of Maine voting in favor. Ranking Republican Chuck Grassley, a key member of the committee’s “gang of six” negotiators this summer, joined the rest of the Republicans in voting against the bill. Speaking to the Des Moines Register Grassley “said he has no regrets about working with majority Democrats on the committee, only to oppose the bill. Given more time, he might have struck a deal, he said.”

This guy is the perfect picture of a bad-faith negotiator. From the Register:

Grassley said he objects most to provisions in the bill that would require Americans to obtain health insurance. But Grassley also said the bill does too little to block federal money being spent to provide abortions and provide coverage for illegal immigrants.

“Those aren’t the only things, but I think they are the most controversial or the most difficult to deal with,” Grassley told The Des Moines Register.

As Jason Hancock reported for the Iowa Independent last week, Grassley publicly supported the idea of an individual mandate to purchase health insurance this summer. I agree that requiring individuals to purchase insurance is problematic if there is no broad-based public health insurance option (because then the government is just subsidizing private insurers), but of course Grassley opposed the public option too.

In addition, the “gang of six” made changes in the bill before markup to address groundless Republican claims about illegal immigrants. According to PolitiFact, the “Baucus plan explicitly states that no federal funds – whether through tax credits or cost-sharing credits – could be used to pay for abortions (again, except for rape, incest, or the life of the mother).”

Trying to cut deals with Grassley is a waste of time. For more on that point, check out the skipper’s recent diary.

Speaking of Grassley, Cityview’s Civic Skinny thinks he should be worried about a potential race against attorney Roxanne Conlin. When a reporter asked Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack whether his wife, Christie Vilsack, might run against Grassley, he replied, “You should ask her about that.” (UPDATE: Dave Price did ask her and wonders whether she is the mystery candidate.)

As for the health care bill, the Finance Committee and HELP Committee versions have to be merged before a floor vote. It’s imperative that a public option be included in the version sent to the floor, and HELP Committee representative Chris Dodd says he will fight for that. On the other hand, Snowe and a few Democrats, like Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, might vote against the bill on the floor if it contains a public option. Chris Bowers wrote more at Open Left about the merging process in the House and Senate.

Soon after becoming the new chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Tom Harkin expressed hope that the Senate would approve a food safety bill this year. However, he was less optimistic about that timetable when speaking with a group of Iowans who came to Washington last week to lobby for passage of the bill.

Senate Democrats have not given up on passing health care reform through normal procedures requiring at least 60 votes to overcome a Republican filibuster. The problem is, several conservative Senate Democrats are on record opposing a public health insurance option. Meanwhile, a bill with no public option will have trouble passing the House of Representatives, where the overwhelming majority of the Democratic caucus supports a robust public option tied to Medicare rates.

The obvious political solution is to include some watered-down public option in the bill, giving cover to Progressive Democrats who insist on a public option while placating House Blue Dogs and Senate conservatives who want to protect private insurers’ market share.

The “triggered” public option favored by many industry allies didn’t fly, because most Democrats understand that the trigger would never be pulled. This past week, a new possible compromise emerged:

It was pulled out of an alternative idea, put forth by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and, prior to him, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, to give states the power to determine whether they want to implement a public insurance option.

But instead of starting with no national public option and giving state governments the right to develop their own, the newest compromise approaches the issue from the opposite direction: beginning with a national public option and giving state governments the right not to have one.

I consider this idea’s pros and cons after the jump.  

Via the Senate Guru blog I saw that Survey USA released results from its late September poll of 600 adults in Iowa (margin of error 4.1 percent). The survey measured Senator Chuck Grassley’s approval rating at 50 percent. That’s the lowest figure ever for Grassley by this pollster, and you can see from this graph that Grassley’s trendlines are ugly. A full 40 percent of respondents disapprove of Grassley’s performance. His high-profile role in the health care reform debate seems to have hurt his image. Senate Guru notes, “Grassley is also below 50% approval among independents (48%) and self-described moderates (47%).”

The Des Moines Register published a new article Monday on rumors that a well-known and well-funded Democrat will give Grassley “the race of his life.” Speculation seems to be centering on former First Lady Christie Vilsack, who is now executive director of the Iowa Initiative, and prominent attorney Roxanne Conlin, a onetime U.S. Attorney who was the Democratic nominee for governor in 1982.

Other notable findings from Survey USA in September: Senator Tom Harkin is at 44 percent approval and 46 percent disapproval. President Barack Obama’s approve/disapprove numbers in Iowa are now 46/48, but there is a huge gender gap. Among male respondents, 39 percent approve of Obama and 56 disapprove. Among female respondents, 53 percent approve and only 40 percent disapprove.

I was surprised to see that Survey USA didn’t find nearly as much of a gender gap concerning Governor Chet Culver. Culver’s at 41 percent approve/48 percent disapprove overall. Among men and women, 41 percent approve of Culver’s performance. The difference is that 55 percent of men said they disapprove of Culver, versus only 44 percent of women (a full 15 percent of female respondents answered “not sure”). If I were running Culver’s re-election campaign, I would put a high priority on building support among women voters. If a well-known woman makes a serious run at Grassley, that should help boost turnout among women Democrats and leaners.

Incidentally, Swing State Project changed its rating on the Iowa governor’s race from “race to watch” (but safe for the incumbent) to “likely D.” They may revise that rating again if former Governor Terry Branstad enters the campaign.

Survey USA’s Iowa sample in September consisted of 35 percent Democrats, 29 percent Republicans, and 31 percent independents. The sample for their August Iowa poll was quite different: 28 percent Democrats, 34 percent Republicans, and 35 percent independents. That alone could explain why Grassley’s approval rating fell from August to September, while Culver’s rose a bit from his all-time Survey USA low in August.

It’s obviously way too early to predict what proportion of Democrats and Republicans will turn out to vote in Iowa next November. The GOP primary for governor could energize that party’s base or cause lasting divisions. The Democratic base may or may not be excited, depending on what Culver and state legislators accomplish next session and whether Grassley’s race becomes competitive.  Unemployment seems likely to keep rising.  

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

If you’re an insurance company, that is:

Late in the afternoon [on Wednesday], Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), the top Republican on the committee, requested consideration of the “Grassley F-1 Modified Amendment.” Its goal: eliminate $7 billion a year in fees that the government would charge private health insurance companies, and make up the shortfall by reducing benefits to poor people and legal immigrants.

It was dangerously close to a parody: Republicans demanding that fees be reduced on a profitable industry and shifted to low-income Americans. But Grassley pressed on, unafraid. The fees on the corporations, he said, are a “bad idea” and would undoubtedly result in higher insurance premiums. “I urge my colleagues to vote for my amendment, to strike the fees,” he exhorted.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) recognized the fat target that Grassley had just set up. “I think it’s a ‘message amendment,’ ” he said, suggesting Grassley was sending a symbolic signal to the conservative base. “It certainly takes on legal immigrants and Medicaid in a very sharp way.”

Grassley looked hurt. “You don’t really believe that this is a message amendment, do you?”

Why so cynical, Senator Rockefeller? I take Senator Grassley at his word. He would rather reduce health care coverage for poor people and immigrants (during a recession!) than force a profitable industry to pay higher fees.

I encourage Bob Krause and Tom Fiegen to add this Washington Post story to their Senate campaign websites.

In case anyone is wondering, I still have no idea who the mystery Grassley challenger might be.

UPDATE: Grassley also failed on Wednesday to get the committee to adopt “that would have required beneficiaries of Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program to show a photo ID in order to enroll.” However, the committee unanimously adopted Grassley’s amendment “that would require members of Congress to get their health insurance through a proposed federal exchange.”

The White House agreement with the pharmaceutical industry, which is reflected in the Senate Finance Committee’s health care bill, is one of the most shameful episodes of the health care reform process. Presidential candidate Barack Obama had promised to “put an end to the game-playing” in Washington, citing in one television ad the deal the pharmaceutical industry wrote into the Medicare prescription drug legislation. Yet in order to bring big Pharma on board with health care reform, the White House “stood by a behind-the-scenes deal to block any Congressional effort to extract cost savings from them beyond an agreed-upon $80 billion.”

Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota says no deal, according to Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post:

A Senate Democratic leader is hoping to blow up the deal reached between the White House, drug makers and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), by introducing an amendment on the floor to allow prescription drugs to be re-imported from Canada.

It’s one of the simplest ways to reduce health care costs but was ruled out by the agreement, which limits Big Pharma’s contribution to health care reform to $80 billion over ten years.

North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan, a member of Democratic leadership, isn’t a party to that bargain. “Senator Dorgan intends to offer an amendment to the health reform bill and his expectation is that it will be one of the first amendments considered,” his spokesman Justin Kitsch told HuffPost in an e-mail. “Prescription drug importation is an immediate way to put downward pressure on health care costs. It has bipartisan support, and has been endorsed by groups such as the National Federation of Independent Businesses and AARP.” […]

Jim Manley, senior communications adviser to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), said that he sees no reason the amendment won’t get a floor vote.

If an amendment on reimporting drugs from Canada gets to the Senate floor, it is hard to see how it fails to pass. Grim notes that a separate bill to allow re-importation of prescription drugs from Canada “has 30 cosponsors, several Republicans among them.” I hope the White House doesn’t start twisting arms to keep that amendment off the Senate floor.

Giving the government the ability to negotiate prescription drug prices would bring costs down even more. Obama should support that reform, since he says he won’t let the health care bill add a dime to the deficit. But apparently, not taking that step was part of the White House deal with drug companies.

Speaking of backroom deals, Alexander Bolton reports for The Hill, citing “senior Democratic aides,” that Reid will “not include legislation repealing antitrust exemptions for the health insurance industry in the healthcare package he will bring to the Senate floor.”

So far the powerful insurance industry has held back waging a full-out battle against Democratic health reform proposals because companies stand to gain tens of millions of new customers. But adding language that would open health insurance companies to prosecution by the Justice Department would provoke a strong counterattack from the industry.

Hey, why take something valuable away from the insurance industry (the ability to fix prices) just because we’re about to hand them a “bonanza” (individual mandate to buy their products)? They might run ads against us.

It is time to replace Reid as Senate majority leader. Since Senate Democrats are unlikely to take that step, I agree with Chris Bowers that Reid losing re-election next year wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Getting a more effective majority leader, like Dick Durbin of Illinois or Chuck Schumer of New York, would make up for losing Reid’s Senate seat.

As expected, the Senate Finance Committee rejected two amendments yesterday that would have added a public health insurance option to the health care reform bill Chairman Max Baucus drafted with a big assist from industry lobbyists. Five Democrats voted with all the committee Republicans against Senator Jay Rockefeller’s amendment, which would have created a national public option tied to Medicare rates. Three Democrats also joined Republicans to vote down Senator Chuck Schumer’s much weaker “national level playing field” public option. CA Berkeley WV liveblogged yesterday’s hearing for Congress Matters.

Senator Chuck Grassley sang the same old song about the “government run plan” forcing private insurance companies out of business. He got a little tripped up when Senator Chuck Schumer asked him for his views on Medicare, though.

“I think that Medicare is part of the social fabric of America just like Social Security is,” Mr. Grassley said. “To say that I support it is not to say that it’s the best system that it could be.”

“But it is a government-run plan,” Mr. Schumer shot back.

Mr. Grassley, a veteran Senate debater, insisted that Medicare did not pose a threat to the private insurance industry. “It’s not easy to undo a Medicare plan without also hurting a lot of private initiatives that are coupled with it,” he said.

Chairman Baucus scored highest on the chutzpah meter, praising the public option even as he refused to support it. Grassley also held out false hope that maybe someday some other bill will accomplish that goal.

Several Senate Democrats, including Tom Harkin, insisted yesterday that they will get some kind of public option into the bill that reaches the Senate floor. After the jump you’ll find lots of links on the battles to come.

I agree that the public option is not dead yet, but for it to survive, President Barack Obama and Senate Majority leader Harry Reid will need to do a lot more than they’ve done so far to lean on the Senate conservadems.  

Iowa Democratic Party chair Michael Kiernan spoke confidently today about a “first-round draft pick” who is ready to run against Senator Chuck Grassley, Kay Henderson reported for Radio Iowa.

“I’m going to tell you here today that Chuck Grassley is going to be in for the race of his life.” […]

“You’re just going to have to wait to find out,” Kiernan said this morning during taping of this weekend’s “Iowa Press” program.  “We want to wait ’til, obviously, after Terry Branstad announced his candidacy for governor.”

Kiernan isn’t revealing the characteristics this phantom candidate may have either. “I’ll just wait for the announcement,” Kiernan said.  “You will be impressed.” […]

“I’m here to tell you today that it will be the toughest race that Chuck Grassley has faced since John Culver,” Kiernan said.

Grassley defeated Senator John Culver (Governor Chet Culver’s father) in the 1980 Reagan landslide.

Speaking to reporters after today’s taping, Kiernan said the big-name challenger is “100 percent committed” to this race.

Your guess is as good as mine. A retired politician? Christie Vilsack? A celebrity in a non-political field? Someone from the business world? (Retired Principal Financial Group CEO Barry Griswell has ruled out running, as has Fred Hubbell, the incoming interim director of the Iowa Department of Economic Development.)

Grassley’s approval rating has fallen this year, but it’ll take a lot to convince me that we can defeat him. He’s still got a strong brand name and 30 years of constituent service behind him.

For months, White House officials and Senate leaders praised the “gang of six” negotiations toward a bipartisan deal on health care reform, even as other observers doubted the Republicans in that group were negotiating in good faith. At the beginning of the summer recess in August, Senator Jay Rockefeller (who was shut out of the deal-making) warned:

Changes to the bill have been frustrating, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) told reporters at a press conference, particularly given that the Republicans — Mike Enzi of Wyoming, Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Olympia Snowe of Maine — are, in his opinion, just stalling for time.

“You just watch as the bill diminishes in its scope, in its coverage, in its ferocity to try to attack the problem. I don’t know where it will come out,” Rockefeller said. “My own personal view is that those three Republicans won’t be there to vote it out of committee when it comes right down to it, so that this all will have been a three-or-four-month delay game, which is exactly what the Republicans want.”

No Republicans stood with Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus last week as he finally unveiled what David Waldman described as “a plan that amounts to capitulating to every Republican demand, and then adding a heaping pile of political suicide on top of it.” The bill is in markup this week, and CA Berkeley WV has been blogging the Senate Finance Committee meetings for Congress Matters (day one, day two and day three).

Where does ranking Finance Committee member Grassley stand after Baucus bent over backwards to keep negotiating with him all summer? After the jump I’ve posted the relevant portion of a transcript from Grassley’s September 24 telephone news conference with Iowa reporters. The short version is, he’s against the bill because:

1. The individual mandate to buy health insurance amounts to “[q]uite a steep tax for people that maybe don’t pay a tax.”

2. Democrats supposedly were “not willing to go far enough” on enforcement to make sure illegal immigrants wouldn’t be covered.

3. Democrats supposedly “weren’t willing to go far enough to make sure that the subsidy through the tax credit was not used to finance abortions.”

4. You shouldn’t be “increasing taxes and cutting Medicare” when “we’re in depression.”

I told Iowa Republicans not to worry about Grassley voting for any health care reform bill. Senate Democrats should reject the concessions Baucus made to win GOP votes that are now off the table.

The Republican polling firm Rasmussen Reports surveyed 500 “likely voters” in Iowa on September 22 and came up with bad numbers for Governor Chet Culver. Former Governor Terry Branstad leads Culver by 54 percent to 34 percent, and Bob Vander Plaats leads Culver by 43 percent to 39 percent. Culver’s approval rating is 43 percent, with 53 percent of respondents disapproving of the job he is doing.

Topline results and favorability ratings are here. Culver was viewed very or somewhat favorably by 43 percent of respondents and viewed very or somewhat unfavorably by 50 percent. Branstad’s favorability was 64 percent, and his unfavorable numbers were just 29 percent. Vander Plaats was viewed favorably by 45 percent and unfavorably by 30 percent.

These numbers will encourage Branstad, who appears likely to seek his old job again. He has said he’ll decide by October, and I’ve heard rumors that Branstad will announce his candidacy very soon (September 28 according to one person, October 3 according to someone else). I believe that the numbers we see for Branstad this month will be his high water mark, since no one has campaigned against him for 15 years.

Vander Plaats will surely cite the Rasmussen poll as proof that he can beat Culver. The whole “draft Branstad” movement grew out of fears that Vander Plaats could not win a general election.

As a rule, Rasmussen polls tend to come in with somewhat better numbers for Republican candidates and worse numbers for Democrats. Go to Pollster.com and click on almost any national or state-level race to compare recent results from different pollsters.

The recent Selzer Iowa poll for the Des Moines Register found much better numbers for Culver (50 percent approve, 39 percent disapprove). Selzer polled 803 Iowans over a three-day period (3.5 percent margin of error), while Rasmussen polled 500 “likely voters” on a single day (4.5 percent margin of error). Selzer did not poll Culver against Branstad or any other Republican.

I am seeking further information about the likely voter screen Rasmussen used, as well as the proportion of Democrats, Republicans and no-party voters in the sample. I will update this post if I receive more details. If any Rasmussen premium subscriber is reading, feel free to post a comment here or e-mail me at desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com.

The same Rasmussen poll shows Senator Chuck Grassley leading Democrat Bob Krause 56 percent to 30 percent. Chase Martyn looks at the trendlines and concludes that Grassley could become vulnerable next year. In my opinion, Grassley is still well outside the danger zone for an incumbent despite his falling approval numbers.

Click here for Rasmussen’s results on how Iowans view President Obama, the economy and health care reform proposals.

UPDATE: The commenters at Swing State Project trust Selzer a lot more than Rasmussen. One person pointed out that in late July, Rasmussen found Senator Barbara Boxer of California leading Republican Carly Fiorina by just four points (45-41), while a few weeks later Research 2000 found Boxer leading Fiorina 52-31. It appears that Rasmussen’s likely voter screen produces a sample skewed a bit toward Republicans.

It would have been helpful if the Des Moines Register’s recent poll had asked respondents about Culver and Branstad and Vander Plaats. Craig Robinson is wrong to imply that the Register might have asked those questions and decided to cover up the results. The Register published the full questionnaire from its recent poll. Some pollsters don’t think head to head matchups are useful this far out from an election.

Senator Jay Rockefeller was excluded from the bipartisan group of Finance Committee members who worked on the bill Chairman Max Baucus unveiled on Wednesday, so he spent part of his summer vacation researching the fake public option favored by some “gang of six” members. He reported on his findings in an open letter to Baucus and ranking member Chuck Grassley. You should click through and read Rockefeller’s whole letter, but here are some excerpts:

“First, there has been no significant research into consumer co-ops as a model for the broad expansion of health insurance. What we do know, however, is that this model was tried in the early part of the 20th century and largely failed. As the USDA states in its response letter, ‘Government support for the cooperative approach to delivering universal health care was reduced during [World War II] and terminated afterward.’ This is a dying business model for health insurance. Moving forward with health insurance cooperatives would expose Americans, who are hoping for a better health care system, to a health care model that has already been tried and largely failed in the vast majority of the country.

“Second, there is a lack of consistent data about the total number of consumer health insurance cooperatives in existence today, and there have been no analyses of the impact of existing health insurance cooperatives on consumers.

“Third, all of the consumer health insurance cooperatives identified by the [U.S. Department of Agriculture] and [National Cooperative Business Association] operate and function just like private health insurance companies. Therefore, it is unclear how expanding consumer health insurance cooperatives would actually achieve greater affordability for consumers or bring about greater competition in the private market…

The Congressional Budget Office doesn’t expect the co-ops to affect the cost of the Baucus bill:

(The proposed co-ops had very little effect on the estimates of total enrollment in the exchanges or federal costs because, as they are described in the specifications, they seem unlikely to establish a significant market presence in many areas of the country or to noticeably affect federal subsidy payments.)

The failure of co-ops to provide competition in Iowa bears out the CBO’s expectations:

In the 1990s, Iowa adopted a law to encourage the development of health care co-ops. One was created, and it died within two years. Although the law is still on the books, the state does not have a co-op now, said Susan E. Voss, the Iowa insurance commissioner.

Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield collects about 70 percent of the premiums paid in the private insurance market in Iowa and South Dakota.

It’s past time for President Obama to stop sending out White House staff and cabinet secretaries to signal that Obama might accept cooperatives as an alternative to a public health insurance option.

Here’s hoping that even in the absence of presidential leadership, Rockefeller can get strong amendments attached to the Baucus bill or make sure it never gets out of the Senate Finance Committee.

In his latest e-mail blast to constituents, Senator Tom Harkin touches on his priorities as the new chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. One point he mentioned hasn’t been on my radar screen this year:

The full agenda of the Committee will focus on reforming federal student loan programs so that we can stop subsidizing private banks and instead focus on loans that the federal government can make more cheaply.  We can save $87 billion over 10 years in that effort, and use that money to increase Pell grants for low- and middle- income college bound students, and to fund other important education initiatives.  

I had forgotten about President Barack Obama’s effort to reform the student loan system:

His plan is to do away with a system in which the Federal Government subsidizes banks and other private finance companies like Sallie Mae to lend money to students. The Administration essentially wants to cut such companies out of the game and run the system itself. Democrats claim the move will save $87 billion over 10 years, which can be used for a laundry list of education priorities, including increasing the maximum amount of Pell Grants, expanding Perkins Loans and investing in community colleges and other programs. […]

Educational institutions currently have two ways to offer federal loans to students. In the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL, pronounced “fell”) program, the government pays subsidies to banks and lenders to dole out money to borrowers and reimburses companies up to 97% of the cost of any loan that is not paid back. The second way is the direct-loan program, created in 1993 as an alternate option, in which the government cuts out the middle man, lends money directly and gets all the profits. If the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA) passes both houses of Congress, the approximately 4,500 colleges and universities that are currently signed up for FFEL will have to abandon the program and start using the direct-loan option by July 1, 2010.

Directing federal money toward programs that help needy students, such as Pell Grants, makes a lot more sense than subsidizing private banks to make student loans.

Finding 60 votes in the Senate for this proposal will be challenging, however. This is one banking bailout Republicans will fight hard to protect, and according to Time magazine, at least one Democrat (Ben Nelson of Nebraska) opposes the plan too. If this bill passes, it will probably be through the budget reconciliation process, which requires only 51 votes in the Senate.

Health care reform is sure to take up a lot of Harkin’s time this fall, but I’m glad the HELP chairman will also focus on other bills that could change many lives for the better. Even if the health care project falls apart in the Senate, Harkin could accomplish a lot this year if he gets the student loan bill through and brokers a good compromise on the Employee Free Choice Act.

I see only one downside to Harkin becoming the HELP chairman, and that’s Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas taking over the Agriculture Committee. Jill Richardson has been on this case at La Vida Locavore. I recommend reading her posts on industry lobbyists who used to work for Lincoln, Lincoln’s strong support for corporate ag interests such as Arkansas-based Tyson Foods, and Lincoln’s positions on trade, the climate change bill, and the Clean Water Act.

BruceMcF breaks it down for you:

So: (1) Public Choice

“No Taxation without Representation”. Every single person facing an individual mandate must be provided with the choice of a publicly administered plan. Otherwise the government is forcing the citizen to pay without the elected representatives of the citizen controlling the spending.

You want to put a trigger on the public option. Fine, except the exact same trigger applies to the individual mandate.

You want to restrict access to the public option to some smaller group? Fine, except the same restriction applies to the individual mandate.

The system is not politically legitimate if it requires payment to for-profit commercial corporations.

(2) Robust

It cannot be lumbered down with any restrictions not faced by private insurers.

State by state public options? Really? You are really prepared to restrict the corporations to firms with no commercial activity across state lines? If they are free standing state by state public options, it has to be state by state for profit corporations. Oh, not allowing [United Healthcare] into the exchanges defeats the purpose of lining private pockets at the public expense? Yeah, kind of thought so.

BruceMcF has long been one of my favorite transportation bloggers and has written great stuff on health care reform too, including Axelrod: Government by Consent of the Corporation. His home blog is Burning the Midnight Oil, but he frequently cross-posts his work at Progressive Blue, Daily Kos, My Left Wing, Docudharma, and the Hillbilly Report.

Speaking of real and fake public options, Timothy Noah explains “the sorry history” of triggers enacted by Congress, and slinkerwink has suggestions and talking points to use when contacting House Progressives about health care reform. I still think it’s worth urging Populist Caucus members as well as Progressives to insist on a real, not fake or triggered, public option in the final health care bill.

Bruce Braley (IA-01) leads the Populist Caucus, and Dave Loebsack (IA-02) and Leonard Boswell (IA-03) both belong to the caucus. All of them have advocated for the public option, but to my knowledge none has pledge to vote down any bill that lacks a public option.

For those interested in the nitty gritty of legislative wrangling, David Waldman ponders what might happen if the Senate Finance Committee members can’t agree and consequently fail to report out a health care bill.

Senator Tom Harkin told a crowd of nearly 2,000 people today that health care reform including a public health insurance option will pass before this Christmas. Speaking at his 32nd Annual Steak Fry in Indianola, Harkin joked,

“This is my kind of town-hall meeting,” […] because he didn’t see any Republicans standing up to say, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare.”

Harkin and event headliner Al Franken predicted that health care reform would pass with some Republican votes, which seems unlikely if the final version of the bill contains a public option. Republican Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine has been the focus of White House courting on health care, but she opposes a public option, apparently because it has the potential to provide lower-cost health insurance.

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions passed a bill this summer containing a public option, but according to one critic, the HELP bill’s public option is anything but robust:

the actual provisions in the HELP Committee bill call for numerous “community health insurance options,” not the single “Medicare-like” plan promised by “public option” advocates. That means the individual “options” will probably be as small and weak as the co-ops now under discussion in the Senate Finance Committee. More importantly, these “community options” will almost certainly be run by insurance companies.

The public option in the bill that cleared the House Energy and Commerce Committee, HR 3200, is also weak in several respects.

President Barack Obama met with 17 relatively conservative Democratic senators on Thursday, reinforcing many people’s fears that he was ready to discard the public option. The same day, Harkin assured the Progressive Populist blog that 51 votes can be found in the Senate for a bill with a public option.

So what about all the hubub about the Blue Dogs and/or Progressives opting out if the bill doesn’t meet their liking? Harkin said don’t put too much stock in those statements.

“Look, around here people are always jockeying for power. That’s all this is,” Harkin said.

The only chance of making this bill stronger, in my opinion, is getting a large bloc of House Democrats to draw a line in the sand. If you live in Iowa’s first, second or third Congressional districts, please contact Bruce Braley, Dave Loebsack or Leonard Boswell to urge them not to accept any bill containing a “trigger” (which is guaranteed to fail) or some other fake public health insurance option. Organizing for America has a new petition out if you prefer that method of generating an e-mail to your member of Congress.

UPDATE: Don’t miss John Deeth’s entertaining liveblog from this event, with lots of photos. Braley and Loebsack praised Boswell for standing up for a public option (unlike many Blue Dogs).

From Chase Martyn’s write-up at Iowa Independent:

Boswell and fellow Democratic U.S. Reps. Bruce Braley and Dave Loebsack also expressed optimism that a final bill would include measures to reform medicare reimbursement rates. Medicare currently pays doctors in rural states like Iowa less than what doctors in densely populated states receive for the same procedures.

I mentioned on Labor Day that I haven’t heard much lately about Senator Tom Harkin’s efforts to reach a compromise on the Employee Free Choice Act. The EFCA is one of the top legislative priorities for organized labor and needs 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a Republican filibuster. Several Democrats who supported the bill in 2007, knowing that President Bush would veto it, either oppose the bill or have dodged the question this year.

Harkin has been the lead Senate negotiator on EFCA and is replacing the late Senator Ted Kennedy as chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Speaking to the American Rights at Work group yesterday, Harkin said he had 60 votes lined up behind a compromise this summer:

“As of July, I can tell you this openly and I know the press is all here but we had worked out a pretty good agreement. […]”

Harkin said prominent labor leaders were on board with the deal, including AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union.

“That’s when we needed 60 votes and that’s when I called to get Sen. Kennedy down because we needed him for three days. That’s when Dr. [Lawrence] Horowitz told me that he couldn’t make it,” Harkin said.

The Hill’s Kevin Bogardus reported that Harkin refused to specify the terms of the compromise deal:

“I will not say because it was closely held, it never leaked out and it still hasn’t,” Harkin said. “I took it off the front-burner and put it on the back-burner so it is still on warm, OK?”

In May Harkin suggested that the “card check” provision might be dropped from the bill in favor of other changes to labor election procedures. He did not say anything about binding arbitration, which is also an important part of the EFCA.

If Massachusetts law is changed to allow Governor Deval Patrick to appoint a temporary replacement for Kennedy, then Harkin may be able to revive this compromise and pass the EFCA this fall. Democratic leaders in the House agreed earlier this year not to bring the EFCA up for a vote until the measure had passed the Senate. Getting the bill through the House should not be difficult, even if a substantial number of Blue Dog Democrats vote no.

For Immediate Release: September 10, 2009

Contact: Eric Nost, Environment Iowa, 515-243-5835, enost@environmentiowa.org

New Report: Strong Energy Efficiency Policies in Energy/Climate Legislation Would Save Iowa Families $282 per Year, Create 6,200 Jobs

Des Moines, IA – A new national report finds that Iowa households would save an average of $282 per year and 6,200 sustainable jobs would be created in the state over the next ten years if Congress acts now to include strong energy efficiency improvements in energy and climate legislation. The report, entitled Energy Efficiency in the American Clean Energy Security Act of 2009: Impacts of Current Provisions and Opportunities to Enhance the Legislation, was released by Environment Iowa and the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. The efficiency provisions would prevent 5 million metric tons of global warming emissions from being released here in 2020 alone, the equivalent of taking over 900,000 cars off the road for a year. (The report is publicly available at http://www.environmentiowa.org)

(continues after the jump) 

President Barack Obama goes before Congress this evening to urge passage of health care reform this year. I will update this post later when the prepared text of the speech becomes available. White House officials say Obama will make the case for a public health insurance option, but it sounds as if he will still leave the door open for Congress to take a different approach. That doesn’t look like a strong negotiating position to me.

Various polling firms will survey people who watch Obama’s speech tonight. Mark Blumenthal of Pollster.com discusses the methodology of instant reaction polls and gives a few reasons for you to be skeptical of their findings.

Speaking of polls, I was disappointed to learn from Greg Sargent that a recent White House memo omitted results from polls showing strong nationwide support for a public health insurance option. (Multiple polls earlier this summer also found majorities in favor of a public option. In fact, Republican pollster Rasmussen has found that support for health care reform drops sharply if there is no public option.

Still, expect to hear Republicans demagogue against government-run “Obamacare.” Yesterday The Iowa Republican blog hyped a new poll from the Winston Group showing that a plurality of Iowans oppose “Obama’s plan” for health care (whatever that is). I wasn’t surprised to read that the head of the Winston Group

has served as a strategic advisor to Senate and House Republican leadership for the past 10 years. He was formerly the Director of Planning for Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and advises center-right political parties throughout Europe. Additionally Winston was a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation where he did statistical policy and econometric modeling. He has served in a senior staff role to four RNC Chairmen.

Gee, I’m shocked that the Winston Group would produce a poll indicating that Obama’s plan is unpopular.

The president’s support has declined quite a bit among Democrats and independents recently. The obvious way for him to turn this situation around is to get behind a real health care reform package that doesn’t give away the store to corporate interests.

Speaking of giving away the store, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus finally made his health care plan public this week. Turns out K Street lobbyists had the draft before Baucus showed it to fellow senators or White House officials. Also, a Baucus staffer who used to work for WellPoint is the author of the document.

Ezra Klein thinks the Baucus plan isn’t as bad as you may have heard, but Chris Bowers explains why it is very, very bad. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Chuck Todd and Andrea Mitchell are correct, and the White House is sick of dealing with Baucus. But like Bowers, I am skeptical that Obama would push for any law encountering objections from the major industry it affects. Consequently, I have no confidence in Obama to reject the Baucus approach outright.

Post any thoughts about the president’s speech or health care reform in this thread.

UPDATE: The full text of the speech as prepared is after the jump. I didn’t watch, but I did read the speech and I am very disappointed. He made a big deal about the moral case for reform, then defended the public option by saying don’t worry, hardly anyone will sign up for it. The only veto threat he made was, “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits – either now or in the future.”

If we did health care reform right, we would save money and not add to the deficit. But on principle, I reject the idea that providing universal health care at reasonable cost is not worth doing if it adds to the deficit. Obama doesn’t mind expanding our commitment in Afghanistan, providing an open-ended bailout to Wall Street, extending most of the Bush tax cuts and any number of other things that add to the federal deficit. But for some reason, health care reform isn’t as important. Pathetic.

Corrupt Democrats will make sure that no real public option remains in the bill, which will drive up the cost, allowing Republicans to complain that Obama is breaking his promise not to add to the deficit. To keep costs down, Congress will probably reduce the subsidies available to citizens who will be forced to purchase private insurance. Huge bonanza for insurance companies, nothing to keep costs down, political suicide for the Democratic Party.

I don’t care what the instant reaction polls say; in my view this speech was a failure.

Senator Ted Kennedy’s death left a vacancy as chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. I had assumed that Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, who is looking vulnerable going into his re-election campaign, would jump at the chance to become the HELP committee chairman, but surprisingly, he prefers to remain chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Paul Kane reports for the Washington Post,

Dodd’s decision leaves the chairmanship of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee to Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who follows Dodd in seniority. Multiple sources in the Harkin orbit, requesting anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said that he is certain to take over the HELP committee.

Harkin is currently chairman of the Agriculture Committee and would have to give up that position. He would likely be replaced at Agriculture by Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), who faces a difficult reelection bid in 2010. Other Democrats are more senior than her on the Agriculture Committee, but they hold more prestigious chairmanships already.

Leaving the chairman’s position at Agriculture means Harkin will have less influence over the drafting of the next farm bill. On the other hand, the HELP Committee deals with a range of extremely important issues.

I have contacted Senator Harkin’s office seeking confirmation of this report, and I’ll update this post when I hear back from his staff.

UPDATE: Harkin will replace Kennedy as HELP chairman. His statement is after the jump, along with a statement from Iowa Democratic Party chair Michael Kiernan.