Taxed Enough Already? Not If You Want a Viable Country, Newsweek Analysis Says

Doing its part to impart a dose of reality to TEA Party protesters on Tax Day, Newsweek says they might want to thank their lucky stars for April 15, 2010--because taxes will never be this low again! As David Stockman warned conservatives in February, "Game Over" for Tax Cuts. If we want to remain a nation, taxes will have to go up. Newsweek's Robert J. Samulson explains why:

Almost nobody likes tax day, but people may look back nostalgically on tax day 2010 and those of earlier years because, almost certainly, taxes are going up in the future, and they may go up a lot. With hindsight, tax day 2010 may seem almost dreamy.

Why? For starters, almost half of U.S. households aren't paying any income taxes on their 2009 earnings. The exact figure is 47 percent, says the Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, two think tanks. Among elderly households, 55 percent pay no income tax; among all households with children (including those headed by single parents), the nonpaying share is 54 percent. By contrast, only 38 percent of married couples filing jointly don't pay. (Of course, this doesn't mean people pay no federal taxes; about three quarters of households pay more in Social Security payroll taxes than in income taxes.)

The personal exemption and standard deduction, combined with the child tax credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit, shield many poor and middle-class families from the income tax. In 2009 they got extra protection from President Obama's Making Work Pay tax credit, which was $400 for single workers (phasing out at $75,000 of income) and $800 for a couple (phasing out at $150,000 of income). Without that credit, probably only 40 percent of households or less wouldn't have paid income taxes. President Obama has proposed that the credit be renewed for 2011. But given the massive federal budget deficits, there's a good chance that the credit will someday expire.

So that's one pressure for higher taxes. But it's peanuts compared to the real threat: an aging America. As almost everyone knows, the huge baby-boom generation is edging—or collapsing—into retirement. Its first members, born in 1946, turn 65 in 2011, when they will qualify for Medicare. Some have already taken Social Security as early as 62 at a reduced rate. Boomers collecting benefits, combined with uncontrolled health costs, are the underlying engine for rising federal spending and endless budget deficits.

To which there's at least one obvious solution: raise taxes. By all estimates, the budget outlook is daunting. The latest projections of the Congressional Budget Office reckon the cumulative deficits under President Obama's policies to be $12.7 trillion from 2009 to 2020. In 2020 the estimated annual deficit will be $1.25 trillion, or 5.6 percent of the economy (gross domestic product), despite assumed "full employment" of 5 percent. And the deficits get larger with every succeeding year. Given unavoidable uncertainties, these precise projections are likely to prove wrong. But their basic message seems incontestable: there's a large and growing gap between the government's promises and the existing tax base.

How big a tax increase would be needed to close the gap? Well, huge. To put things in perspective, all federal taxes (income, payroll, and excise) averaged 18.1 percent of GDP from 1970 to 2009. Under CBO's assumptions about Obama's policies, taxes in 2020 would already be slightly higher, at 19.6 percent of GDP. But on top of that, there'd need to be a further tax boost approaching a third to balance the budget, because spending is projected at 25.2 percent of GDP. Needless to say, this would be the largest tax burden in U.S. history, even including World War II.

A recent study by Rosanne Altshuler, Katherine Lim, and Roberton Williams of the Tax Policy Center shows what this would mean for income tax rates. Their study uses earlier and somewhat more optimistic CBO projections. Moreover, the study assumes only that the budget deficit is cut to 2 percent of GDP—not that it's balanced. Still, income tax rates would have to rise sharply to reach even this goal. If all income tax rates were increased proportionately, today's lowest rate of 10 percent would go to 15 percent and the highest rate of 35 percent would go to 52 percent. If only today's top two tax rates of 33 percent and 35 percent were raised, the new top rates would be 86 percent and 91 percent. At those astronomical levels, the study says, the well-off and wealthy would work less and pursue aggressive tax avoidance. Tax revenues would suffer.

These bleak estimates demonstrate why politicians of both parties have avoided confronting the government's long-term budget deficits. Anything they might do—raising taxes or cutting retirement benefits such as Social Security and Medicare—risks a public backlash. Some experts urge new taxes, such as a value-added tax or energy taxes. Others talk of "broadening" the income-tax base by eliminating or reducing tax breaks (deductions, credits, or exemptions). But of course, none of these steps would be popular. Hardly anyone wants to pay higher taxes, and most big tax breaks (the home-mortgage interest deduction, credits for college tuition, the charitable deduction) benefit major constituencies.

Almost all the pressures on taxes are in the same direction: up. It will be hard for President Obama to keep his promise not to raise taxes on households with incomes below $200,000 (for singles) and $250,000 (for couples). It will be hard for economic conservatives or the tea party to achieve meaningful tax reductions. Just about everyone will be tempted to deplore federal budget deficits—and do nothing about them. But this escape route may close; many economists warn that endlessly large deficits risk big jumps in interest rates. Someday, higher taxes may be unavoidable.

So, the lesson for tax day 2010 is simple: enjoy it while you can. It's not going to get any easier.

Pope's #2 Under Fire for Blaming Sex Abuse of Children on Homosexual "Pathology"

MSNBC has posted a Reuters article reporting that gay rights groups, the French Foreign Ministry and even some pro-Vatican Catholic blogs have denounced Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone for repeating the universally discredited canard that gay priests and nuns are to blame for the church's sex abuse of children.

As noted here last November, such scape-goating has even been rejected by researchers studying the U.S. sex abuse scandal on behalf of the U.S. Catholic bishops.

Excerpts from the MSNBC posting follow:

Gay groups and politicians condemned Pope Benedict's number two on Wednesday for calling homosexuality a "pathology" and linking it directly to sexual abuse of children.

The comments made by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone during a visit to Chile, and the controversy they caused, were splashed on mainstream Italian newspapers on Wednesday.

The French foreign ministry and some Catholic blogs that support the pope also condemned the cardinal's remarks.

Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state, who is sometimes called the "deputy pope," told a news conference in Santiago on Monday:

"Many psychologists and psychiatrists have shown that there is no link between celibacy and pedophilia, but many others have shown, I have recently been told, that there is a relationship between homosexuality and pedophilia.

"This pathology is one that touches all categories of people, and priests to a lesser degree in percentage terms," he said. "The behavior of the priests in this case, the negative behavior, is very serious, is scandalous."

Gay rights activists reacted with derision and outrage.

"This is a scientific absurdity. The World Health Organization calls homosexuality a variation of human behavior. It is pedophilia that is a pathology, a crime, not homosexuality," said Franco Grillini, a former parliamentarian who was at the vanguard of Italy's gay rights movement.

"Because they have their own problems with the abuse crisis and don't know how to handle it, they are trying to pass their 'cross' from their shoulders on to ours," Grillini told Reuters.

The French foreign ministry called it an "unacceptable linkage that we condemn."

Some pro-Vatican Catholic blogs said more controversy was the last thing the Vatican needed.

"Pedophilia and homosexuality: Bertone trips up — again — on gays," read a post in the Italian-language "Blog of the Friends of Pope Ratzinger."

A front-page editorial in Rome's left-leaning La Repubblica newspaper titled "The Confusion in the Church" said Bertone's comments would end up causing the Church more "harm to itself, not homosexuals."

Bertone was also criticized by Alessandra Mussolini, a right-wing parliamentarian whose grandfather, wartime Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, sent gays into internal exile.

"You can't link sexual orientation to pedophilia ... this link risks becoming dangerously misleading for the protection of children," Mussolini said.

ArciLesbica, Italy's main lesbian rights group, accused the Vatican of using "violent and deceptive statements" to divert attention from its abuse scandal and said Italian parents should consider removing their children from Church-run institutions.

Pope Should Resign for "Not Being Truthful" on Sex Abuse, Massachusetts Pastor Says

Boston TV channel WCVB reports that a Massachusetts priest who previously withheld funds from his neighboring Springfield diocese until it defrocked an abusive priest has called for Pope Benedict XVI to resign because "he is not being truthful" about clerical sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church.

Rev. James Scahill says that due to his parish's opposition to priest child-abusers he has lived in fear, with his stomach in knots, for the last eight years. "But when a person comes to the point of not being afraid to die, how can you then possibly fear what anyone or any institution will do to you?" This link includes the WCVB video. WCVB's written account follows, minus some self-indicting criticism from the bishop of Springfield:

The uproar over the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal is reaching a new level -- a call for the pope's resignation coming from inside the church.

That call comes from Massachusetts -- the epicenter of the abuse scandal in the United States. An East Longmeadow priest is demanding action from the Vatican.

It is not the first time the Rev. James Scahill has criticized the Pope or the church hierarchy. But this time he minced no words and left nothing to anyones imagination.

"The pope should step down if he's not prepared to embrace the truth relative to this matter," said Scahill. "I would think he is not being truthful."

In his eight years at St. Michael's Church, Scahill has withheld money from the Diocese until Richard Lavigne was defrocked and has accused church leaders of ineptitude.

"By placing these weak men in further temptation, they frankly were as culpable of the victimization as the victimizer," he said.

Some say Scahill has been disobedient.

"The church will not have myopic obedience from me like the myopic obedience of the soldiers of Hitler," he said. "There is nothing more prolife than the better protection of children from exploitation of any kind from anyone, and yet this church has remained patently silent about this."

His sermon on Sunday was neither surprising nor out of character.

"They couldn't help but rise to their feet and applaud him for his bravery," Sister Betty Broughan said.

"We had 1,700 families. We're up to 2,300 in just eight years when other churches are closing," said Patti Baran, of St. Michael's.

"Of course I'm afraid. My stomach has been jumping off and on for eight years. Of course I'm afraid. But when a person comes to the point of not being afraid to die, how can you then possibly fear what anyone or any institution will do to you?" Scahill said.

"Strongest Declaration of Christian Faith Ever Uttered by a Sitting President"

The Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, senior pastor of Houston's Windsor Village United Methodist Church, attended Tuesday's post-Easter prayer breakfast at the White House, along with 90 other Christian activists and church officials, including Joel and Victoria Osteen, pastors of Houston's Lakewood Church, widely touted as the largest congregation in the country.

After President Obama's five-minute speech to "my brothers and sisters in Christ," Caldwell called it "one of the clearest, if not the clearest, strongest declaration of Christian faith ever uttered by a sitting president." Caldwell added: "If anyone ever doubted his Christianity or beliefs, yesterday's statements clarified it and then some."

An edited White House transcript of Obama's remarks follows:

One of my hopes upon taking this office was to make the White House a place where all people would feel welcome. To that end, we held a Seder here to mark the first Passover. We held an Iftar here with Muslim Americans to break the daily fast during Ramadan. And today, I’m particularly blessed to welcome you, my brothers and sisters in Christ, for this Easter breakfast.

With us are Christian leaders from all across America, men and women who lead small-town churches and big-city congregations, and major organizations in service of others; folks whose sermons are heard and whose examples are followed by millions all across the country. So I wanted to join you for a brief moment today to continue the Easter celebration of our risen Savior, and to reflect on the work to which His promise calls all of us.

I can’t tell any of you anything about Easter that you don’t already know. I can’t shed light on centuries of scriptural interpretation or bring any new understandings to those of you who reflect on Easter’s meaning each and every year and each and every day. But what I can do is tell you what draws me to this holy day and what lesson I take from Christ’s sacrifice and what inspires me about the story of the resurrection.

For even after the passage of 2,000 years, we can still picture the moment in our mind’s eye. The young man from Nazareth marched through Jerusalem; object of scorn and derision and abuse and torture by an empire. The agony of crucifixion amid the cries of thieves. The discovery, just three days later, that would forever alter our world -- that the Son of Man was not to be found in His tomb and that Jesus Christ had risen.

We are awed by the grace He showed even to those who would have killed Him. We are thankful for the sacrifice He gave for the sins of humanity. And we glory in the promise of redemption in the resurrection.

And such a promise is one of life’s great blessings, because, as I am continually learning, we are, each of us, imperfect. Each of us errs -- by accident or by design. Each of us falls short of how we ought to live. And selfishness and pride are vices that afflict us all.

It’s not easy to purge these afflictions, to achieve redemption. But as Christians, we believe that redemption can be delivered -- by faith in Jesus Christ. And the possibility of redemption can make straight the crookedness of a character; make whole the incompleteness of a soul. Redemption makes life, however fleeting here on Earth, resound with eternal hope.

Of all the stories passed down through the gospels, this one in particular speaks to me during this season. And I think of hanging -- watching Christ hang from the cross, enduring the final seconds of His passion. He summoned what remained of His strength to utter a few last words before He breathed His last breath.

“Father,” He said, “into your hands I commit my spirit.” Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. These words were spoken by our Lord and Savior, but they can just as truly be spoken by every one of us here today. Their meaning can just as truly be lived out by all of God’s children.

So, on this day, let us commit our spirit to the pursuit of a life that is true, to act justly and to love mercy and walk humbly with the Lord. And when we falter, as we will, let redemption -- through commitment and through perseverance and through faith -- be our abiding hope and fervent prayer.

Many of you are living out that commitment every day. So we want to honor you through this brief program, celebrating both the meaning of Easter and the spirit of service that embodies so much of your work.

Creeping Clericalism: How Rome Contradicts Vatican II's Priesthood of All Believers

Yesterday's post focused on Rome's attempt to reverse Vatican II's stress on the church as the People of God, by increasing the scope of papal infallibility beyond anything authorized by the council or even Vatican I in the 19th century.

Today's post focuses on another National Catholic Reporter article on a related multi-decade crusade: Rome's campaign to deny the laity its essential, active role in proclaiming the Good News and in crafting and enacting the liturgy, by reasserting a neo-clericalism that departs significantly from Vatican II's emphasis on the priesthood of all believers.

The article is by Rev. Paul Philbert, a Dominican friar who lives in Raleigh, NC, and freelances as a lecturer and writer after many years as a professor of theology. He documents three specific ways in which this neo-clericalism explicitly departs from the theology of Vatican II. Extensive excerpts follow:

A type of clericalism has been revived over the last 20 or 25 years that is subduing the apostolic vision of the church sketched by Vatican II. It is overemphasizing the part played by the ordained in the life of the church. There are many symptoms, from cardinals unpacking their 15-foot trains of scarlet silk — cappa magnas (ceremonial capes) — to seminarians and young priests living full time in cassocks; from the disappearance of inclusive language in church texts and preaching, to the nearly exclusive focus upon clerical vocations in diocesan letters. Seminarians are in short supply, and officials fear that the generalized secularization of the culture and particularly the promotion of laypersons to ministries of service in the church will have the effect of discouraging vocations to the ordained priesthood. The consequent demotion of the spiritual dignity of the faithful and a chilling of social relations between clergy and people are all too clear among some church leaders. These details are debatable; they vary from place to place. Far more significant is the underlying vision and practice of what goes on in the local church.

I am trying to describe here an implicit popular theology of the church that appears to be widespread. These ideas represent not only people’s general understanding of what the church is about, but also much in pulpit preaching and in church documents as well. Here is a brief description of the problem:

(a) In this popular theology, the priest represents Christ, while the people represent those to whom Christ ministered. During this “Year for Priests,” we have heard lots about how important the figure of the priest is. However, I have yet to hear anyone echo the clear teaching of St. Paul that each of the baptized is an alter Christus — another Christ — and has a vocation to share the church’s mission through an apostolic life in the ordinary world.

(b) In this popular theology, the ordained presbyter (priest) is understood to be the one who is active in the Eucharist as the agent of reenacting Holy Thursday and Good Friday, while the people are sacramentally passive as recipients of the priest’s sacred action. Some of those who buy into this vision of the Eucharist are hungry to hear Gregorian chant, Renaissance polyphony and Latin texts while they are edified by the priest’s awesome rites. This reduction of the laity to passive bystanders instead of active participants in Catholic worship is the most characteristic manifestation of clericalism.

(c) One additional aspect of this implicit popular theology has to do with the Holy Spirit. It imagines that if the Spirit is bestowed on the faithful, it will come exclusively through the ministry of the ordained. It presupposes that the faithful are directly dependent upon bishops and priests for their sanctification. This ignores the rich teaching of Romans and First Corinthians that baptism gives the faithful the power to live and act under the impulse of the Holy Spirit and to be powerful witnesses to God’s action in the world.

Speaking through the council fathers, the Spirit at Vatican II left no doubt that all three of these theological manifestations of clericalism are wrong. In the “Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests,” we read: “Jesus gave his whole mystical body a share in the anointing of the Spirit with which he was anointed. In that body all the faithful are made a holy and kingly priesthood, they offer spiritual sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ ... therefore there is no such thing as a member who does not have a share in the mission of the whole body” (Presbyterorum Ordinis 2). Put another way, each of the faithful, positioned in some way at the church’s periphery, has the potential to initiate a more dynamic expression of the living church, calibrated precisely to the real existing possibilities for life that are always emerging there.

To the idea that the priest celebrates the Eucharist and that the faithful are nourished from afar, the council insisted on the contrary: “The eucharistic celebration is the center of the assembly of the faithful over which the priest presides. Hence priests [must] teach the faithful to offer the divine victim to God the Father in the sacrifice of the Mass and with the victim to make an offering of their own lives” (Presbyterorum Ordinis 5). By offering themselves and their apostolic action in the world, the faithful bring the fruit of their baptismal priesthood (which is essentially non-liturgical and lived out in the world) to the church’s fundamental act of sacrifice and self-offering to God at Mass. When this role of the faithful is denied, then Sunday Mass becomes the place where people assemble not as a priestly people offering their lives to God, but as individuals praying private devotions as they watch the priest offer sacred rites on a distant altar.

To the idea that the faithful are sanctified uniquely through the ministries of the ordained, the “Constitution on the Church” clearly says: “The baptized, by regeneration and the anointing of the Holy Spirit, are consecrated a spiritual house and a holy priesthood, that through all their Christian activities they may offer spiritual sacrifices and proclaim the marvels of him who has called them out of darkness into his wonderful light” (Lumen Gentium 10). In other words, the vocation that the church offers to the faithful is not a secondary role as clients of clerical ministries, but a Spirit-filled participation as pioneers in the church’s role as herald of the kingdom of God.

The laity is supposed to be the link between the church and the world. Pope Paul VI describes laypeople as those whose vocation places them in the midst of the world, in charge of the most varied temporal tasks. He goes on to say: “Their primary and immediate task is ... to put to use every Christian and evangelical possibility latent but already present and active in the affairs of the world. Their own field of evangelizing activity is the vast and complicated world of politics, society and economics, but also the world of culture, of the sciences and the arts, of international life, of the mass media” (Evangelii Nuntiandi 70). A church that forgets this and fails to commission the laity to this irreplaceable dynamic role in the culture has let go of the great commission that Christ left to the church as his last mandate: “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation” (Mark16:15; Matt 28:19). It is a church that has forgotten that it is baptizing and confirming missionaries “to make the church present and fruitful in those places in circumstances where it is only through them that it can become the salt of the earth” (Lumen Gentium 33).

Amen!

Creeping Infallibility: Popes Have Gone Way Beyond What Vatican Councils Authorized

Prominent Catholic canon lawyer Ladislas Orsy, S.J., says in a new book that recent popes have taken it upon themselves to expand the notion of papal infallibility way beyond what was defined and authorized by the First and Second Vatican Councils. So writes the National Catholic Reporter's John Wilkins in his review of Orsy's Receiving the Council: Theological and Canonical Insights and Debates.

Orsy sees this creeping infallibility as part of Rome's multi-decade project to undo Vatican II's stress on the church as the "entire people of God" and to deny the non-ordained any say in the governance of the church. Excerpts from Wilkins' review follow:

Throughout the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), Orsy, teaching at the Gregorian University in Rome, marveled as the world’s Catholic bishops got to work. The council was the “awakening” of the “entire people of God,” he writes.

Exactly the same metaphor was used at the time by then-Fr. Ratzinger, who was at Vatican II as the expert adviser to Cardinal Josef Frings, archbishop of Cologne, Germany. In an overview of the council’s work, published a year after it ended, Ratzinger hailed “the awakening of the church” as “the true event” of Vatican II.

Vatican II spoke of the whole “people of God” as a communion, a key concept for Orsy, before it spoke of the pope and bishops as a communion within the communion. Certainly, as Orsy acknowledges, the lay faithful now have a greater place in the internal life of the church than they did before. “They work in chanceries, ecclesiastical courts, parish councils and other ministries.” Here they have an opportunity in particular to apply the virtue of prudence, which is not guaranteed to the ordained.

Yet canon law separates the laity out again, excluding them from decision-making. Only the hierarchy has the power of governance. Laypeople can cooperate with this power but cannot share in it. The 1983 Code of Canon Law promulgated by Pope John Paul II restores the negative definition of the laity as those who are not clerics. The code calls them “the other members of the Christian faithful.”

Orsy is among those who are alarmed that a previous tradition in the church finds no echo in the new code. In the first millennium, lay men and women summoned ecumenical councils; most participants at the Council of Florence (1438-45) on the reunion of East and West were not ordained; abbesses for centuries had a power of jurisdiction. Looking beneath the surface, Orsy warns: “If the present situation becomes a norm for the future, the church will be more clerical than it ever was.”

He sees “turbulence” in the church today, resulting from the collision of two currents. One tends toward a new church order based on communion; the other seeks to restore an absolute monarchy, and at present is dominant.

Orsy’s charge is that the scope of the doctrine of infallibility, previously carefully restricted, has in effect been hugely extended by recent documents of the Holy See. Neither at Vatican I nor at Vatican II did the bishops conceive of any such enlargement. His concern is with Pope John Paul II’s 1988 apostolic letter Ad Tuendam Fidem “(To Guard the Faith”), the attendant doctrinal congregation commentary signed by Ratzinger, and the expanded profession of faith and the oath of fidelity that, since 1989, all officeholders are expected to take. These initiatives establish, Orsy contends, a new category of “definitive” teaching that is proclaimed as “irreformable” and attended by sanctions enshrined in canons inserted into the Code of Canon Law.

These developments seem to him to open up “a new and vast field for infallible teaching.” For what is the difference between infallible and “definitive”? Only the mode of promulgation, he thinks. “In the case of an infallible definition the pope must speak solemnly ex cathedra. ... In the case of a definitive teaching it is enough for him to indicate that his statement is intended to be definitive: No more is required.”

When it comes to Ad Tuendam Fidem, he stresses that the apostolic letter is authentic papal teaching that demands obedient respect. But he points out that Vatican II leaves no doubt that pope and bishops together in an ecumenical council can “abandon, supersede or modify earlier papal teachings which were not ex cathedra definitions.” As regards the commentary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he suggests that perhaps its status can be compared to that of the drafts put before the bishops by the curia at the start of Vatican II. And we all know what happened to those drafts: They were voted down.

National Catholic Reporter to Pope: "Tell the Truth" about Church's Child Abuse

In a frank editorial posted this morning, the National Catholic Reporter tells Pope Benedict XVI "It's time, past time really" for him to tell the whole truth about his role in the failure of Catholic bishops over several decades to prevent abuse of children. I agree with NCR's assessment that "We now face the largest institutional crisis in centuries, possibly in church history."

Much of the editorial follows; I've added bold-face to some important sentences:

The Holy Father needs to directly answer questions, in a credible forum, about his role -- as archbishop of Munich (1977-82), as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1982-2005), and as pope (2005-present) -- in the mismanagement of the clergy sex abuse crisis.

We urge this not primarily as journalists seeking a story, but as Catholics who appreciate that extraordinary circumstances require an extraordinary response. Nothing less than a full, personal and public accounting will begin to address the crisis that is engulfing the worldwide church. It is that serious.

With the further revelations March 26 by The New York Times that memos and meeting minutes exist showing that Benedict had to be at least minimally informed that an abuser priest was coming into the archdiocese of Munich and that he further had been assigned without restrictions to pastoral duties, it becomes even more difficult to reconcile the strong language of the pope in his letter to Irish bishops and his own conduct while head of a major see.

No longer can the Vatican simply issue papal messages -- subject to nearly infinite interpretations and highly nuanced constructions -- that are passively "received" by the faithful. No longer can secondary Vatican officials, those who serve the pope, issue statements and expect them to be accepted at face value.

We were originally told by Vatican officials, for example, that in the matter of Fr. Peter Hullermann, Munich Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger approved the priest's transfer to the archdiocese, but had no role in the priest's return to parish ministry, where he again molested children. Rather, it was Fr. Gerhard Gruber, archdiocesan vicar general at the time, who, according to a March 12 Vatican statement, has taken "full responsibility" for restoring the priest to ministry. Gruber, subsequent to his statement, has not made himself available for questions.

We are told, moreover, that the case of Hullermann is the single instance during Ratzinger's tenure in Munich where a sexually errant priest was relocated to a parish where he could molest again. If true, this would be a great exception to what, in the two-and-a-half decades NCR has covered clergy abuse in the church, has been an ironclad rule: Where there is one instance of hierarchical administrative malfeasance, there are more.

Given memos and minutes placing the pope amid the discussions of the matter, we are asked to suspend disbelief even further.

The first reported clergy sex abuse stories, dating back in NCR to 1985, focused on the misconduct of priests who had been taken to court by parents of molested children -- parents who had gone to church officials, but received no solace. Instead, what they received from church officials was denial and counter accusation.

Almost from the beginning of the coverage of these trials, it was clear the clergy sex abuse story had two consistent components: the abusing priest and the cover-up by the bishop.

In nearly every instance, bishops, faced with accusations of child abuse, denied them, even as they shuffled priests to new parishes, even as they covered up their own actions.

In the last decade the story has not gone away. Rather it has continuously reared its head in nation after nation, especially in those countries with a free press and independent judicial system. A dominant characteristic of this story is that where and when it has emerged it has done so without the aid of church hierarchy. To the contrary, it has taken lawsuit after lawsuit, investigative report after investigative report, to bring this horrendous story to necessary light.

Inexorably, a story that began with reports on trials in a few U.S. cities a quarter century back has now moved up the Catholic institutional ladder -- from priests to bishops to national bishops' conferences and to the Vatican itself. This last step is the one we see emerging this month. The new focus is unlikely to end anytime soon.

The focus now is on Benedict. What did he know? When did he know it? How did he act once he knew?

The questions arise not only about his conduct in Munich, but also, based also as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. A March 25 Times story, citing information from bishops in the United States, reported that the Vatican had failed to take action against a priest accused of molesting as many as 200 deaf children while working at a school from 1950 to 1974. Correspondence reportedly obtained by the paper showed requests for the defrocking of the priest, Fr. Lawrence Murphy, going directly from U.S. bishops to Ratzinger, then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, and Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, now the Vatican secretary of state. No action was taken against Murphy.

Like it or not, this new focus on the pope and his actions as an archbishop and Vatican official fits the distressing logic of this scandal. For those who have followed this tragedy over the years, the whole episode seems familiar: accusation, revelation, denial and obfuscation, with no bishop held accountable for actions taken on their watch. Yes, there is a depressing madness to this story. Time after time, this is a story of institutional failure of the deepest kind, a failure to defend the Gospel of Jesus Christ, a failure to put compassion ahead of institutional decisions aimed at short-term benefits and avoiding public scandal.

The strategies employed so far -- taking the legal path, obscuring the truth, and doing everything possible to protect perpetrators as well as the church's reputation and treasury -- have failed miserably.

We now face the largest institutional crisis in centuries, possibly in church history. How this crisis is handled by Benedict, what he says and does, how he responds and what remedies he seeks, will likely determine the future health of our church for decades, if not centuries, to come.

It is time, past time really, for direct answers to difficult questions. It is time to tell the truth.

Republicans, Not Content to Destroy Their Party, Take Aim at Democracy Itself

Political commentary on the GOP's refusal to abide by the majority vote on the health care legislation has tended to focus on the likely failure of two major Republican strategies and how that might seal the demise of the Republican Party as a viable political entity.

Those concerns are well founded and well articulated. But they miss a larger point lurking first in the racial and gay slurs that mobs have hurled at Democratic officials in the last few days, then by actual vandalism and assassination threats.

Each time the misguided Republican strategies fail, the angrier and more desperate the fascist, racist, gun-toting fringe of the tea-baggers becomes. Now that they have become so frustrated that they are threatening to shoot office holders elected by majority vote--who have committed the 'tyranny' of passing legislation by majority vote--their threat to the survival of democracy in America is a clear and present danger. It needs to be our deepest concern.

Some of the political commentary focused on the futility of the Republicans trying to run against the health care law in November.

The Houston Chronicle editorialized that the Republicans were on the "wrong side of history" and that they should not be surprised when the voters tell them so: "It will be interesting to see how receptive voters will be to a pitch to reinstate higher drug prices for the elderly, permit insurance companies to resume denying coverage for pre-existing conditions and cancel tax breaks for individuals and small businesses to pay for policies."

In his Political Memo in the New York Times, Adam Nagourney warned the Republicans that they were about to compound the failure of their political strategy in Congress with a failure of political strategy in the mid-term elections.

Like the Houston Chronicle, he cited provisions of the bill that will be "broadly popular with the public." He also noted that "more contentious" provisions of the bill "including the mandate for the uninsured to obtain coverage, do not take effect for years." But to highlight how much damage the Republicans were really doing to themselves, Nagourney quoted a respected conservative political analyst:

David Frum, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative research organization, said Republicans had tried to defeat the bill to undermine Mr. Obama politically, but in the process had given up a chance of influencing a huge bill. Mr. Frum said his party’s stance sowed doubts with the public about its ideas and leadership credentials, and ultimately failed in a way that expanded Mr. Obama’s power.

“The political imperative crowded out the policy imperative,” Mr. Frum said. “And the Republicans have now lost both.”

“When our core group discover that this thing is not as catastrophic as advertised, they are going to be less energized than they are right now,” Mr. Frum said.

He warned that the energy Republicans were finding now among base voters would fade.

Other analysis focused on the futility of the legal challenges mounted by 14 state attorneys general, all but one a Republican. The Houston Chronicle called these Republican officials "sore losers" and said all they were doing was wasting precious taxpayer time and money.

A professor of law at Washington and Lee University agreed, telling CNN in excruciating detail that the states' legal position was full of holes and had about as much chance of prevailing as a snowball in hell.

These points, though well taken, miss the bigger picture: the Republican march into irrelevance has been a long time coming and may now be irreversible; but it could bring down much more than a failed political party.

It reached its previous nadir in follies like bungling an unfunded war in Iraq, establishing unfunded drug benefits for seniors and so ham-stringing federal enforcement agencies that Wall Street pursued greed at any cost and the economy tanked here and around the globe. Then they piled new atrocity upon that by opposing stimulus bills aimed at fixing their economic mess and health care reform that they once thought was a very good idea.

So frankly, the country should shed no tears if the Republican Party meets its final demise.

But if we have no good reason to keep the Republicans from destroying themselves, we have every reason to stop them from destroying the country. We need to focus on how the fascists they pander to are reacting to Republican defeats: they are rejecting democracy itself.

The Republicans are very much in danger of transitioning from the party of no to the party of treason. The majority in Congress need to make the GOP members accountable for violating their oaths to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." And the Justice Department needs to prosecute all who incite treason and all who threaten the extermination of elected officials faithfully doing the jobs the voters elected them to do.

Bishops' President Distorts Catholic Health Association's Stance on Health Reform

In a commentary posted yesterday, Washington Post syndicated columnist E. J. Dionne Jr. puzzles over why Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, would say the Catholic Health Association's support for the health care bill came in part because, unlike the bishops, "They believe ... that the defects that they do recognize can be corrected after passage of the final bill" -- when in fact that is not the CHA's position at all!

Sister Carol Keehan is president of the Catholic Health Association, whose members, Dionne notes, "include 600 Catholic hospitals and 1,400 nursing homes." Keehan told Dionne that George's assertion was "flatly not true" (his words). Quoting her, he wrote:

"We're not saying that," she said. Her organization believes the bill as currently written guarantees that there will be no federal funding for abortion and does not need to be "corrected." Why the bishops would distort the position of the church's major health association is, to be charitable, a mystery.

Dionne said Keehan was particularly troubled by the bishops' opposition to the Senate language on abortion, because she and her organization were directly involved in crafting it -- working with two Democratic senators strongly opposed to abortion, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania. Again in Dionne's words:

She loyally refuses to criticize the bishops but argues that their interpretation of the abortion language is simply wrong...

“We looked at the bill. We spent a lot of time with Sens. Casey and Nelson,” she said in an interview. “We agreed to support it because we believe it meets the test of no federal funding for abortion. Perhaps the language is not the way I would write it, but it meets the test. … I was not going to take a little bit of abortion (in the bill) to get federal funding.”

She added: “I can't walk away from extending coverage to more than 30 million people.”

It's hard not to see this as more evidence for the position I have advance here before: that the true aim of the bishops is not to uphold the Hyde Amendment's current restrictions on using federal funds for abortions, but to use the bill's new federal involvement in health-care funding as a pretext to also limit abortion coverage by private insurers.

As Dionne notes, it is unconscionable for the U.S. bishops to hold health-care reform hostage to this new agenda and make its rejection their excuse for defecting from the health-care equity they have championed for decades.

National Catholic Reporter Defends CHA, Applauds U.S. Nuns, Urges Health Reform

The National Catholic Reporter has just posted an editorial defending the Catholic Health Association against criticism by some U.S. bishops, applauding the 59,000 U.S. women religious who asked Congress to pass the pending health-care reform, and adding its own endorsement of the measure. The editorial accused the bishops of putting out more than one "red herring" about the measure's true impact on abortions. Part of the editorial follows:

Much of the focus on the bill in these last days, and not only in the Catholic world, has been on its provisions regarding abortion. All sides agreed to abide by the spirit of the Hyde Amendment, which for more than 30 years has banned federal funding of abortion. But the Hyde Amendment applies to government programs only, and trying to fit its stipulations to a private insurance marketplace is a bit like putting a potato skin on an apple. Pro-choice advocates could not understand why a government that currently subsidizes abortion coverage through the tax code should balk at subsidizing private plans that cover abortion in the insurance exchanges the bill establishes. They have a point. Pro-life groups understandably worry that opening the door to federal funding of abortion, even indirectly, risks further encroachments on Hyde. They have a point, too.

This being a political debate, it was bound to get nasty. And nasty it has gotten. The Catholic Health Association and its leadership is taking heat for their courageous stance in favor of the bill; the nearly 60,000 women religious who endorsed the measure yesterday, even as their congregations face scrutiny from Rome on other matters, should be applauded.

While we acknowledge the thoughtful tone of the statement by Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, the president of the U.S. bishops' conference, some of his confreres have taken it upon themselves to impugn CHA's motives, the competence of its leadership, or both.

Part of the difference between the positions taken by the Catholic Health Association as well as by the leaders of the women's religious communities, and that taken by the USCCB has to do with their different roles. CHA actually knows how health care is provided at the ground level. The USCCB's inside-the-beltway analysis is focused on possible scenarios, many of them worst-case scenarios. The U.S. bishops' conference is right to worry about such things and the sisters are right to put those worries in perspective.

In any event, what is being debated is not the morality of abortion but the politics of abortion, and there is plenty of room for honest and respectful disagreement among Catholics about politics.

That said, the bishops have to be clear that some of their talking points might lead honest observers to question their competence -- or worse. In the past week or so, much has been made of the bill's provision of $7 billion dollars to community health centers. The National Right to Life Committee chimed in that this money could go to pay for abortions at clinics run by Planned Parenthood. Back to Logic 101: All Planned Parenthood clinics may be clinics, but not all health care clinics are Planned Parenthood clinics. The community health centers in question do not, never have, and have no intention of performing abortions, and they are prohibited by statute from doing so. This is a red herring and it was profoundly disappointing to see the USCCB Web site give credence to it.

Bottom line: The current legislation is not "pro-abortion," and there is no, repeat no, federal funding of abortion in the bill.

Meanwhile, writing in The Washington Post last Sunday, T.R. Reid, a first-rate journalist, a Catholic, and author of "The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care." argues persuasively that industrialized countries that achieve universal or near-universal insurance coverage have a demonstrably lower abortion rate than we have in the United States. It should matter to those who believe in the sacredness of all human life that this legislation will not only provide health care to those who don't currently possess it, but will encourage women facing crisis pregnancies to choose life. Given the intractable nature of the abortion debate in the United States, this amounts to a pro-life victory of historic proportions.

When Social Security first passed in the 1930s, and Medicare first passed in the 1960s, the bills were insufficient to the problems the laws were designed to address. For example, in order to secure the support of Southern senators, the original Social Security bill exempted sharecroppers from its concern, as the current health care bill exempts immigrants. But, over time, the problems were remedied and both Social Security and Medicare have become essential parts of our nation's social fabric. They embody that solidarity which is the goal of Catholic social teaching.

The current health care bill, for all of its problems and all of its controversies, will further turn our society in the direction of solidarity and away from the Social Darwinism its opponents prefer.

59,000 U.S. Nuns and the Catholic Health Association Urge Health Reform Passage

Right on the heels of the Catholic Health Association's announcement that it is parting ways with the U.S. Bishops' opposition to health-care reform, representatives of 59,000 U.S. women religious delivered a letter to every member of Congress yesterday urging them to vote in favor of the pending legislation. Signers of the letter include the president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) and, according to the National Catholic Reporter, "the leaders of more than four dozen U.S. congregations of women religious."

What is significant is that both Catholic groups do not buy the bishops' position that the reform bill would weaken current restrictions on using federal funds for abortions. That tends to confirm recent analysis here that the bishops' true intent is to add to the current restrictions, not just maintain them.

Also significant is that Catholics more directly involved in health care than the bishops are telling the bishops and their conservative allies in Congress that they have got it wrong. This is precisely the way we do morality in post-Vatican II Catholicism. The bishops don't understand that yet, but maybe this can be another teachable moment for a few of them. The text of the letter follows.

Dear Members of Congress:

We write to urge you to cast a life-affirming “yes” vote when the Senate health care bill (H.R. 3590) comes to the floor of the House for a vote as early as this week. We join the Catholic Health Association of the United States (CHA), which represents 1,200 Catholic sponsors, systems, facilities and related organizations, in saying: the time is now for health reform AND the Senate bill is a good way forward.

As the heads of major Catholic women’s religious orders in the United States, we represent 59,000 Catholic Sisters in the United States who respond to needs of people in many ways. Among our other ministries we are responsible for running many of our nation’s hospital systems as well as free clinics throughout the country.

We have witnessed firsthand the impact of our national health care crisis, particularly its impact on women, children and people who are poor. We see the toll on families who have delayed seeking care due to a lack of health insurance coverage or lack of funds with which to pay high deductibles and co-pays. We have counseled and prayed with men, women and children who have been denied health care coverage by insurance companies. We have witnessed early and avoidable deaths because of delayed medical treatment.

The health care bill that has been passed by the Senate and that will be voted on by the House will expand coverage to over 30 million uninsured Americans. While it is an imperfect measure, it is a crucial next step in realizing health care for all. It will invest in preventative care. It will bar insurers from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions. It will make crucial investments in community health centers that largely serve poor women and children. And despite false claims to the contrary, the Senate bill will not provide taxpayer funding for elective abortions. It will uphold longstanding conscience protections and it will make historic new investments – $250 million – in support of pregnant women. This is the REAL pro-life stance, and we as Catholics are all for it.

Congress must act. We are asking every member of our community to contact their congressional representatives this week. In this Lenten time, we have launched nationwide prayer vigils for health care reform. We are praying for those who currently lack health care. We are praying for the nearly 45,000 who will lose their lives this year if Congress fails to act. We are also praying for you and your fellow Members of Congress as you complete your work in the coming days. For us, this health care reform is a faith mandate for life and dignity of all of our people.

We urge you to vote “yes” for life by voting yes for health care reform in H.R. 3590.

U.S. Must Convince Israel: Of the Three Things You Want, You Can Only Have Two

New York Times op-ed columnist Thomas L. Friedman had an excellent analysis yesterday, arguing that Israel, moderate Arabs and the U.S. should support Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's proposal for creating a Palestinian state. Friedman argues that it is the only proposal that (1) protects their interests, (2) resolves the conflict between Israelis and the indigenous Palestinians of the West Bank, and (3) successfully establishes Palestine on the West Bank. All other proposals ultimately destroy both claimants to the land.

Friedman's description of "Fayyadism" is straight-forward: Fayyad calls for "a nonviolent struggle, for building noncorrupt transparent institutions and effective police and paramilitary units, which even the Israeli Army says are doing a good job; and then, once they are all up and running, declare a Palestinian state in the West Bank by 2011."

Friedman is at his best in explaining why Israel has no choice but to accept Fayyad's plan: of the three things Israelis want most, the logic of the situation will allow them to achieve only two. Fayyad's strategy would give them the best two of the three.

Friedman makes these points in one paragraph. I re-format it here to let each of the three choices stand out:

Ever since Israel occupied the West Bank and its Palestinian population in 1967, Israelis have faced a dilemma: Do they want a Jewish state, a democratic state and state in all of the land of Israel (Israel plus the West Bank)? In this world, they can have only two out of three.

Israel can be Jewish and democratic, but not if it keeps the West Bank, because the Palestinians there plus all the Israeli Arabs will eventually outnumber the Jews.

It can be Jewish and keep the West Bank, but then it can’t be democratic; Arabs will be the majority.

It can be democratic and keep the West Bank, but then it can’t be Jewish.

Friedman argues that Israel's only choice is to be Jewish and democratic--and concede the West Bank to Palestine. He thinks Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu understands this, or he would not have accepted the two-state solution in principle: "But his government is an impossible mix of moderate Labor Party and hard-line religious and nationalist ideologues who actually believe Israel can have all three if it just hangs tough."

The "big U.S. strategy" for the Middle East, Friedman concludes, should be to go all out for Fayyad's proposal and convince Israel it is the only way forward, if Israelis and Palestinians are ever to live in peace, and if the Palestinian wound, which pains Muslims globally and focuses their hostility on Jews and their supporters, is ever to be healed.

The REPUBLICANS Have Driven Government Takeover of Health Care for Two Decades

We've heard ad nauseam the Republican claim that the Democratic health-care reform proposals would mean a federal government takeover of one-sixth of the national economy.

Enter Newsweek's Daniel Gross, who posted an important analysis yesterday that attacks Republican claim on two fronts. First, he says, "the proposed health care reform does not take over the system in any sense"--as the chagrin of most liberals amply shows. Second, the expansion of federal involvement in health care since 1990 has been almost entirely the doing of Republicans, who either pushed it directly or caused situations that forced more federal involvement. Thanks to the Republicans, the government has already taken over one-twelfth of the national economy! In fact, it is the Democrats who are trying to contain that trend.

Following is most of the Newsweek analysis. [Be aware: if you link to the CDC's "big annual report," it will want to load a 10.25 MB file to your computer.]

There have been lots of absurdities in the debate—such as it is—about health care reform. There's the hypocrisy of people dependent on government-run health care complaining about government-run health care. And now comes the Republican canard that the current health care reform proposal constitutes a government takeover of one-sixth of the economy. Here are Rep. Steve Buyer of Indiana, Rep. John Fleming of Louisiana, and Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina making precisely that argument.

First, the proposed health care reform does not take over the system in any sense. Much to the chagrin of progressives, the bills under consideration don't contain a public option and don't provide for a single payer. In fact, they provide subsidies for millions of people to purchase private insurance.

Second, . . . We're already halfway toward socialized medicine, but not because of Obamacare. . . Over the last couple of decades, as the private sector has done a miserable job controlling costs, as employers have felt less and less compelled to offer health care benefits as a condition of employment, as the population has aged, and as the government created new health care entitlements, the government has been slowly assuming a higher portion of health care spending in the United States—or "taking it over."

Check out Table 123 in the CDC's big annual report. In 1990, health care expenditures in the United States were split, 60-40, between the private and public sectors. By 2000, the ratio had fallen to 55.9-44.1. In other words, in the 1990s, a period in which Republicans controlled the House for six years, the share of health spending controlled by the government rose by 10 percent. The trend continued in the period from 2000 to 2008, when Republicans controlled the White House and largely controlled Congress. The recession boosted the poverty rate, making more people eligible for Medicaid, and led to the reduction of millions of payroll jobs, which led to losses in job-related insurance.* By 2008, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, private health care expenditures had fallen to 52.7 percent and public had risen to 47.3 percent. In pretty much every year of the Bush administration, the government "took over" a greater chunk of the health care sector. And many of the Republicans who are complaining about reform proposals today didn't utter a peep. In fact, they helped the process along by voting for the Medicare prescription drug benefit in 2003. (Hat tip to Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic for the references.)

CMS also notes that thanks to these trends, public spending will soon outpace private spending—even in the absence of significant reform. "As a result of more rapid growth in public spending, the public share of total health care spending is expected to rise from 47 percent in 2008, exceed 50 percent by 2012, and then reach nearly 52 percent by 2019."

So, to reiterate, we're already half way toward fully socialized medicine. The government has already taken over one-twelfth of the economy—and more every day. That's the status quo the opponents of reform are defending.

Another Reason to Reform Health Care: "To Improve Americans' Sense of Security"

As one of his chief arguments for the necessity of health care reform, President Obama has tried to sell the point that the current system is such a major drag on the national economy and the federal budget that improving it is critical to economic recovery and slowing the growth of the national debt.

Not everyone buys it, and opponents charge that the specific plan he is supporting might actually have the reverse impact: i.e., retard economic recovery by increasing the cost of health insurance and increase the nation's indebtedness to pay for more unfunded entitlement programs. Never mind that the Congressional Budget Office disputes those outcomes. The opponents, after all, have never been known to let facts get in their way.

In the middle of all this, a syndicated columnist has just added an important nuance to Obama's economic argument for health reform. In an analysis published March 2nd, the Providence Journal's Froma Harrop suggests that ending Americans' terror at losing their health insurance might just be key to whether or not consumer confidence returns anytime soon.

The nexus she makes between consumers' willingness to spend and their fear of facing serious illness without health insurance may not be immediately obvious. Indeed, I'm not aware of anyone who has made it before. But once the nexus is brought to our attention, the point becomes so self-evident that it's very difficult to ignore.

Harrop launches her conclusion from an unlikely platform: "Americans who shopped till they dropped have stopped. Per capita consumption is down for two straight years, according to Booz & Co.'s new study of U.S. spending behavior. That hasn't happened since the Great Depression."

Booz suggests that the Great Recession has had such a gut-punching impact that, in Harrop's words, it has "changed American spending habits in lasting ways."

No income group has been immune from this change, but the impact is greatest on the middle and lower-income consumers who are the engine of U.S. retail sales. Harrop continues:

"Discretionary spending has fallen in every income group, and the lower the income, the deeper the plunge. More disturbing, though, is the growing pessimism. Only 31 percent of those surveyed said their household's financial status would improve over the next year, while 32 percent thought it would get worse."

So what does all this have to do with health care? Let Harrop make the connection, in her own words:

"As the American economy climbs out of the recessionary pits, the kind of consumer that will emerge with it is becoming evident: not much of one. Only 18 percent of respondents told Booz that they plan to spend on clothing and shoes at pre-recession levels. That leaves over four in five American shoppers saying they won't hit the stores like they used to.

"So Americans' normally sunny outlook has fundamentally changed. The magic pills used to dull the pain of global competition are gone. No more housing bubbles to spin illusions of wealth, no more big loans for the little people, no more charge cards to recent bankrupts.

"The most obvious mood-enhancer is to improve Americans' sense of security. Like so much else that plagues our economy, this should start with health care. The loss of medical coverage remains the perpetual American nightmare. The unemployed can often replace much of their previous income by cobbling together a couple of part-time jobs. But if they lose health coverage along with the full-time position, they're out in the cold."

The argument seems iron-clad, and long overdue. It confirms Obama's argument that economic recovery depends to a large extent on real health care reform--but it adds an important reason that no one has highlighted to date: people are not going to spend on consumer goods when they live in horror of not being able to afford health care. Until that horror is banished, all they can do is save, and pray.

Harrop concludes with an wry contrast between health care security in the U.S. and Canada:

"How interesting that consumer confidence rose in Canada last month, while it fell sharply in the United States. Canadians know that if a family member falls sick, the family won't lose their house to medical bills. They know that a layoff won't leave them uninsured. That's a huge pillow of security.

"The American masses are unlikely to resume their heroic shopping sprees anytime soon (nor would that be desirable). But government policies that ease the terror of personal catastrophe are sure to lift the animal spirits of the American consumer — and that would help the economy a great deal."

Amen.

Obama Has Mandate to Move Health Reform Forward, Houston Chronicle Says

In an editorial published in its Sunday print edition, the Houston Chronicle says the public wants real health care reform and is tired of Republican efforts to block it. The editorial said that far from being "the statist caricature its GOP critics would have the nation believe," the Democratic plan is "centrist and reasonable." It urged the President and his party to move forward on their own and said the voters would reward them. The editorial follows:

President Barack Obama's much-anticipated health care summit was clarifying. Nearly seven hours of talk on Thursday made plain that the divide between Democrats and Republicans is wide and likely unbridgeable.

But the summit also made this much clear: Most Americans believe that health care reform is needed. We would argue that gives Obama and the Democrats a clear mandate to move forward on their own.

Health care reform is too important to this economy, to the millions of Americans who go without, and even to well-insured Americans whose premiums continue to soar, to be put off for a moment longer.

The president's plan has many critics, including many in the liberal wing of Obama's own party. But the plan is not the statist caricature its GOP critics would have the nation believe. On the contrary, it is centrist and reasonable. And it is greatly needed.

The president was wise to resist the imploring of Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., to scrap the current plan and start over. Given the degree of difference between the views of the two parties, that is likely a road that would lead nowhere.

Obama and the Democrats should specifically not be cowed from using the parliamentary device known as reconciliation to push the number of votes needed for Senate passage down from 60 to a simple majority of 51 in the upper chamber.

There is no shame in relying upon the smaller majority in the Senate. It has been used before by the same Republicans who now criticize it. The real crime would be to let this moment of opportunity for reform pass without action.

It will take stronger leadership than Obama has so far shown to stiffen the resolve of wavering centrist Democrats in the House of Representatives and bring health care reform. It will also take greater presidential leadership to overcome the drumbeat of misinformation about the plan from moneyed special interests.

It is worth the risk. We believe voters will reward Obama and the Democrats for showing the courage to move forward on their own. More important, the rewards of doing so will be shown in a strengthened economy and greater economic security for American workers and their families.

GOP 'Plan' Would Make Health Care "Even More Brutal" for the Uninsured

On Friday I noted several glaring deficiencies in the Gland Old Party's so-called plan for health care reform. Over the weekend I noticed that New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has highlighted another.

Not content with reducing the ranks of the uninsured by only 1%--compared to a 64% reduction for the Democratic plan--and exacerbating the downward spiral of patients in high risk pools, the Republicans would make a new mess: "the people losing insurance would be those who need it most. Under the Republican plan, the American health care system would become even more brutal than it is now."

The following excerpts make Krugman's point:

What really struck me about the meeting. . .was the inability of Republicans to explain how they propose dealing with the issue that, rightly, is at the emotional center of much health care debate: the plight of Americans who suffer from pre-existing medical conditions. In other advanced countries, everyone gets essential care whatever their medical history. But in America, a bout of cancer, an inherited genetic disorder, or even, in some states, having been a victim of domestic violence can make you uninsurable, and thus make adequate health care unaffordable.

One of the great virtues of the Democratic plan is that it would finally put an end to this unacceptable case of American exceptionalism. But what’s the Republican answer? Mr. Alexander was strangely inarticulate on the matter, saying only that “House Republicans have some ideas about how my friend in Tullahoma can continue to afford insurance for his wife who has had breast cancer.” He offered no clue about what those ideas might be.

In reality, House Republicans don’t have anything to offer to Americans with troubled medical histories. On the contrary, their big idea — allowing unrestricted competition across state lines — would lead to a race to the bottom. The states with the weakest regulations — for example, those that allow insurance companies to deny coverage to victims of domestic violence — would set the standards for the nation as a whole. The result would be to afflict the afflicted, to make the lives of Americans with pre-existing conditions even harder.

Don’t take my word for it. Look at the Congressional Budget Office analysis of the House G.O.P. plan. That analysis is discreetly worded, with the budget office declaring somewhat obscurely that while the number of uninsured Americans wouldn’t change much, “the pool of people without health insurance would end up being less healthy, on average, than under current law.” But here’s the translation: While some people would gain insurance, the people losing insurance would be those who need it most. Under the Republican plan, the American health care system would become even more brutal than it is now.