Archive (2007)

Kuhl News and Comment

Reader Elmer sends the Corning Leader story [pdf] detailing Randy Kuhl's town meetings in the Corning area this weekend.  A full list is available on Kuhl's official site.

Kuhl continues active posting on his blog.  Many of his latest postings concern the speed of legislative progress in Congress.  One factor in this speed is the use of what used to be called "filibuster threats" by the Republican minority in the Senate.  Earlier this year, McClatchy covered the greatly expanded use of delaying tactics by the Republicans, pointing out that the Senate was on track for a record number of cloture votes this year.   To help understand the use of cloture, I've added cloture votes as a category of tracked votes on CongressDB.  Here's an example for a happy warrior.  By my count, cloture has been invoked 48 times so far this year, which is more than the full session (two year) number for many recent Senate sessions.

National Media

The Rothenburg Political Report has two recent columns about close House races.  The first describes the challenges facing Republicans, which include the National Republican Congressional Committee's (NRCC) lack of money, and being on the wrong side of a number of issues:

Given the GOP’s image problem, the party’s failure to accomplish much of anything during its last two years in control of Congress and the party’s role in blocking additional funds for embryonic stem-cell research, immigration and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, it will be relatively easy for Democrats to position themselves once again as the party that is most likely to bring about change.
The second Rothenburg column is about Veterans running for Congress, and mentions Eric Massa. 

Yesterday's LA Times carried a story about the consequences of opposing the Iraq War for Congressional Republicans.   Using the examples of Walter Jones (NC-3), Wayne Gilchrest (MD-1) and Senator Chuck Hagel (NE), the Times shows that Republicans who opposed the war are now faced with well-funded primary challengers and hostile criticism from the rank-and-file and conservative commentators.

Some Non-S-CHIP News

Reader Elmer sends today's Corning Leader, which front-pages [pdf] State Assemblyman Jim Bacalles' complaint that Governor Spitzer is red-lighting some earmarks (here's the jump [pdf]).   Since Massa and Spitzer are pretty closely aligned, this might cause a little heartburn in the Massa camp.

Randy Kuhl has come out strongly against mandatory speed limiters in Canada, according to Land Line, the "Business Magazine for Professional Truckers".

Charlie Rangel is having a fundraiser for Eric Massa on Monday. 

What a refreshing change to write about something other than S-CHIP.  


Did Something Happen Yesterday?

With all of the media attention focused on the S-CHIP veto, the actual override got slight media attention in district newspapers.  When I pulled the paper Democrat & Chronicle from my front step this morning, I found a front-page AP story that didn't even bother to report how area representatives voted.  That's consistent with their usual low-quality political coverage.  The Elmira Star-Gazette has nothing that I can find.  The Corning Leader, which I'm beginning to think is the best paper in the district, actually took a wire story and inserted a couple of graphs about how the local Congressman voted.  That's what newspapers are supposed to do with national stories that have a local tie-in.

But I shouldn't be too hard on the local papers.  The lack of coverage actually confirms what everyone knew at the start:  there was no chance that Republicans would change their vote on this measure, and the failure of the override was a foregone conclusion.   The real question is whether the Democrats' decision to delay the override vote for two weeks helped or hurt their cause.  To answer that question, I pose another: Is the stench of unresponsiveness wafting from Congressional Republicans powerful enough to offset the whiff of impotence emanating from Congressional Democrats?   Only time will tell if voters' nostrils are sensitive enough to discern a difference, or if they'll just conclude that the whole thing stinks.

S-CHIP Override Fails

Randy Kuhl voted against the S-CHIP veto override this afternoon, and the override failed on a vote of 273-156.  Despite all the lobbying, the main change in the vote was the movement of a few Democrats who decided to oppose the veto.  S-CHIP passed the House earlier by a 265-159 vote.

Morning Roundup

A new National Public Radio/Kaiser Foundation/Harvard poll on S-CHIP has been released, and pollster.com has a summary.   The results are somewhat different from the USAToday/Gallup cited by Randy Kuhl.   When asked about the possibility of S-CHIP leading to people dropping private insurance, 65% said still favored S-CHIP expansion.  64% said they supported the veto override, and 52% said they weren't concerned about S-CHIP expansion leading to government-run health care.   35% said they would be less likely to support their Member of Congress if he or she voted to sustain the veto.

The difference in the two surveys is in the phrasing of the questions.  This shows that one poll by itself proves very little, a lesson that all of us should remember when it comes to polls in the 29th next year.  The full detail on the NPR poll is here [pdf], and the USAToday/Gallup detail is here

In other news, the Hornell Evening Tribune carries a money roundup today, calling the money race "neck and neck". 

Finally, my inability to punch in a 5-digit code correctly prevented me from covering the Massa press conference yesterday.

Town Meetings

Reader Vincent writes to say that he received a call last night inviting him to participate in a Kuhl telephone town meeting.  Apparently there was a glitch, and he was disconnected.   I participated in one of the meetings earlier this year, and describe it here.

Rep. Kuhl will also participate in some physical town meetings in Allegany, Steuben and Cattaraugus counties next weekend.  The full schedule is posted on his blog.

S-CHIP: The Pope and the Protesters

The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle covers a press conference by Rochester-area faith and health groups at the Rochester Roman Catholic Diocese.  All groups were urging Randy Kuhl and Tom Reynolds to override the S-CHIP veto.

There were protests yesterday in Syracuse and Fairport.  In Syracuse, medical students rallied to encourage Kuhl and Reynolds to join with Jim Walsh in a vote to override.  In Fairport, Kuhl's office was the subject of a protest by Metro Justice, as described by Rochesterturning.

S-CHIP and Adult Coverage

The Elmira Star-Gazette reprints a Kuhl press release on S-CHIP.  It begins by touting the same USA Today poll as his blog post yesterday, then it makes the following claim about adult coverage in S-CHIP:

Currently there are more than 500,000 low-income children eligible for the program but not covered. Meanwhile, some 700,000 adults currently receive SCHIP benefits, including 87 percent of the enrollees in Minnesota and 66 percent of the beneficiaries in Wisconsin, according to the Congressional Research Service.
I couldn't find the Congressional Research Service report Kuhl cites, but the Kaiser Family Foundation's S-CHIP page has a report on Family Coverage that contains the same numbers.  The states Kuhl listed do have a high percentage of adult enrollment, because S-CHIP allows states to spend S-CHIP dollars on adults (mainly parents and pregnant moms) if they've already covered children under Medicaid.  Here's why:

In 2000, based on research showing the benefits for children of parent coverage, federal SCHIP waiver guidelines were issued permitting family coverage under certain conditions. In 2001, the Bush Administration released a broader waiver initiative, called the Health Insurance Flexibility and Accountability (HIFA) initiative, which encouraged waivers that used Medicaid and SCHIP funds to cover uninsured adults [...]
So, the coverage of adults was increased by the Bush administration, which now uses the waiver they issued as a basis for vetoing S-CHIP.   Strange, to say the least.

The reason that 500,000 children don't have coverage while some states are covering adults is because of the state/federal partnership on Medicaid.  States choose how much they spend on Medicaid in general, and S-CHIP in particular, and some states are far more generous than others.  This fact sheet from the Kaiser Foundation shows the variations across states.   There are a dozen states, most of them big states in the Southwest, where over 20% of the eligible children lack coverage. 

Finally, it's worth a peek at another Kaiser report on the basic problem which sparked the S-CHIP changes: the rising cost of health care, which has led to more uninsured families:

[T]he analysis shows that 48 percent of the increase in uninsured children from 2005 to 2006 was among families with incomes between 200% and 399% of the federal poverty level (roughly $40,000 to $80,000 for a family of four in 2006). Among kids, the share with employer-sponsored insurance declined by 1.2 percentage points, but there was no change in the share with Medicaid or SCHIP coverage to offset the employer decline since most children in this income group are not eligible for public coverage under current rules.
This is why states like New York want to raise eligibility requirements for S-CHIP.  The working poor and lower-middle-class can't afford health insurance, and their employers aren't providing it. 

USA Today S-CHIP Poll

Randy Kuhl's blog, and the Ontario GOP blog, take encouragement from a USA Today/Gallup poll on S-CHIP.  Both note that a majority of those polled (55%) said they were "somewhat concerned" (33%) or "very concerned" (22%) that S-CHIP would be an incentive for the middle class to drop private health insurance.   And another majority (52%) preferred Bush's plan to limit S-CHIP to a family of 4 making less than $41K, versus the Democrats' plan to make the upper limit $61K.

Both Kuhl the the Ontario GOP omit another interesting statistic from that poll.  When asked who they trust to get S-CHIP right, 52% say that they trust the Democrats.  Only 32% trust the President.   Another interesting fact:  17% of the respondents were following S-CHIP "very closely", and 34% "somewhat closely".  Almost half of the public (49%) are following the issue "not too closely" or "not at all".

So, when a generally uninformed public is presented specific facts on S-CHIP, they tend to agree with Republicans.  When those facts are absent, their general distrust of the President governs their opinions.  The news on S-CHIP could be worse, but this certainly doesn't qualify as good news for Republicans.

Also, it's interesting to see Republicans in the same position where Democrats usually find themselves.  The Republicans' position is based on a careful reading of the details.  Democrats are aiming straight for the gut.  When half of the public doesn't really care, the gut carries the day.

Update:  Via pollster.com, here's the Gallup writeup on the poll.

Money Followup

As noted in Rochesterturning, Massa raised the most of any challenger in the Western New York Congressional races, and Kuhl raised the least of any incumbent.   That said, everyone's raising significant cash, especially considering that we're thirteen months away from the 2008 election.  This means that the Rochester media market, which is an important one for the 25th, 26th and 29th districts, will be saturated with advertising a year from now.   Since 2008 is also a presidential year, I assume that a major canvassing and get-out-the-vote effort will complement the massive advertising blitz.

Based on Massa's plan to raise $3 million, the likelihood that Kuhl will match Massa's fundraising, and the involvement of third parties, the 29th may see $6-8 million spent on the 2008 race.   Since the Massa campaign makes much of Kuhl's corporate donations, and the Kuhl campaign likes to ding Massa for raising money from out-of-state liberals, money will probably become a major issue in next year's campaign.  

In other money news, today's Elmira Star-Gazette carries the Gannett News Service story on the 29th's money race. 

Anti-Iran War Robo-Call

Itchy over at Rochesterturning got robo-called by American Family Voices.  The subject of the call was the possibility of war with Iran, and the text is included in his post.