Author: Mike Lillis

Temporary safety net or permanent entitlement program? That’s the question some conservative voices are asking as Congress eyes yet another filing extension for federal unemployment benefits. The Washington Post reports:

[C]omplaints that extending unemployment payments discourages job-seeking have begun to bubble into the political debate. […]

[Arizona GOP Sen. Jon] Kyl told the Senate he questioned why anyone would see unemployment benefits as helpful to the economy, or to the job market. ”If anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work,” Kyl said. “I am sure most of them would like work and probably have tried to seek it, but you can’t argue it is a job enhancer.”

Conservative employment experts are now weighing in with a similar message. James Sherk, a labor economist at the Heritage Foundation, for example, told the Post that the extension of emergency benefits — which now run for 99 weeks in high-unemployment states — have turned a safety net program into something more like welfare.

“It is appropriate and natural for Congress to extend the time limit of unemployment insurance with the job market as bad as it is,” Sherk said. “But by quadrupling it, it is no longer an unemployment insurance program but a welfare program.”

Two thoughts:

1) The critics aren’t wrong to question the very human motivational effects that indefinite federal payments could have on some workers. (No doubt there are folks out there only too happy to be paid for doing nothing — and would continue to do so as long as they could.) Yet there’s also a general agreement among economists of all stripes that the current jobs crisis has endured because businesses simply aren’t hiring — not because of some pandemic of laziness among workers receiving emergency help. Indeed, the average UI check is just 36 percent of a worker’s previous salary, according to the National Employment Law Project — hardly enough for many recipients to pay mortgages, make car payments, keep the kids in Nikes, and generally sustain the type of consumptive lifestyle that the nation’s economy hinges on. To say that folks would be satisfied enough with such a pay cut to retire on UI checks is to wholly misunderstand the motivations that make our very system of capitalism click.

As Peter Morici, economist at the University of Maryland, wrote last week: “When dollars leave the United States to purchase imports and do not return to purchase exports, Americans cannot sell all they make — be it manufacturers, software makers, movie producers, or clean shirts from the corner laundry.” It’s these trade imbalances, Morici argues, that are exacerbating the jobs crisis, which has left 16.8 percent of workers either without a job or underemployed. Not that Congress shouldn’t be addressing such deeper structural problems in the economy, of course. But meantime, critics of a UI extension should be called out when they try to shift the blame to the unemployed simply because American companies have found higher profit margins in outsourcing. (Kyl, for one, seems to recognize some of this. Despite his reservations with the UI extension, the Arizona Republican eventually voted last week in favor of a short-term filing extension.)

2) Kyl’s claim that UI benefits aren’t a job enhancer flies in the face of economic experts who point out that those payments provide more bang for the buck than nearly all other forms of economic stimulus. Analysts at Moody’s Economy.com, for example, estimate that every $1 that Washington spends on UI benefits returns $1.61 to the larger economy — a far cry from the 21 cents per $1 returned by the corporate tax break (popular among conservatives like Kyl) that Congress enacted in the name of stimulus last fall.

“Without this extra help,” the Moody’s analysts wrote of UI benefits, “laid-off workers and their families would be slashing their own spending, leading to the loss of even more jobs.”

Earlier today, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) introduced legislation to block the EPA from using the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse emissions from stationary sources (ie, coal-fired electric plants) for two years. It didn’t take long for environmentalists to blast the bill for protecting big industry above human health.

Here’s David Doniger, for example, policy director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Climate Center:

It is not constructive to block the only working law on the books to curb global warming pollution and replace it with nothing. Blocking the Clean Air Act will do nothing to bring Congress closer to passing comprehensive climate and energy legislation. Rather than fighting global warming solutions, we need to focus on cutting carbon pollution in a way that will spur clean energy investment and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

During a jobs crisis, when the heavy-polluting industries represent jobs in any number of congressional districts, the environmentalists have the distinct disadvantage.

It was a tough day to be Herbert Allison. The Treasury official charged with monitoring the $700 billion Wall Street bailout appeared Thursday before the congressional panel created for that same purpose — and was promptly lashed by committee members for evading many of the questions they hurled his way.

The topic at hand was Citigroup, which received $45 billion in cash and $310 billion in guarantees through TARP between October 2009 and January 2009.

More recently (last month, in fact), Standard and Poor’s granted Citigroup an “A” credit rating — three clicks higher than it otherwise would have ordinarily “to reflect the likelihood that if further extraordinary government support were needed, it would be forthcoming.” Oversight Chairman Elizabeth Warren today offered a translation: “In other words, Citi is too big to fail and this fact is now directly, measurably affecting its credit rating.”

Yet when Warren asked Allison what the taxpayers — who still own more than a quarter of the company — had received in return for that kind credit rating (which allows Citi to do business more cheaply), Allison didn’t directly respond. The exchange is telling:

Warren: The market clearly perceives that there is a too-big-to-fail guarantee, and the market is rating Citi higher because of that. That gives Citi an advantage in raising capital. That is very valuable to Citi, and it is potentially very costly to the American taxpayer. And I want to know if the American taxpayer gets paid for that.

Allison: There is no too-big-to-fail on the part of the U.S. government. And I can’t account for any statement that some outside agency may make.

Warren: I will take that as a no.

Some good reading today in The Washington Post, which got its hands on transcripts depicting reactions from some AIG employees when their bonuses were threatened last year.

Behind closed doors, employees at AIG’s Financial Products division — the very unit whose trading had hastened the insurance giant’s collapse — were defiant, saying they were merely getting what they were due, recoiling at public accusations that they were behind their capitalizing on the company’s massive taxpayer bailout.

It’s worth reading the whole piece to get a full taste of the pomposity inherent in some of these folks, who after all, had recently contributed to the collapse of the global economy. The arrogance award, though, goes to the nameless employee who said this of taxpayers:

To be honest with you, I really hope it blows up. I think the U.S. taxpayer deserves to lose a trillion dollars over this thing for the way they have behaved.

That same guy also had some choice words for the politicians critical of AIG’s dealings:

They only care about the next election, just like we only care about the next bonus. Well, none of them cares about the country, none of us cares about the institution. They really don’t care, and I really don’t care. And frankly, if a trillion dollars gets lost, fine.

It’s unclear whether this particular angry person was aware that he had just conceded precisely how shallow he really is.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) didn’t mince words today in calling for the repeal of the long-standing ban on gay men donating blood.

“Not a single piece of scientific evidence supports the ban,” Kerry wrote today in Bay Windows, a New England-based gay and lesbian newspaper.

A letter to the FDA — spearheaded by Kerry and signed by 20 other Senate Democrats — is more guarded, calling for the administration to review — and modify, if appropriate — the long-standing prohibition.

“With hospitals and emergency rooms across the country in constant and urgent need of blood products, we believe certain blood donor deferral policies should be reviewed and appropriately modified and modernized while ensuring the blood supply meets the highest possible standards that we all expect in America,” the lawmakers write.

Still, they also seem confident that such a review would lead to the repeal of the blanket ban that they’re clearly advocating.

The safety, availability, and integrity of our nation’s blood supply are vital.  For these reasons, we agree with the American Red Cross, America’s Blood Centers, AABB, and others that the time has come for the FDA to modify the lifetime deferral for [gay men] to be consistent with sensible health and safety policy and with FDA deferral guidelines for high-risk heterosexual behavior.  We request that you initiate a review of the lifetime deferral requirement for men who have sex with men wishing to donate blood and that you reexamine the deferral criteria for all blood donors to ensure all high-risk behaviors are appropriately addressed.

Aside from Kerry, the letter was also signed by Democratic Sens. Kirstin Gillibrand (N.Y.), Dick Durbin (Ill.), Daniel Akaka (Hawaii), Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Frank Lautenberg (N.J.), Bob Casey (Pa.), Bernie Sanders (Vt.),  Russ Feingold (Wis.), Mark Udall (Colo.), Al Franken (Minn.), Maria Cantwell (Wash.), Carl Levin (Mich.), Tom Harkin (Ohio), Mark Begich (Alaska), Roland Burris (Ill.) and Michael Bennet (Colo.).

Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) will replace Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) atop the powerful Ways and Means Committee, The New York Times reports this morning.

Levin is the No. 3 Democrat on the panel, meaning that party leaders skipped over the second most senior member, Rep. Pete Stark, the feisty California populist who asked that his name be withdrawn from consideration.

The Hill has a nice rundown that helps to explain Stark’s — and the party’s — motivations in going with Levin.

December’s EPA finding that greenhouse gases endanger both public health and public welfare has been, for months, a thorn in the side of lawmakers from pollution-heavy states, who fear that stricter environmental protections — even in the name of human health — would hurt industries feeding local economies already struggling with prolonged jobs crises.

Many lawmakers — from Minnesota to Alaska to Missouri to North Dakota — are scouring for ways to block any new regulations the administration has in mind to apply. They may represent different industries, but their message is identical: Congress, not the EPA, should have the final say on how to regulate greenhouse emissions.

The latest figure to enter the ring is Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), who introduced legislation today that would prevent the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases from “stationary sources” for two years. Stationary sources, of course, would include things like coal-fired electric plants, which want nothing more than to protect their access to unlimited supplies of cheap coal, much of which comes from West Virginia. For Rockefeller, the issue is one of economy.

Today, we took important action to safeguard jobs, the coal industry, and the entire economy as we move toward clean coal technology. This legislation will issue a two year suspension on EPA regulation of greenhouse gases from stationary sources — giving Congress the time it needs to address an issue as complicated and expansive as our energy future.

Congress, not the EPA, must be the ideal decision-maker on such a challenging issue.

That argument might be more persuasive if Congress could prove that it’s capable of being that decision-maker. Instead, on the toughest issues of the day — from health care reform, to deficit spending, to financial reform, to climate change — lawmakers have been frozen in a permanent state of partisan bickering that’s left nearly 300 House-passed bills sitting idle in the Senate.

The dysfunction hasn’t been lost on The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart, who wonders this morning why lawmakers are so angry at the EPA for stepping in to tackle a pressing problem that Congress hasn’t.

“If Congress is so concerned, why can’t it get its act together and control greenhouse gas emissions so the EPA doesn’t have to?” Capehart asks. “The president and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson have said over and over again that they want Congress to pass comprehensive climate change legislation. They have had and will have plenty of time to get it done.

“So, folks, what’s the hold up?”

Although a good number of (non-congressional) budget hawks are urging more federal spending to address the jobs crisis, not everyone is on board.

Martin Feldstein, the conservative Harvard economist and chief economic adviser to former President Ronald Reagan, said last night that, despite his support 16 months ago for the idea of stimulus spending (though not the ultimate bill), the time for such a government intervention has passed.

“At this time I think a stimulus spending bill would probably do more harm than good by further undermining confidence in the fiscal situation,” Feldstein, president emeritus of the National Bureau of Economic Research, wrote in an email.

It’s the best news Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) has had in a week.

Sen. Jim Bunning’s (R-Ky.) recent one-man stand against legislation extending unemployment benefits offered a high-profile airing of a popular GOP message: Deficit spending, in almost any form, will cause more harm than good to a fragile economy.

Standing in the way of the Republicans’ reasoning, however, has been another formidable group: budget experts. Most are urging additional, though temporary, deficit spending as the surest way to tackle the jobs crisis and prevent the economy from slipping back into recession. It hasn’t helped the GOP’s argument that a good number of them are fiscal conservatives.

Few observers, for example, would accuse David M. Walker of being a liberal spendthrift. Indeed, the former U.S. comptroller general has spent most of the last decade forging a personal crusade against deficit spending. Yet last week — on the same day that Bunning, a Hall of Fame baseball pitcher known more for his curveball than his economic insights, initiated his drive against fiscal imprudence — Walker wrote in Politico that “a focus on jobs now is consistent with addressing our deficit problems ahead.”

“A huge recession can yield a huge deficit,” Walker, now head of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, which advocates for balanced budgets, wrote in an op-ed co-authored by Lawrence Mishel, president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute. “Though a concern, most of the recent short-term rise in the deficit is understandable. Furthermore, public spending can help compensate for the fall in private spending, and help stem the pain of substantial job losses.”

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com, agrees. Zandi, an adviser to Sen. John McCain during the Arizona Republican’s 2008 run at the White House, has urged lawmakers in recent weeks “to be aggressive” in tackling the continuing jobs crisis, which has left nearly a fifth of the nation’s working population without a job or underemployed.

“If we have another recession, we will have no policy response,” Zandi told a House panel last week. “We have to err on the side of doing too much.”

The message from the experts is clear: If you think adding $10 billion to the deficit is dangerous to future economic growth, wait ‘til you see what happens when millions of unemployed folks, denied access to a government safety net, slash their consumption (at best) and foreclose on their homes (at worst).

No matter. On the issue of deficit spending to address the hovering downturn, Republican leaders in both chambers are all but united in opposition, as is much of their caucus. Thirty Republicans, for example, voted to block the Democrats’ $15 billion jobs package that passed the upper-chamber last week. More recently, 39 Republicans voted with Bunning against the Democrats’ plan to tap deficit spending to pay for a $10 billion temporary extension of COBRA benefits, funding for doctors who treat Medicare patients, federal highway programs and the filing deadline for unemployment insurance.

“If we can’t find $10 billion to pay for something that we all support, we will never pay for anything on the floor of this U.S. Senate,” Bunning said during his five-day stalling marathon. “We cannot keep adding to the debt.”

At issue is the distinction — many would say a failure to distinguish — between the long-term structural problems at the heart of the nation’s unsustainable spending curve, and the temporary measures the government has put in place in the past two years to address the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. The Government Accountability Office summarized the long-term budget crisis Tuesday, issuing a report indicating what experts know too well: Federal spending threatens to swamp the nation’s economy, and the entitlement programs — particularly Medicare and Medicaid, which run on autopilot — are the predominant driving force, not recent stimulus measures.

“By 2030,” GAO warned, “there will be little room for ‘all other spending,’ which consists of what many think of as ‘government,’ including national defense, homeland security, investment in highways and mass transit and alternative energy sources.”

Walker and Mishel also stressed the importance of differentiating between short-term emergency spending and statutory obligations. The former, they argue, “and the resulting short-term deficits they cause, should not be confused with the primary deficit challenge facing our nation: structural deficits. These deficits are projected to exist in coming years — even when the country is at peace, even when the economy is growing, even when unemployment falls.”

Ironically for this debate, the legislation causing much greater strain than stimulus bills on the the country’s fiscal health are measures passed under the Bush administration with the blessing of GOP leaders in Congress. The Bush tax cuts, for example — if extended this year, as expected — stand to whisk hundreds of billions of dollars from the federal coffers over the next decade. And the Medicare prescription drug benefit — an unfunded entitlement expansion that Republicans rammed through Congress in 2003 — is estimated to add $550 billion to the debt by 2017.

Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist and former advisor to Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), hasn’t overlooked the hypocrisy coming from GOP leaders who suddenly want to be recognized as champions of fiscal restraint.

“It astonishes me that a party enacting anything like the drug benefit would have the chutzpah to view itself as fiscally responsible in any sense of the term,” Bartlett wrote in Forbes recently. “As far as I am concerned, any Republican who voted for the Medicare drug benefit has no right to criticize anything the Democrats have done in terms of adding to the national debt.”

It hasn’t stopped Bunning. The Kentucky Republican, who voted for the drug benefit, warned Democrats that he plans to play fiscal monitor as the majority party moves ahead this month with its job-creating agenda.

“I’ll be watching them closely,” he said Tuesday, “and checking off the hypocrites one by one.”

If anyone doubted the willingness of the White House to stick its neck out for health care reform this year, President Obama likely put those questions to rest this afternoon. Speaking at the White House to promote his newly tweaked reform proposal, the president rejected the Republicans’ “tinker around the edges” approach, instead calling on lawmakers to hold a vote on comprehensive reform “in the next few weeks.”

“Congress owes the American people a final vote on health care reform,” Obama said, vowing, “I will do everything in my power to make the case for reform.”

Other highlights:

1) A Call for Reconciliation: Pointing to past legislation that has been enacted using the budget reconciliation approach — including the sweeping Bush tax cuts — Obama argued that health care reform “deserves the same kind of up or down vote.”

2) Rejection of Single Payer Health Care: Supporters of a Medicare-for-all-style system of reform have complained that such a proposal has rarely been mentioned throughout the debate. They can’t make that claim anymore, though neither will they like the attention Obama gave single-payer Wednesday. “In America,” the president said, “it would be neither practical nor realistic.”

3) Comprehensive vs. Piecemeal Reform: Republicans, behind Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), have argued that “Congress doesn’t do comprehensive well.” They’ve been pushing for Democrats to scrap their comprehensive proposal in favor of smaller, more incremental reform steps — a strategy that Obama rejected outright. “The insurance reforms rest on everybody having access to coverage,” he said. “Health reform only works if you take care of all of these problems at once.”

4) Funding: Covering 30+ million uninsured folks will cost money, Obama conceded. But the additional costs — which he estimates to be $100 billion per year — can largely be covered using funds the country already spends on health care (roughly $2.3 trillion annually). “The bottom line is [that] our proposal is paid for,” he said.

5) The Enthusiasm Factor: Liberals have been all over Obama for what many viewed as a tepid approach to health reform in the last year. He let Congress draft the bills, they say, and he hasn’t nearly used the bully pulpit to sell his message that health reform is not just a moral concern but an economic necessity. His actions in recent weeks indicate that he’s ready to get more aggressive. And his promise to do “everything in my power” to pass reform this year is sure to light a fire under at least some moderate Democrats who have been wary that they’ve been left dangling in the wind.

“I do not know how this plays out politically, but I know that it’s right,” Obama concluded. “Let’s get it done.”

Waiting now for the GOP attacks.

Good: Because Don McLeroy — the guy who, according to The New York Times, “identifies himself as a young-earth creationist who believes that the earth was created in six days, as the book of Genesis has it, less than 10,000 years ago” — will no longer have voting power to dictate the content of the state’s public school textbooks.

Not Great: Because McLeroy’s challenger, Republican Thomas Ratcliff, won with just 50.5 percent of the vote — a razor-thin margin indicating that roughly half of the district wanted McLeroy to remain.

Is there any wonder that American kids are so far behind the rest of the developed world in science?

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) introduced legislation yesterday to replace the likeness of Ulysses S. Grant with that of Ronald Reagan on the $50 bill.

“Every generation needs its own heroes,” McHenry said in a statement launching his proposal. “President Reagan was a modern day statesman, whose presidency transformed our nation’s political and economic thinking. Through both his domestic and international policies he renewed America’s self confidence, defeated the Soviets and taught us that each generation must provide opportunity for the next.”

Conservatives’ efforts to deify Reagan, of course, are nothing novel. In 1998, a GOP Congress renamed Washington-National Airport to honor the 40th president. There’s that enormous $800 million trade center on Pennsylvania Ave. bearing Reagan’s name. The Navy christened the USS Ronald Reagan, an aircraft carrier, in 2001. And there was even a 2005 congressional push to replace D.C.’s 16th St. in favor of Ronald Reagan Boulevard. (It failed.)

What’s confusing is why Reagan would be the hero of anyone claiming to be a fiscal conservative. In 1980, the year Reagan was elected president, the federal debt was just under $908 billion. Eight years and several tax cuts later, it was $2.6 trillion — a jump of 186 percent.

Put another way: Reagan racked up more debt in eight years than the previous seven presidents had managed in 35 — a span that included the Korean and Vietnam wars.

How disillusioned are Republicans by Reagan’s legacy? In 1998, after the airport renaming, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) called the move a fitting tribute to “the man who initiated the concept of a responsive, smaller government.”

He might have added: that can’t afford itself.

UPDATE: Libertarians aren’t fooled. While GOP leaders were celebrating their claims to fiscal rectitude last month at CPAC, Wes Benedict, head of the Libertarian Party, issued a statement pointing out that Reagan “signed massive spending bills that made his the biggest-spending administration (as a percentage of GDP) since World War II.”

An article posted at CNS News, linked prominently from the Drudge Report, noted that the Obama administration is on track to beat the Franklin Roosevelt administration in terms of average federal spending as a percentage of GDP. However, the article failed to note that the Reagan Administration already beat the Franklin Roosevelt administration easily. Roosevelt’s average was 19.4 percent of GDP, while Reagan’s average was 22.3 percent of GDP.

With that in mind, Reagan’s face on the $50 bill might carry something much different than the flattering symbolism that supporters envision.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog group, points out that Rep. Charlie Rangel’s (D-N.Y.) decision to step down from his perch atop the Ways and Means Committee “didn’t happen in a vacuum.”

“Midterm elections are only eight months away and voters have made it abundantly clear that they care about ethics, even if members of Congress only pretend to,” Sloan said in a statement. “By forcing Rep. Rangel out, Democrats undercut Republican efforts to portray them as soft on ethics, the very strategy that returned Democrats to the majority in the 2006 elections.”

Rangel was admonished last week by the House Ethics Committee for taking corporate-sponsored trips that the same ethics panel had approved beforehand.

After a five-day standoff, Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) conceded defeat, and the Senate last night approved a short term measure extending COBRA benefits, funding for doctors who treat Medicare patients, federal highway money and the filing deadline for unemployment insurance.

It was quite a ride, though not for the reasons commonly stated. That is, the focus on “Bunning’s blockade of an unemployment benefits extension” — the ubiquitous remark both in media reports and on the Senate floor — distracted from the fact that (1) there is no extension of unemployment benefits being proposed, just an extension of the filing deadline for existing benefits, and (2) the jobs bill to which the Senate is moving next includes a provision that would pay UI benefits retroactive to March 1 — meaning that Bunning could have continued his one-man stand indefinitely and those checks would likely still have been delivered, if a little late.

The more dramatic consequence of Bunning’s blockade came in the form of the thousands of federal workers who were furloughed this week for a lack of infrastructure funds, which expired Feb. 28. The Chicago Tribune reports:

Among the construction sites where work will be halted: the $36 million replacement of the Humpback Bridge on the George Washington Parkway in Virginia; $15 million in bridge construction and stream rehabilitation in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; and the $8 million resurfacing of the Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi.

And there’s the rub for Republicans resisting more government spending: That cash sustains jobs, even in conservative districts.

Rep. Charles Rangel, the animated but controversial head of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, has decided to step down — at least temporarily — from his perch atop the panel, according to news reports.

“I have, this morning, sent a letter to Speaker Pelosi asking her to grant me a leave of absence until such time as the Ethics Committee completes its work,” the congressman announced today during a brief meeting with reporters.

The 20-term New York Democrat had been admonished last week by the House Ethics Committee, which found that Rangel had violated congressional lobbying rules when he was flown to Caribbean business conferences in recent years at the expense of corporate sponsors.

The Ethics Committee finding was odd for a number of reasons. (1) The same House Ethics Committee had approved the trips before Rangel ever boarded a plane. (2) Other lawmakers on the same junkets were cleared of all wrong-doing. And (3) the ethics panel conceded that Rangel himself didn’t know about the corporate sponsorships, though members of his staff allegedly did.

“Common sense dictates that members of Congress should not be held responsible for what could be the wrongdoing or mistakes or errors of staff unless there is reason to believe the members knew or should have known,” Rangel said last week.

Considering all of that, some Washington prognosticators were speculating that the recent admonishment was the least of the problems facing Rangel, who is being investigated for a laundry list of separate ethics violations. As The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart pointed out last week:

There’s the use of official stationary to solicit funds for a school of public policy named after him, the rent-controlled apartments and the revised financial disclosure forms that potentially double his net worth. Among other things, those forms revealed not one, but two checking accounts with up to $500,000 in them. I don’t know about you, but I’d be very mindful of having that much coin in checking. I can’t wait to hear Rangel’s explanation. There doesn’t seem to be anyone to throw under the bus for that one.

Meanwhile, Democrats will have to name a replacement for Rangel atop the Ways and Means panel — no easy task considering that the next in line, Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.), is even more controversial than Rangel.

It was inevitable: Senate Republicans were dying to talk about health care reform today, but all reporters wanted to discuss was Sen. Jim Bunning’s (R-Ky.) decision to stall unemployment legislation. It didn’t help the GOP that Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the minority leader, dodged every question thrown at him.

Asked, for example, if Bunning is “speaking for the Republicans,” McConnell declined to answer the question, responding instead that “we’re working on this issue and hope to have it sorted out in a way that will be satisfactory to all concerned in the very near future.”

Pressed for more specifics, McConnell only repeated that “we’re working on this, and we believe we can reach a consent agreement … hopefully in the near future.”

Finally, the minority leader gave up. ”Are there any questions,” he asked, “on any other subject?”

Less than a week after a high-profile, bipartisan health reform summit in Washington, President Obama has said he’s open to adopting four major provisions preferred by the Republicans, The Associated Press reports. The concessions include:

1) An additional emphasis on pilot programs designed to rein in medical malpractice costs.

2) Higher Medicaid payments to tackle the trend of doctors refusing to treat low-income patients.

3) Anti-fraud programs featuring investigators impersonating patients.

4) An expansion of personal health savings accounts.

The AP’s Erica Werner notes the asterisk necessarily accompanying Obama’s maneuver:

Obama’s announcement is not likely to win any votes from Republicans. Nor is there any guarantee that Democratic leaders will agree to incorporate the administration’s suggestions in revised legislation. But it could give wavering Democrats political cover by showing the White House has been willing to compromise in the wake of last week’s summit.

As the Democrats push to pass health care reform before the Easter recess, they can use all the political cover they can get.

Add Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) to the growing list of conservative state officials who are preaching fiscal restraint while also vying for federal stimulus dollars to address state budget problems. The Washington Post reports that McDonnell — who just last week told the American Action Forum that the economic downturn presents government leaders with the opportunity to scale back bloated bureaucracies — is also applying for $350 million in stimulus grants.

“I thought the stimulus package ought to have been done differently but, as long as it was there, that Virginia ought to have its share,” he said.

That’s not all. McDonnell was also among the 43 state governors advocating last month for additional federal funds for state Medicaid programs.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee, had a few choice words for lawmakers who would blast the stimulus bill as irresponsible, then turn around and lobby for its fruits.

“It’s hypocrisy. There’s nothing else to call it,” she told the Post. “You can’t have it both ways. If you are against something, be against it.”

Here’s some good news for the long-term unemployed poised to exhaust their jobless benefits in the midst of Sen. Jim Bunning’s (R-Ky.) one-man stand against a temporary filing extension: the Senate’s long-term extension to file for UI benefits, expected to pass the upper chamber this week or next, would provide additional funding — including an extra $25 per week — retroactively beginning March 1, regardless of when the bill should become law. (The National Employment Law Project estimates today that the provision would benefit 200,000 workers set to exhaust their benefits this week alone.)

That marks a break from the UI extension Congress enacted in November, which didn’t provide retroactive benefits at all.

Update: To clarify, the Democrats’ proposals would not create additional tiers of benefits, but would only extend the filing deadline for existing benefits, which came and went Feb. 28.

Democrats are no longer the only ones going after Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) for holding up unemployment benefits.

Sen. Susan Collins, moderate Republican from Maine, took to the chamber floor this morning to request the immediate passage of a House-passed bill providing temporary funding for unemployment insurance, COBRA benefits, highway projects and doctors treating Medicare patients. The request, Collins said, was made “on behalf of numerous members of the Republican caucus” who are concerned “that this was not done last week when it should have been done.”

“There are 500 Mainers whose [UI] benefits expired Sunday,” Collins said.

Bunning, true to his message that the $10 billion proposal be paid for, objected, and in doing so went after fellow Kentuckian, Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell. Roll Call reports:

But in objecting, Bunning took a shot at his own party and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) as he read a letter from a constituent who praised his stand against the bill. McConnell and Bunning have a frosty relationship — it hit a low point last year as Bunning was deliberating over whether to seek another Senate term.

“It’s too bad Sen. Mitch McConnell and some of the elected officials on your side of the aisle do not have the backbone or your sense of decency when it comes to keeping their promises to the American people,” Bunning quoted his constituent from Louisville as writing.

Bunning’s one-man stand against the temporary extension means that Democrats will have to move to a much larger jobs package, which would extend the filing deadline for UI benefits through the end of 2010.