Category: Kase Wickman
Snowe Will Vote No; Finance Committee’s Bill will have no GOP Support
SNOWE INSERT
Bangor Daily News
Kase Wickman
Boston University Washington News Service
Sept. 16, 2009
WASHINGTON —
Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), one of the Senate Finance Committee’s so-called Gang of Six, has long played coy about whether she would support the committee’s eventual bill. She had long said that she would not support a straight public health insurance option, and instead pushed a “trigger” option, a fail-safe subsidized option that would kick in should the cost of health care not decrease.
Snowe said as early as Tuesday that she would not support the bill Finance chairman Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) unveiled Wednesday, citing concerns about how the reform package would be funded. Baucus’ bill, which carries a price tag of $856 billion, is the cheapest plan for health care reform of the five bills that have been introduced.
Though she said she will not support the bill in its current incarnation, Snowe said in a statement Wednesday that she and the other members of the Gang of Six “fully intend to keep meeting, moving forward and continuing to work with the chairman during the committee process toward crafting a bill that I, and hopefully other Republican members of the Finance Committee, can support.”
She also said that committee members should have had more time to read the bill before Baucus made it public.
In a 2006 survey conducted by Project Vote Smart, a voter education project that tracks members of Congress’ voting records and political actions, Snowe said that she did not support the following statement: “Providing health care is not a responsibility of the federal government.” However, one of Snowe’s sticking points in the recent health care reform negotiations has been her opposition to the inclusion of a public option.
In the same survey, she indicated that she did not support the implementation of a universal health care program to guarantee coverage to all Americans regardless of income.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) called Wednesday’s bill “an improvement over the House bill and the bill reported out of the Senate HELP Committee” in a statement and praised some of the preventative care and incentives for accountability introduced in Baucus’ bill.
“I remain committed to working with my colleagues for a bipartisan bill that improves quality while reducing unnecessary cost,” Collins said. Like Snowe, Collins’ reservations stem primarily from the cost and scope of the bill, which Collins said “affects every American and one sixth of our economy.”
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Pathogens are the New Weapons of Mass Desctruction, and They’re Here
WMD
Bangor Daily News
Kase Wickman
Boston University Washington News Service
Sept. 10, 2009
WASHINGTON –The term “weapons of mass destruction” may be connected in the minds of many with nuclear warheads and rocket launchers, but the latest homeland security legislation, introduced by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), deals not with giant bombs but with the tiny pathogens that can be found in many labs across the country.
Eight years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the anthrax attacks by way of the postal system, the bill, introduced Tuesday aims to improve security and regulation of domestic labs that house pathogens that could be used as biological weapons in an attack.
“America must not become complacent,” Collins, the senior Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said in a statement. “Terrorists haven’t given up; they haven’t gone away. Our enemies remain fixed on their avowed goal of committing mass murder.”
The bill would provide $50 million for federal grants that would go toward improving the security of labs housing the deadliest pathogens.
A congressionally mandated commission on weapons of mass destruction and terrorist attacks published its report last December, saying that a WMD terrorist attack is likelier than not to occur by 2013, and that it is likelier to be biological than nuclear.
“Given the urgency of the threat, we enthusiastically welcome [the bill],” said Bob Graham, chairman of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, in a statement. “This act will enable the decisive actions required to defend America from these threats.”
“The commission’s report is a call to action,” Collins said in a statement.
The act targets improving the safety at labs where harmful pathogens are kept, requiring the Department of Homeland Security to designate those labs that keep pathogens that could be used as biological weapons and work with the U.S. Postal Service to quicken the deployment of life-saving drugs to combat the effects of some of these pathogens in case of an emergency.
A unique partnership among the postmaster general, the Health and Human Services secretary and the Homeland Security secretary would be forged with passage of the act, requiring the three to develop a plan using the Postal Service to dispense medical countermeasures to a bioterrorist attack.
The Postal Service-based program already exists in pilot form, and passage of the act would mandate its expansion to five additional cities within a year and 15 more the next.
The Postal Service could be quickly co-opted for emergency use. People exposed to pathogens could take shelter in their homes if the exposure was environmental or could be quarantined if necessary. Postal workers, trained in efficient home delivery, would be ideal conduits for transporting life-saving medicine in a timely manner.
A Government Accountability Office study released July 28 examined the Department of Defense’s readiness to respond to chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and high-yield explosions. The GAO concluded that though efforts at strengthening responses to explosions was underway, a lack of central oversight in the Defense Department made it impossible to conclude how much the project would cost and difficult to track which components of the improved response plan were still unfulfilled.
U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) said in a statement that national security and defense against terrorist attacks has improved since the attacks in 2001 but that there is still work to be done.
“I do think we are safer now than we were before 9/11,” Pingree said, “but we still have a lot of work to do. . . . President Obama has begun the task of creating a more cooperative and humane foreign policy. How we interact with the rest of the world has a direct effect on how safe and secure we are here at home.”
A Gallup Poll released in early July showed that 83 percent of Americans think that the security measures instituted to prevent additional terrorist attacks after 9/11 are still necessary, though fears about terrorism have reached a five-year low. Thirty-six percent said hey are very worried or somewhat worried that they or a family member would be a victim of a terrorist attack, down from the high of 59 percent in October 2001.
“Over the last eight years, thousands of Americans, both in and out of government, have worked tirelessly to improve our nation’s security and to protect our people,” U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud (D-Maine) said in a statement. “Americans remain steadfast in our determination to disrupt, dismantle and defeat terrorist organizations. However, we must continue to be vigilant as we look into the future and keep working to improve our national security efforts.”
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After Obama’s Health Care Reform Speech, Maine Delegates Left Divided
MAINE REACTION
Bangor Daily News
Kase Wickman
Boston University Washington News Service
Sept. 9, 2009
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama has delivered 262 speeches since he took office nearly eight months ago, 28 of them specifically about health care reform. The one health care speech that Obama will be remembered for, however, was delivered to a rare joint session of Congress Wednesday night.
U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud, one of 52 fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrats in the House, said in a telephone interview after the speech that he will not decide whether he will vote in favor of the reform package until he sees the final bill. He also voiced concerns about possible cuts to Medicare, as a relatively high number of Mainers rely heavily on the federal program for their health care.
“We have to make certain that the cuts will not affect the services that those elderly and other people who need them are receiving,” Michaud said. “Now it’s really up to Congress to really move forward to get health care reform passed sometime this year.”
Michaud also noted the blunt criticism Obama laid out on what Michaud referred to as “conservative groups who are just trying to scare the American people” by dropping terms like “death panel” into the national conversation.
“He did hit those who were opposed to health care reform pretty hard,” Michaud said, “and he probably realized that if he gets any support on the Republican side, it’ll be very little.”
Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe, part of the Senate Finance Committee’s bipartisan Gang of Six, has spoken out against the public option, which the president mentioned, but did not explicitly endorse.
“I would have preferred that the issue [of a public insurance option] were taken off the table as I have urged the President – given that any bill with a public option will not pass the Senate and this divisive subject is unnecessarily delaying our ability to reach common ground,” Snowe said in a statement.
Snowe said she was “encouraged” to hear that the “trigger” option she has championed is still on the table. With this option, a safety net of further health care savings measures would be implemented if private insurers fail to provide affordable health care after an initial health care bill is passed.
“Moving forward,” she said, “I will continue my work within the Gang of Six to produce a consensus bill that will curb spiraling health care costs and ensure the health security of all Americans.”
Republican Sen. Susan Collins voiced concerns about the cost of reform in a statement issued after the speech, saying that “any reforms must also take into account our country’s exploding national debt,” and citing the Congressional Budget Office’s $1.6 trillion price tag over the next decade.
“[Health care reform] affects every American and one-sixth of our economy,” she said.
Democrat Rep. Chellie Pingree said in a statement that she was pleased with Obama’s speech.
“In many ways it’s the same message I have heard from people in Maine all summer—the time has come to bring about the reform we’ve been talking about for so long,” Pingree said. “Maine people have had it with the bureaucracy of insurance companies, skyrocketing premiums and out of pocket expenses and they are tired of living in fear of losing their health insurance.”
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Maine Delegates Wait for Obama’s Take on Nation’s Health Care Reform
Maine Preview
Bangor Daily News
Kase Wickman
Boston University Washington News Service
Sept. 8, 2009
WASHINGTON – As the debate over President Barack Obama’s push for reform of the health care and insurance industry rolls on, Maine’s congressional delegation finds itself in the eye of the storm. Wednesday evening, Obama will address a joint session of Congress for the second time of his presidency.
This speech marks the first non-State of the Union, non-introductory address to a joint session since President George W. Bush spoke to Congress Sept. 20, 2001 about the War on Terror.
Maine has been entangled in the debate from the beginning, boasting both Blue Dog Democratic Rep. Mike Michaud and Sen. Olympia Snowe, one of three Republicans in the Senate’s so-called Gang of Six, a bipartisan group on the Finance Committee hammering out details of the committee’s version of the bill.
Michaud has not yet confirmed a vote either way on the president’s reform efforts and said in a statement that Obama “needs to provide clear direction and be open and direct with the American people.”
“We must do what we can to make sure that every American has access to affordable health care,” he said. “At the same time, we must provide security and stability to those who are already insured.”
U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, said that she expects Obama to be “quite forceful and bold” in his speech and that he “understands the urgency and importance of moving Congress forward.”
“More than anything else,” Pingree said, “people want to see progress and move forward” with health care reform. People in Maine “want to believe that the president is working as hard [on reform] as the delegation in Maine.”
On the issue of bipartisanship, a buzzword from the very beginning of health care reform’s current life, Pingree was lukewarm, saying that it would be “great,” but that “allowing that to stand in the way of passing a bill and moving forward on the issue would be a tragic mistake.”
Republican Sen. Susan Collins), who has been vocal with her concerns about the reform package’s price tag, said in a statement that she is “eager” to hear what Obama has to say Wednesday night and hopes “that he will focus on reducing the cost of health care.”
Collins said that if the cost of the reform package was not reduced – it will cost an estimated $900 billion over the next decade as it stands – she would not vote for the bill, calling it “simply unaffordable.”
Snowe, who spent her first day back from Congress’ August recess on a conference call with fellow Gang of Six senators picking through the version of the reform bill Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus outlined Sunday, said the president’s address was both “unexpected” and “critically important.
“It’s important to hear his position on specific issues,” Snowe said. She said she hopes to hear Obama explicitly de-emphasize the public health insurance option, which she does not support, and “move on to different approaches.”
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