The White House is lining up the players for implementation of the health insurance reform provisions coming up in September.

Via the Billings Gazette:

HELENA — Liz Fowler, a key staffer for U.S. Sen. Max Baucus who helped draft the federal health reform bill enacted in March, is joining the Obama administration to help implement the new law.

Fowler, chief health counsel for the Senate Finance Committee, which Baucus chairs, will become deputy director of the Office of Consumer Information and Oversight at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“Liz Fowler is an extremely knowledgeable and dedicated adviser, and while I’m very proud of her new position, she will certainly be missed at the committee,” Baucus said in a statement Tuesday.

Baucus, D-Mont., led the Democrats’ efforts in the Senate the past two years to draft and pass a major health-reform bill, which President Barack Obama signed into law March 23.

Fowler's appointment has fired up a hot discussion about her past association with Wellpoint.

Marcy Wheeler:

This is the kind of “oversight” that resulted in the BP disaster.

And remember Obama’s lobbyist restrictions? The ones that prevent someone from working in the Executive Branch on an issue that they’ve lobbied Congress on for two years? Fowler was not a registered lobbyist; rather, she was the VP of Public Policy and External Affairs. But in any case, it appears that Fowler returned to MaxTax Baucus’ staff on March 4, 2008, so nothing prevents the former VP of WellPoint from writing the “consumer and oversight” rules that are the only thing protecting Americans from policies — like WellPoint’s — that screw consumers.

Marcy is correct: Fowler was not a registered lobbyist, nor was she acting as a lobbyist in her two years with Wellpoint. In fact, if you look over Fowler's entire career, she is a career public servant. One might even argue that private industry and Ms. Fowler were not a great "fit", as noted here:

As far as I have been able to tell, she has spent most of her career in public service. She spent her early years in at Hogan & Hartson, worked for Senator Pat Moynihan, Rep. Pete Stark and Senator Max Baucus, and then later rejoined Baucus and the Senate Finance Committee in 2008.

So what exactly is the problem? She's not a lobbyist; most of her career has been spent in public service; and she was the head of a 20-person team that drafted the Senate Finance Committee version of the reform bill.

Fowler headed up a team of 20-some Senate Finance Committee staffers who helped draft the bill in the Senate. She was Baucus’ top health care aide from 2001-2005 and left that job in 2006 to become an executive at WellPoint, the nation’s largest private insurer.

It's worth noting that the Senate Finance Reform committee version was certainly included in the Senate version of what ultimately became the Affordable Care Act, but so too were provisions from the Senate HELP Committee's version. Harry Reid, as you might recall, combined pieces of both to make the Senate bill, and that version included a watered-down, ineffective public option which was ultimately stripped away from the final version because Joe Lieberman wanted to punish liberals more than he wanted to see people have access to health care.

Liz Fowler didn't take out the public option. She didn't kill it. And she didn't lobby against it. Is it possible that she simply has a different policy opinion from others? Or that she actually doesn't have a different opinion but made a calculation about what was possible with this Senate Finance Committee?

Health care, whether it's government-run single payer or covered by private insurers, is one of the most complex areas of public policy there is. Implementation of the Affordable Care Act needs policy wonks at the helm. If Liz Fowler is anything at all, she is a policy wonk, one who has earned a doctorate and a law degree, and who has spent her entire career in the policy area of health care.

Seems like a natural choice to me. Don't forget she also worked for Pete Stark (an ardent single payer advocate). Why does the Wellpoint 2 years carry more weight than the Stark/Moynihan? Because it fits the narrative or because there's evidence of malfeasance? If there's evidence, where is it? A difference of opinion over policy does not mean corruption is afoot.

Something to consider, anyway.

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Awwwwwww. We're shocked, shocked we tell you:

Indiana Republican Rep. Mark Souder announced Tuesday he would resign from Congress, effective Friday, because he had an affair with a staffer.

The eight-term congressman apologized for his actions but provided no details.

"I am so ashamed to have hurt the ones I love," he said at a news conference in Fort Wayne. "I am sorry to have let so many friends down, people who have worked so hard for me."

... Souder, 59, said he would not be a candidate in the fall election. It will be up to Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels to decide whether to call a special election to fill the vacancy or wait until the November ballot.

"I sinned against God, my wife and my family by having a mutual relationship with a part-time member of my staff," Souder said. "In the poisonous environment of Washington, D.C., any personal failing is seized upon and twisted for political gain. I am resigning rather than put my family through a painful drawn out process.

Yeah, it's the nasty environment in Washington that made him resign, you see.

According to Fox News, Souder had an affair with a part-time staffer named Tracy Jackson -- the woman you see interviewing Souder in the video above.

As Justin Elliott at TPM Muckraker notes:

The eight-term Indiana congressman is, of course, a vocal proponent of traditional family values. He has been married since 1974 and has three grown children.

"I believe that Congress must fight to uphold the traditional values that undergird the strength of our nation," he says on his official website. "The family plays a fundamental role in our society. Studies consistently demonstrate that it is best for a child to have a mother and father, and I am committed to preserving traditional marriage, the union of one man and one woman."

Souder adds: "I am committed to fighting the assault on American values."

Including, evidently, the value of boinking your staffers.

You know what? If I hear one more Beltway insider tell me there is "no political will" for another tier of unemployment benefits, I think I'll scream:

My inbox is filled with desperate people who have exhausted their unemployment benefits and are hoping that somehow Congress will include additional weeks of coverage in future legislation.

But after speaking with a number of House and Senate staffers in recent hours, it appears less and less likely that a so-called "Tier 5" of unemployment coverage will become law anytime soon.

According to one House staffer, the problem is while many on the Hill believe that adding a Tier 5 of additional weeks of benefits makes good economic sense, any such legislation faces several formidable hurdles.

One of the reasons they cite is "lack of political will." You want to know what they mean by "political will"? They mean they're not being deluged with calls, letters and faxes. (Although there is an online petition. Hint, hint.)

You know why they're not being deluged with calls, letters and faxes?

Because people are confused. They think that last extension of the filing deadline added additional benefits - and it didn't.

For the past month, I had to dig deep to find details on that bill, and got confusing and misleading responses from everywhere. (Believe me, I was motivated.) I even talked to Hill staffers who thought the bill added additional benefits. All it did was move the deadline for filing for the extension that already existed. It didn't do a thing for people who'd used up their benefits in this jobless recovery.

So is it any wonder the American public is confused? It doesn't help that there's no major TV coverage - and the big-name progressive groups like MoveOn are strangely silent on this crucial economic issue. (Not to mention the Democratic leadership. Hel-lo? Mid-term election issue, anyone?)

People know there aren't any jobs. And while the Tea Party folks seem to think everyone else is unworthy of a helping hand, most people don't want their neighbors and relatives to suffer during a major recession. Since they were barraged with news stories about passing an unemployment extension, they think the problem was already taken care of.

I know. My benefits just ran out with no job in sight, and everyone I've told - intelligent, informed people who are political junkies - told me I wouldn't have to worry because the new legislation added more benefits. It didn't.

It's not that people don't care. It's that they don't know.

Call your Congress critters. Tell them if we have money to bail out Wall St., we have money to help people who can't find these mythical jobs.

Limbaugh and his minions are fanning the flames for the lunatic fringe. Passing HCR has made the nuts go nuclear with the help of the talkers.

A 64-year-old Yakima County man has been charged with threatening to kill U.S. Sen. Patty Murray over her support of the National Health Care Reform Act.

The FBI and local police arrested Charles Alan Wilson at his Selah home early Tuesday. Wilson was scheduled to make an appearance in U.S. District Court in Yakima, and he will be then transported to Seattle, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

According to the charges, staffers in Murray's office in the Jackson Building in downtown Seattle had become concerned over a series of phone calls by an unknown man over the past several months. The calls came from a blocked number, and often were made in the evenings or on weekends.

Usually, according to a staffer identified by the initials "M.G.," the calls were merely vulgar and harassing.

But on March 22, "the caller began to make overt threats to kill and/or injure Senator Murray," according to the complaint signed by FBI Agent Carolyn Woodbury.

In that message, a man the FBI says it has identified as Wilson stated, "I hope you realize there's a target on your back now ... Kill the [expletive] senator! I'll donate the lead."

In several other vulgar and profanity-laced messages left over the next week, the caller repeatedly threatened the Democratic senator's life and said he "hopes somebody kills" President Obama as well, according to portions of transcripts in the complaint

The FBI obtained the phone number that coincided with the calls through a search warrant served on Verizon. Another agent called the number, posing as a representative of "Patients United Now," a group that has called for the repeal of the Health Care Reform act, and identified Wilson by his voice, according to the charges.

As much as the left despised George Bush and his two wars, there never was this type of violent rhetoric and actions being threatened on the lives of our politicians and police force or in any way---shape ---or form in the public square. Limbaugh and FOX News are doing their part in pushing the tea party fringers over the cliff. This can't end well.

Rebeccah Heinrich, a House staffer for Rep. Trent "nuclear terrorism scares me" Franks (R-AZ), has an article in Politico attacking Philip Coyle's nomination for the White House Science and Technology Policy office. Philip has made the error of pointing out the flaws of the national missile defense program, and while his potential future position doesn't involve the program, Rebeccah doesn't want to take the chance that he'll infect people in the White House by, you know, talking to people.

In his appearances before House panels, Coyle’s basic argument has been that Iran or North Korea would not launch a missile attack on the United States. If they do, he argues, they would use multiple missiles, or countermeasures to overwhelm our GMD system.

Coyle’s confidence in these two countries’ rationality is startling. His lack of confidence in our own military leaders and engineers is disconcerting.

America can develop a more robust defense, capable of defending against sophisticated threats — if we make up our minds to achieve it. Just because the system isn’t now capable of handling all future threats doesn’t mean it isn’t worth building or making operational while U.S. engineers improve it.
-----------
Coyle’s nomination is a mistake. So are his ideas. Missile defense is a national security necessity. It’s one that, as a poll shows, 88 percent of Americans support.

The Americans that she cites probably don't know that the US government spends between $8-10 billion a year on the national missile defense research and development, not to mention the $4 billion planned for building Europe's long-range missile defense. Americans probably don't know what the cost of building a large system would be - one required to protect the entire United States - not to mention the annual sustainment costs. Rebeccah would rather hide that from the people, waving her flag of patriotism and idealism instead.

America can develop a more robust defense, capable of defending against sophisticated threats — if we make up our minds to achieve it. Just because the system isn’t now capable of handling all future threats doesn’t mean it isn’t worth building or making operational while U.S. engineers improve it.

Yes, thank you Rebeccah, for providing us with the brilliant rationale for building about every badly run and over-budget defense program, including the F22 and F35 aircraft, the Airborne Laser, the DIVAD program, the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, and so many others. So what if it doesn't really work? There's always time to improve it later. Overall cost-benefit analyses and low probabilities that the system will ever be used doesn't really matter as much as good intentions, do they?

Rebeccah fronts for a "missile defense caucus" in the House, so she's hardly an unbiased source here. The Politico doesn't want to tell you that, however. It might spoil the surprise. Her attack is unwarranted and illogical, as is the unnamed Republican senator's hold on his nomination. She shouldn't be so upset about a war of words between one influential guy against the missile defense advocates at the Heritage Foundation. But today's political conservatives never seemed to care much about logic and allowing a fair and open debate on defense issues.

US VS. THEM: This is one reason I am proud to be a Democrat:

"ABC News conducted a bipartisan experiment in which producers and volunteers went to rallies for each candidate wearing the other party's T-shirt, and found that each campaign had its own methods of preventing the shirts from being seen.

A second team of ABC News producers waited until entering Space Coast stadium before showing its Kerry-Edwards T-shirts [at a Bush rally], but was still quickly spotted and ordered out by [Lance "Chip"] Borman [a Bush campaign worker and attorney who worked for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq], who identified himself as working for the Republican National Committee.

He said the rally of some 18,000 people was a "private event," and it made no difference that producers Christine Romo and Jessica Wang had tickets and remained silent and respectful.

"But you wore the shirts; you wore the shirts," Borman said. "And honestly, if you would have come without the shirts and sat quietly, you would have had a fun time and enjoyed it, but I mean it's not that kind of event." He then instructed the sheriff's deputies to escort the ABC News team out to the parking lot.

A Kerry staffer at an Oct. 24 Kerry rally in Boca Raton, Fla., told Bush-Cheney T-shirt wearers that the campaign held a permit to rent the site and could remove anyone who made a disturbance.

"We hold the right to remove you, but other than that, enjoy and hopefully at the end of the event you'll want to wear a Kerry T-shirt," he said.

And at Kerry's Boca Raton rally, one of the faithful Democrats could be seen calming a woman upset at the sight of the Bush-Cheney T-shirts.

"Feel proud that we let them in," he said. "That's what democracy is all about, that's what we're fighting for."

This is kind of strange, isn't it? I mean, he says he's resigning over his language? I know lots of people who work on the Hill and believe me, there are a lot of congress members who are verbally abusive to their staff. We have lots of Republicans guilty of far worse (*cough Mitch McConnell cough*), yet all they have to do is clutch Jesus to their bosoms, smile into the TV cameras and deny, deny, deny. It's a puzzle.

I'll give Massa credit for this: at least he admitted he was guilty. (Unlike almost every Republican Congress member accused of, well, anything.) On the other hand, this means the progressive Eric Massa's "no" vote on the healthcare bill (he was holding out for the public option) not only goes away, it means Nancy Pelosi needs one less vote to pass the admittedly half-assed Senate bill:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- New York Democratic Rep. Eric Massa, facing a harassment complaint by a male staffer, said Friday that he is stepping down from his seat with "a profound sense of failure."

"I am guilty," Massa said in an interview with a Corning, N.Y., newspaper columnist.

Later in the day, Massa released a statement saying that after discovering he had a recurrence of cancer, he learned he was the subject of an ethics complaint by a male staffer who felt "uncomfortable" during an exchange with Massa. The exchange reportedly had sexual overtones.

"I will resign my position," Massa said in the statement.

"There is no doubt in my mind that I did in fact, use language in the privacy of my own home and in my inner office that, after 24 years in the Navy, might make a chief petty officer feel uncomfortable," Massa added. "In fact, there is no doubt that this ethics issue is my fault and mine alone."

Earlier Friday, a visibly upset Massa said he didn't want to put his family through an ethics committee investigation.

"It would tear us apart," Massa said, according to Joe Dunning, a columnist for The Leader newspaper. "It's not that I can fight or beat these allegations, I'm guilty."

Rep. Steve King really can relate to Joseph Stack's attack of the IRS building in Austin because he too was audited. A Media Matters staffer told TPM that King made these outrageous statements about the suicide plane attack at CPAC, Saturday night:

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) told a crowd at CPAC on Saturday that he could "empathize" with the suicide bomber who last week attacked an IRS office in Austin, and encouraged his listeners to "implode" other IRS offices, according to a witness.

King's comments weren't recorded, but a staffer for Media Matters, who heard the comments, provided TPMmuckraker with an account.

The staffer, who requested anonymity because she's not a communications specialist, said that King, an extreme right-winger with a reputation for eyebrow-raising rhetoric, appeared as a surprise guest speaker on an immigration panel at the conservative conference. During his closing remarks, King veered into a complaint about high taxes, and said he could "empathize" with the man who flew a plane into an IRS building last week

.

This is a man that is supposed to serve and protect America. He's a Congressman for God's sake.

Think Progress caught up with him later on and this is what he said.

TP: Do you think this attack, this terrorist attack, was motivated at all by a lot of the anti-tax rhetoric that’s popular in America right now?

KING: I think if we’d abolished the IRS back when I first advocated it, he wouldn’t have a target for his airplane. And I’m still for abolishing the IRS, I’ve been for it for thirty years and I’m for a national sales tax. [...] It’s sad the incident in Texas happened, but by the same token, it’s an agency that is unnecessary and when the day comes when that is over and we abolish the IRS, it’s going to be a happy day for America.

TP: So some of his grievances were legitimate?

KING: I don’t know if his grievances were legitimate, I’ve read part of the material. I can tell you I’ve been audited by the IRS and I’ve had the sense of ‘why is the IRS in my kitchen.’ Why do they have their thumb in the middle of my back. … It is intrusive and we can do a better job without them entirely.

These are the people that will be holding hearings on Capitol Hill if the House goes back toe the republicans. You can bet on it. The treatment ACORN received when they weren't in power is a prelude on things to come. People who don't mind nut-jobs from killing Americans like suicide bombers.

Michele "miss me yet?" Bachmann would actually be in a position of power too...

I'm sure you saw this piece in the Washington Post by Gerard Alexander titled, "Why are liberals so condescending?"

Jamison Foser busts the WaPo:

Well, this is interesting. Remember that "Why are liberals so condescending" piece by Gerard Alexander the Washington Post published last week? Turns out, the author didn't submit the piece the the Post -- the Post sought him out:

Bethesda, Md.: I thought that "Why are Liberals So Condescending" was the most intelligent article I've read in the Post in some time.

Do you think that this is the result of a decision by your editors to be more fair and balanced?

Also, I would appreciate your comments on the "All serious scientists agree that Global Warming is an enormous problem." school of thought. This matter has been positioned in exactly the same condescending manner.

Gerard Alexander: I can only tell you that the Post editor I dealt with searched me out, and were as encouraging as any editor could conceivably be.

I wonder when we'll find out that a Washington Post staffer is actively seeking out a similarly disparaging column about conservatives? After all, Howard Kurtz keeps telling us how liberal the Post's opinion operation is.

Meanwhile, Alexander spent the bulk of today's Washington Post online Q&A acknowledging that some conservatives are plenty condescending to liberals, but claiming that it just isn't very common. Or something. Alexander, for example, contends that "conservative magazines, elected officials, etc" don't accuse coastal liberals of being out of touch with heartland values -- and that if they did so, they'd be "run out of town."

What planet has Alexander been living on for the past thirty years? Conservatives are always so courteous. Why does the Post think we're so mean and nasty? I certainly don't remember conservatives calling us traitors, terrorist sympathizers, we hate our freedom, the troops and American values, do you?

Please email the Washington Post and tell them I sent you. Maybe they can answer your inquiry even if you are a condescending a-hole.

ombudsman@washpost.com

Or just use the phone and call here:

Phone 202.334.6000 | 800.627.1150

Here's their full contact page for more:

Don't know if you've seen this yet. It's an anonymous letter from a Hill staffer to Josh Marshall and it pretty much confirms our worst suspicions: They're "relieved" that they don't have to deliver on health care reform.

A wave election hit us in 2008 where we not only had overwhelming majorities of 59 seats in the Senate (once Republicans finally got around to letting us seat Franken) and 257 seats in the House (returning us to the same power level as when we ruled the House with inpugnity in 1992-3) but, most importantly, a President who was explicitly elected on an agenda of "change." It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to wrench the wheel away from the abyss and really deliver on our promises. It was disheartening when it seemed that Reid was allowing McConnell's disingenuous narrative of "it's always taken 60 votes to get anything done" to take hold, but we were later even saved from that when Specter switched. But it seems we've spent the entire year moving our own goalposts farther away. Things have gotten so bad that in roaming the halls today it feels exactly as if we lost the Majority last night.

The worst is that I can't help but feel like the main emotion people in the caucus are feeling is relief at this turn of events. Now they have a ready excuse for not getting anything done. While I always thought we had the better ideas but the weaker messaging, it feels like somewhere along the line Members internalized a belief that we actually have weaker ideas. They're afraid to actually implement them and face the judgment of the voters. That's the scariest dynamic and what makes me think this will all come crashing down around us in November.

I believe President Clinton provided some crucial insight when he said, "people would rather be with someone who is strong and wrong than weak and right." It's not that people are uninterested in who's right or wrong, it's that people will only follow leaders who seem to actually believe in what they are doing. Democrats have missed this essential fact.

The stimulus bill in the spring showed us what was coming. In the face of a historic economic crisis, Democrats negotiated against themselves at the outset and subsequently yielded to absurd demands from self-described "moderates" to trim the package to a clearly inadequate level. No one made any rational argument about why a lower level was better. It would have been trivial to write "claw-back" provisions if the stimulus turned out to be too much or we could have done a rescission this year to give these moderates their victory, but none of this was on the table. We essentially looked like we didn't know what the right answer was so we just kinda went for what we could get. This formula was repeated in spades in both the Climate and Health Care debacles.

This is my life and I simply can't answer the fundamental question: "what do Democrats stand for?" Voters don't know, and we can't make the case, so they're reacting exactly as you'd expect (just as they did in 1994, 2000, and 2004). We either find the voice to answer that question and exercise the strongest majority and voter mandate we've had since Watergate, or we suffer a bloodbath in November. History shows we're likely to choose the latter.

Although I realize this is far too long to publish, if you do decide to use any of it, please keep my anonymity. Just in case I'm wrong and there is more good to do yet.