That First Amendment will make you crazy. It's like we have a choice between protecting free speech (down with dictators!) or keeping corporate money from buying elections for the wealthy (down with the oligarchy!). But censoring corporate speech without weakening the First Amendment is nigh onto impossible, according to William Freivogel.
Freivogel, a former editor at the Post-Dispatch whose particular beat was the Supreme Court, now heads the journalism department at SIU. Speaking at West County Dems last Monday, he emphasized that he sees no way to accomplish both goals. His reservations have a lot to be said for them. Consider that it wasn't just the NRA that supported the High Court's ruling in Citizens United wherein the McCain/Feingold law banning corporate ads before an election was deemed to violate the First Amendment. The ACLU also supported the position that such censorship was unconstitutional. Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, warned that banning such speech would mean censoring Sierra Club ads sixty days before an election that disapprove of a congressman voting for logging in the national forest; preventing the NRA from publishing a book urging the public to vote for the challenger because the incumbent favors handgun bans; and forcing the ACLU to take down from its website a page telling the public to vote for a candidate in light of his defense of free speech. All these are classic examples of government censorship.
Keep in mind, though, that four justices thought such censorship was necessary. John Paul Stevens, writing for the minority, noted that allowing corporations free rein to speak will further undermine the integrity of elections. He expressed concern about the doctrine that corporations are people and about the likelihood of foreign corporations affecting our elections.
Freivogel can appreciate Stevens' objections. Having come of age during the Watergate era and having seen the abuses of money in politics, he wanted campaign finance reform. But now he thinks:
"There's no way to write a campaign finance law that is going to effectively restrict money abuses in politics and is also going to be consistent with the First Amendment. McCain-Feingold is an attempt to do it. In some ways, if you think about it, McCain-Feingold had some very good provisions, but its provisions made certain kinds of electioneering ads in the time period coming to an election illegal. That's an incredible exercise of government power. It is making illegal political speech at the very time that it's most important, the time right before an election. In some ways, it makes the First Amendment not make sense. Why would the First Amendment make it illegal to have certain kinds of political speech by the ACLU or the NRA or NARAL right before an election and still protect pornography and flag burning. It's a little bit hard to make that argument.
So, as I say, as I saw then the development of soft money that made the Watergate reforms ineffective and saw the problems of that McCain-Feingold law, I basically have come to the conclusion that you can't make the law that's going to both protect the honesty of the electoral process and also protect people's right to join together in groups and to make their views known in the days right before an election.
The only leeway Freivogel would grant in this dilemma about censorship is that he wishes the Court had made a distinction between non-profits and for-profit corporations. That way, Missouri Votes Conservation could air ads about how much money Blunt takes from Big Oil and how necessary cap and trade is. And, to be fair, the NRA could recommend voting against candidates who endorse handgun bans. But Exxon--with its motives of greed and its disregard for the future of the planet--could ... shut. up. Ooh, that sounds good, right? But aside from the fact that SCOTUS didn't make that non-profit/for-profit distinction for us and that creating it is not a legislative option--it wouldn't solve anything anyway. Exxon, trust me, would not be silenced for more than a nanosecond, because that's how long it would take the oil Goliath to get one of its cronies to incorporate a non-profit front group to accept a few million bucks and film ads that lie about climate change.
While digging around on the Web, I came across a couple of blog posts concerning Claire McCaskill. In response to a letter concerning the miscues of Democrats in Congress, McCaskill sent the blogger this response boasting about her wise stewardship of tax dollars - and addressing none of the concerns about which the blogger had contacted McCaskill. This inappropriate, one-note response struck me as a perfect representation of McCaskill's one-note public persona - the fiscally responsible legislator who, like a thrifty aunt, understands the value of a dollar just as well as any of the good folks back home.
The problem comes when McCaskill confuses the discipline of economics with the ledger book - or, in McCaskill's case, perhaps, assumes that her constituents lack the vision to see beyond the ledger book. For example, McCaskill has been in the forefront of those so-called moderate Democrats who ballyhoo a simplistic approach to debt and deficit reduction that is designed to play well at home, but is not likely to address any of our real economic problems.
Most recently McCaskill has once again joined Republican Jeff Sessions (Alabama) in introducing an amendment that would freeze spending for three years. As Pat Garofalo of The Wonk Room notes:
...the notion that a blanket freeze is a good way to reduce deficits is severely misguided. For one thing, it locks in funding without any debate as to whether current levels are appropriate, and it will limit the ability of the Congress to respond to changing demands ... . As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has pointed out, this makes it hard "to do much of anything for the middle class that's important" going forward.
A freeze removes any sense of prioritization from the budget (building effective programs while eliminating ineffective or duplicative ones), and simply whacks away a chunk of funding across the board. As CAP Senior Fellow Scott Lilly has pointed out, programs that are under the radar, but vital to the nation's functioning, will likely end up on the short end of a freeze.
It seems as if McCaskill's ersatz fiscally responsible bad angel is once more leading her astray. Certainly her auditor persona has its good moments - her work on government contracting, which President Obama referenced last Wedensday, comes to mind, as well as her principled stand on earmarks - but she should certainly give the deficit bashing a rest. There are, after all, plenty of Republicans with nothing more constructive to do than to bang on that particular empty drum.
Update: If you are interested in what a nuanced, as opposed to simplistic take on deficits, spending and role of government, actually looks like, take a look at this set of graphs and accompanying commentary.
Image created by Viktor Voight from the Wikimedia Commons.
Our friends at Fired Up posted on this Twitter item by Renee Hulshof, spouse of former Congressman and unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate Kenny Hulshof (r):
My husband is convinced that the dems will get healthcare passed. This educated prediction from him is freaking me out.
[Note: according to Twitter - "This person has protected their tweets."]
Huh? Why, because millions of Americans might be able to get access to affordable health care and just might be able to do so even if the have a pre-existing condition?
Kenny Hulshoff (r) was elected to Congress in 1996 with 49.4% of the vote. He served until January 2009, not seeking re-election and instead deciding to lose to Jay Nixon in the 2008 gubernatorial race by only garnering 39.5% of the vote. Kenny Hulshof (r) served in Congress for twelve years.
While in Congress Kenny Hulshof and his spouse were eligible to participate in the federal health insurance program [pdf] for members. Among its provisions:
...Members meeting minimum enrollment period requirements who are also eligible for an immediate annuity may continue to participate in the health benefit program when they retire...
Okay, Kenny Hulshof has "retired", but we don't know if continues to participate. Do you think anyone will bother to ask him?
...enrollees are not subject to pre-existing condition exclusion...
If it's good enough for Congress it's too good for anyone else?
...At the time of retirement, members...receiving an immediate annuity have a one-time election to continue to participate...provided they have been enrolled for at least five years before retirement (or if less, must have been enrolled from the last day in the period in which the employee became eligible to enroll in the plan up to the date on which the employee became an annuitant) and are eligible for an immediate annuity. Like active workers, retirees may enroll as individuals or may elect family coverage for themselves, their spouse...
Now, we don't know if former Congressman Kenny Hulshof (r) and his spouse were ever enrolled in the federal health insurance program for Congress or if they are presently eligible as "retiree and spouse" for coverage, but in as far as the former, wasn't it nice to have that option? Too bad that option isn't available to everyone else. Apparently the prospect of this happening is enough to freak out Renee Hulshof.
The March 11 issue of the Muleskinner, the weekly student newspaper at the University of Central Missouri, included a front page article on an unfilled Missouri Sunshine Law request pertaining to the search for a new president for the institution. This morning a significant number of newspapers were scattered about the University's visitor lot (and the University president's designated parking spot) and along South Street. We had heard rumors that previous issues of the paper had gone missing from campus newsstands.
At the entrance to visitor parking.
Along South Street.
Along South Street.
It couldn't have been because of the headline story, could it?
This couldn't have been about the headline story, right? Nor stories about an armed robbery near campus, or funding for a campus center which helps youngsters with autism...
It was probably just someone who doesn't like to read.
There is that story asking about the number of applicants, though:
Roy Blunt may be a little too obsessed with Robin Carnahan; she may not be quite as powerful as he thinks. According to Big Bucks Blunt, he is opposing not "Obamacare" which seems to be the bane of most members of the Party of No, but Carnahan's government takeover - as he twittered earlier:
According to @RasmussenPoll 60% of Missourians support our position on health care. Only 37% want Carnahan's govt-takeover.
Carnahan has recently expressed support for health care reform; she is after all a reasonably sane individual, and there is no reason to oppose it unless you are unhinged (Tea-Party) or lying about it as a tool to regain power (other Republicans). However, she might be a little surprised to know that she is the entity responsible for what so many of the cowering right wing consider a government takeover.
If Blunt does manage to establish that Carnahan should be credited for health care reform, he may live to regret it. He cites the Rasmussen polls, which many consider to have a Republican bias because they so consistently perform as an outlier in the direction of Republican druthers, to claim that health care reform is not popular in Missouri. Other polls show, however, that the national trend is now moving in the President's favor and once health care is passed - and the news tonight is that reconciliation will start Monday - approval rates in Missouri will likely climb. Which, oh frabjous day, may well leave Roy Blunt out on a limb while Carnahan picnics underneath.
Earlier, I noted that State Senator Jane Cunningham attended Todd Akin's kill-health-care-reform pep rally to push her Health Care Freedom Act. This bill would put a constitutional amendement on the Missouri ballot this fall that is based on fringewingers' wistful reading of the tenth amendment, which they insist permits states, Civil War to the contrary, to opt out of federal legislation they don't like - in this case, health care reform legislation.
The Beacon's Jo Mannies reported that Cunningham got a standing ovation for this ill-conceived, last-ditch effort to subvert the will of the people who voted for Obama and his promises of health care reform. Do you wonder whether any of those fools applauding Cunningham had the teensiest, tiniest idea about what effect opting out of health care reform could possibly have on Missouri were it to prove possible?
Just take a look at this interactive map prepared by the Center for American Progress. Under the health care reform proposed by the Senate, 200,957 more people in Missouri would be newly eligible for Medicaid, individuals who will continue to be uninsured given the status quo. The loss of federal funds for Medicaid that would result from "opting" out would mean that Missouri's uninsured would continue to exceed 700,000.
Nor, as has been amply demonstrated over the past few years, can Missouri effectively address the problem of the uninsured at the state level. As Ivor Volksy of the Wonk Roomputs it:
Political considerations, special interest influence and budgetary strains have doomed previous state-based health care reform efforts and governors who believe that nullifying federal reform is in the best interest of their citizens are placing politics ahead of sound policy.
Substitute "legislature" for "governors", and you have Missouri in a nutshell, with its 2008 nonelderly, uninsured rate of 14.5% - a rate that is probably quite a bit higher right now.
The Senate health care reform package would extend Medicaid coverage massively, providing subsidies that would reduce costs for state governments, employers, and individuals. It would also include incentives and reformulated payment systems that would work to make Medicaid more efficient. And yet there are people who will stand up and applaud a ideological nitwit like Jane Cunningham for her efforts to deny Missouri citizens needed benefits that give us good returns on our tax dollars.
I don't know why the President let the Republicans get eight months ahead of him in selling health care reform to the public. Now that he's started, though, he's saying all the right things. He needs to convince people that if we don't make these changes, even middle class people who currently have health insurance are going to be priced out of the market. And he needs to allay their fears that, in these recessionary times, we can pay for the plan without raising the deficit.
But you know what's happened over the last several decades. What's happened is, is that more and more businesses are saying, we can't afford to provide health care to our workers because the costs are skyrocketing. So they just drop health care altogether. A lot of small businesses, they don't provide health care to their employees anymore. And large businesses, what are they doing? They're saying to you, we're going to jack up your premiums, we got to increase your deductibles. If you're self-employed, you are completely out of luck. If you've got a preexisting condition, you are completely out of luck. And by the way, those of us who are lucky enough to have health care today, we don't know if we're the ones who are going to lose our job tomorrow, or suddenly it turns out that our child has a preexisting condition. And we'll be stuck in the exact same situation, even if we've got good health insurance.
Now, everything I just said, if you talk to my opponents, they'll agree. They'll say, you're right, the health care system is broken. For too many people it's getting worse. They will acknowledge that the status quo is unsustainable. But you know what they tell me? We had that big health care summit. I know you guys watched all seven hours of it. (Laughter.) Yes, absolutely. It was scintillating. (Laughter.) But you heard what they said. They said, well, we agree with you that the current system is unsustainable, but this is just not the right time to do it. They said, let's start over, that's what they said. We just got to start from scratch.
AUDIENCE: No!
THE PRESIDENT: Well, let me tell you something. The insurance industry is not starting over. They just announced a 39 percent rate increase in California and a rate increase of up to 60 percent right across the border in my home state of Illinois - 60 percent in one year. That's the future. That's the future if we fail to act.
The President's emphasis on Wednesday, however, was less on the dire consequences if we fail to act and more on how savings in government spending can pay for the reform. He warmed up the audience by describing his line by line efforts to cut government spending on all fronts, not just health care.
For example, we decided not to fund an office maintained by the Department of Education - in Paris, France. (Laughter.) Now, I'm sure that was nice work if you could get it. (Laughter.) But I didn't think that was a real good use of our money. We eliminated a decades-old radio navigation system which cost $35 million a year. And some people might say, well, why did you do that? We need that navigation system. Well, the thing is, we got this thing call GPS now, and satellites. (Laughter.) So the whole radio navigation thing wasn't working so well.
With Claire McCaskill sitting behind him, Obama detoured into her ideas for saving government money, pointing out--appropriately, since he was heading for a high dollar fundraiser for her after his speech in St. Charles--that she "just pinches pennies."
I wait with the proverbial baited breath for each and every one of State Rep. Cynthia Davis' (R-19th) Capitol Reports; I am filled with anticipation to learn just how absurd her latest effort to deal with the complexities of government will be. Her most recent effort (printed here at The Turner Report) does not disappoint. It brings us Davis' musings on educational reform, specifically the Race to the Top federal grants program which Davis condemns as a manifestation of:
... the insatiable appetite the federal government has for controlling every element of our lives. There really is no reason for congress or the executive branch to be meddling in how we educate our children or how we administrate health care. ... We are trading away our freedom on how to manage our own schools for a set of federal standards that will be defined by those in Washington, not those closest to the students like the parents and the teachers.
Quelle horreur! Federal standards that reflect an informed, national consensus about what an educated individual should know and the best ways to teach it, rather than the prejudices of small-minded state legislators like Cynthia Davis! You may want your children taught creationism, among other questionable tenets, but most people I know certainly do not.
According to Davis, a national reform effort is not needed:
There is nothing "Race to the Top" can give us that we cannot already give ourselves. If we want school reform, we can simply vote for the reforms the voters want, not what is mandated from on high
Tell that to school administrators in St. Louis, Kansas City, and, I suspect, some of the poorer rural districts and see how they react. Following Davis' logic, one has to conclude that many Missouri parents actually want a mediocre or poor education for their children - or else, surely, they would have voted for just the right reforms long ago - and figured out how to fund them, too - something that our current legislature doesn't seem to be able to manage.
Davis is right that the No Child Left Behind program is a failure; it was always underfunded and excessively rigid - partly to placate conservative beliefs about education, or, as some suspect, to force failure and eventual privatization of our educational system. It did, however, reflect the growing recognition that we need national educational achievement standards and an equitable approach to delivering education if we are to be successful as a nation.
This time, however we are being offered an incremental approach to reform that reflects the real world rather than slogans, which is why the effort to spur practical innovation via the Race to the Top could be an important step. And this terrifies poor Cynthia Davis? Quelle horreur!
...The largest over-the-month decreases in employment occurred in Missouri and Ohio (-12,800 each), followed by Kentucky (-11,800), New Jersey (-9,100), Florida (-6,100), and Nevada (-5,700). Kentucky (-0.7 percent) experienced the largest over-the-month percentage decrease in employment, followed by Missouri and Nevada (-0.5 percent each), and Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi, and Ohio (-0.3 percent each)....
The percentage unemployment for Missouri, compared to a year ago:
Missouri
January 2009 - 8.1%
January 2010 (preliminary) - 9.5%
Over-the-year rate change (preliminary) - 1.4%
[emphasis added]
The actual numbers (seasonally adjusted):
Missouri
Civilian labor force (Numbers in thousands)
January 2009 - 3,053.0
November 2009 - 3,008.5
December 2009 - 3,001.4
January 2010 (preliminary) - 2,994.5
Unemployed (Numbers in thousands)
January 2009 - 246.4
November 2009 - 290.2
December 2009 - 288.0
January 2010 (preliminary) - 283.0
Unemployed (Percent of labor force)
January 2009 - 8.1%
November 2009 - 9.6%
December 2009 - 9.6%
January 2010 (preliminary) - 9.5%
[emphasis added]
It could be worse, President McCain (r) and Governor Hulshof (r) could be on the Sunday tee-vee talk shows telling us, "We're doing nothing because nothing is the best thing to do. All is well!"
Since President Obama was to be in St. Louis today on Wednesday pushing for health care reform, Rep. Todd Akin (R - 2nd) thought he would jump the gun and rally the president's right-wing foes via a video town hall in St. Charles. Attended by about 2,200 people, the event consisted of presentations of the same ol' same ol' talking points by Akin and a handful of other retrograde Missouri politicians, including Lt. Governor Peter Kinder, and, via video, Akin's congressional fellow travelers, John Shimkus, (R-IL) and John Shadegg, (R-AZ).
According to KSDK TV, Akin was in his usual obstructionist form:
I want to say and I want to be completely clear, ... That the bill that we're talking about today is the worst bill that I've seen in all my time in Congress. In fact, it is so bad, it is at least two times worse than the next bad bill, which was the cap and tax bill to supposeably fix global warming.
Not exactly the most profound or relevant analysis - but then this was Todd Akin speaking and we all know that unsubstantiated invective and slogans like "cap and tax bill" seems to work very well with his support base. Other speakers hit the grace notes; State Senator Jane Cunningham, for instance, pushed her tenther legislation "which could potentially stop socialized medicine mandate at the state level." The real knee-slapper, though, came when Akin:
... credited divine intervention with the January election of Scott Brown, R-Mass., which deprived Senate Democrats of the 60-seat majority needed to block filibusters. Akin said he hoped God would intervene again to prevent a health care bill from getting through Congress.
Amazing how small and parochial the God of some of these so-called Christians seems to be.
It is instructive - and sad - to compare this event to the President's appearance, and to think that there are people who are happy to be led down the garden path by fools like Akin and pals. Sadder still to think about what we all stand to lose because we live in a place where this type of idiocy is taken seriously by anyone.
UPDATE: Today (Mar. 12) on the Dianne Rehm show, a caller from St. Charles reported that Akin went even further out onto the thin ice of tasteless absurdity by comparing the passage of health care to that good old Republican fall-back, 9/11. The response, from even the conservative commentator, was to condemn Akin's excess as insane, childish and, at the least, manipulative. Rehm seemed to have trouble believing that there were people present at that rally that cheered Akin - I have trouble believing that there people in my district that voted for him.
At St. Charles High School in suburban St. Louis this afternoon, Barack Obama laid out the argument for the health care reform bill. He was thorough. He was clear. He made that audience understand that we must have reform and that we can, even in these recessionary times, afford it. Indeed, we can't afford not to have it.
I'll write more tomorrow about how he laid out that argument, but right now, I wanted to offer you the end of his speech. It's the kind of stirring rhetoric that kept John McCain from becoming president. It's the kind of rhetoric we should have heard regularly these last few months. Here it is, better late than never.
....Since she [Robin Carnahan] also has a couple of campaign fundraisers scheduled while she's in the capital, Zakula said the campaign is paying for the trip.
Still, the president is not the most popular guy in Missouri, lately. He only had a 40 percent approval rating in the state last month, according to a Rasmussen poll.
But Zakula denied that Carnahan was leaving town to avoid sharing a stage with him.
"She appreciates the support from Sen. McCaskill and the president and she's looking forward to seeing them on the campaign trail this year," he said....
"...He only had a 40 percent approval rating in the state last month, according to a Rasmussen poll..."
....I want to stress that the only point I'm making in this post is that at least in national tracking polls, in any given timeframe, a Rasmussen poll is overwhelmingly likely to show better news for the GOP than any other poll.
To illustrate this point, I generated a series of scatter plot charts using pollster.com's index of polls. Every poll in pollster.com's index is represented on each chart by a dot, plotted horizontally by the date of the poll, and vertically by the results of the poll.
Rasmussen polls are in red; every other poll is in green. Shaded red areas on the charts represent areas where results would favor the GOP.
I think you'll see that Rasmussen polls literally stand out from all the others and they almost always deliver good news for the GOP....
You'd think the Kansas City Star might mention that. If they even knew or bothered to try and figure it out.
The pool report forwarded this evening by the White House Media Affairs Office:
Air force one landed at lambert-st louis international airport at 323 pm local time (423 east coast time).
No gaggle on the flight to St. Louis. But Reid Cherlin stopped by to chat, and says, on the record, that Robin Carnahan had already scheduled her trip to Washington when Potus decided to come to St. Louis. "Her people have asked if President Obama would please appear with her in a future event soon," Mr. Cherlin said. "We are working on that now."
Via HuffPo's Ryan Grim, even Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) supports passing the public option through reconciliation:
Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) became the 41st senator to say that he would back the public insurance option as part of a health care bill moved through reconciliation.
Nelson, asked by HuffPost if he would vote for a public option on the Senate floor, was unequivocal. "Yes," he said firmly. "I've already voted for it in the committee, in the Finance Committee."
The running tally is being kept by one of the organizations pushing for the public option, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.
Forty-one puts Democrats just nine votes short. The number of senators who have publicly committed to the option is striking because the momentum has come without any organized effort by Senate leadership or from the White House.
So where's Claire McCaskill on this? She supports the public option, and she supports making sure that the bill is deficit neutral, which adding the public option can only help with.
...Senator Kit Bond: The Constitution says nothing of the subject of filibuster and it says nothing of the power of a minority to defeat the president's judicial nomination....
....It is the product of a rule of the Senate, passed many years after the ratification of the Constitution. This rule does not derive from the authority of the Constitution....
"...This rule does not derive from the authority of the Constitution...."
...Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two thirds, expel a member....
CANDIDATE INFORMATION
HARTZLER, VICKY JO H0MO04086
Office: HOUSE
Party: REPUBLICAN PARTY Election: 2010
State: MISSOURI District: 04
FINANCIAL SUMMARY
From: 01/01/2009 To: 12/31/2009
I. RECEIPTS
Itemized Individual Contributions $187,342
Unitemized Individual Contributions $100
Party Committees Contributions $0
Other Committees Contributions $2,000
Candidate Contributions $8,088
TOTAL CONTRIBUTIONS $197,530
Transfers from Authorized Committees $0
Candidate Loans $105,000
Other Loans $0
TOTAL LOANS $105,000
Operating Expenditures Offsets $0
Other Receipts $0
TOTAL RECEIPTS $302,530
II. DISBURSEMENTS
Operating Expenditures $45,213
Transfers To Authorized Committees $0
Candidate Loan Repayments $0
Other Loan Repayments $0
TOTAL LOAN REPAYMENTS $0
Individual Refunds $2,400
Political Party Refunds $0
Other Committee Refunds $0
TOTAL CONTRIBUTION REFUNDS $2,400
Other Disbursements $0
TOTAL DISBURSEMENTS $47,613
III. CASH SUMMARY
Ending Cash On Hand $254,916
Net Contributions $195,130
Net Operating Expenditures $45,213
Debts Owed By $105,000
Debts Owed To $0
That's quite a campaign treasury, roughly equivalent to Bill Stouffer (r). And where did some of that money come from?:
Freivogel, a former editor at the Post-Dispatch whose particular beat was the Supreme Court, now heads the journalism department at SIU. Speaking at West County Dems last Monday, he emphasized that he sees no way to accomplish both goals. His reservations have a lot to be said for them. Consider that it wasn't just the NRA that supported the High Court's ruling in Citizens United wherein the McCain/Feingold law banning corporate ads before an election was deemed to violate the First Amendment. The ACLU also supported the position that such censorship was unconstitutional. Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, warned that banning such speech would mean censoring Sierra Club ads sixty days before an election that disapprove of a congressman voting for logging in the national forest; preventing the NRA from publishing a book urging the public to vote for the challenger because the incumbent favors handgun bans; and forcing the ACLU to take down from its website a page telling the public to vote for a candidate in light of his defense of free speech. All these are classic examples of government censorship.
While digging around on the Web, I came across a couple of blog posts concerning Claire McCaskill. In response to a 
Earlier, I 
I don't know why the President let the Republicans get eight months ahead of him in selling health care reform to the public. Now that he's started, though, he's saying all the right things. He needs to convince people that if we don't make these changes, even middle class people who currently have health insurance are going to be priced out of the market. And he needs to allay their fears that, in these recessionary times, we can pay for the plan without raising the deficit.
Since President Obama was to be in St. Louis 
