Archive for the ‘News Clips’ Category
Heated Health-Reform Ads Give Taste of Fall Campaign
By: Michael Scherer/Washington, TIME
Congressman Adam Smith’s phones rang so much on Monday that one of his aides called it a “siege.” Almost all the calls were about health care, and most of his constituents’ opinions were the same. “In my case, it’s very one-sided,” says Smith, a Washington state Democrat. “It’s all been on the anti side.”
The reason for the calls is no secret. National business groups have blanketed Tacoma television stations with a 30-second spot that features depressing images of discouraged workers and a voice-over warning that health care reform will bring billions in new taxes, mandates on businesses and higher health care costs. At the end, Smith’s phone number flashes across the screen. “It’s a pretty thorough buy,” Smith admits, saying it has sometimes run three or four times on a single station in an hour.
The deluge is not limited to Smith’s district. Across the country, groups on all sides of the health care reform debate have been targeting swing members of Congress with costly ad campaigns. Over the coming week, as the House gears up to take a final, deciding vote on reform, issue-ad spending by corporations, trade groups, unions and advocacy organizations may top $24 million, adding to the estimated $200 million that has already been spent on health care advocacy ads. “We are going to be at parity with the other guys in spending for the week,” said one pro-reform organizer, who had been monitoring the antireform ad purchases. “I think our side will spend $12 million for the week.”
The ad running in Smith’s district, which was paid for by an offshoot of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is part of a 17-state campaign slated to cost between $4 million and $10 million. Another conservative group, the American Future Fund, is running ads in 18 House districts that compares health care reform to a pig wearing lipstick before flashing a phone number. America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the industry trade group, has its own television campaign. Another secretive group called the League of American Voters, which works with former Clinton adviser Dick Morris, is running additional ads targeting Democrats who may support “Obama and Pelosi’s health care takeover.”
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1972364,00.html?xid=rss-topstories#ixzz0iLl3kZne
ObamaCare and the ‘Buzzsaw’ of Opposition
By: John Boehner and Mitch McConnell
The president could have chosen a bipartisan approach.
A little over a year ago, when President Obama first took up health-care reform, Republicans reached out to him in the hopes of working together on solutions that would lower health-care costs for families and small businesses. A bipartisan bill focused on lower costs could have been sent to the president’s desk last year, and it would have received the support of the American people.
For instance, this month the president announced his support for additional reforms to crack down on waste, fraud and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid. This is something we can and should be doing already.
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A new wave of health ads hits radio, TV
By: Fredreka Schouten, USA Today
A conservative group, The American Future Fund, has launched TV ads against two Democrats, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, for voicing support for a legislative procedure, known as reconciliation, to pass parts of the health care legislation.
The group is urging Democrats to scrap the health care plan and start over.
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Health care ad spending grows; will it matter?
By: Chris Cillizza, Washington Post
1. The air wars over health care, into which both sides have already poured more than $200 million, are in full swing again. The latest evidence? American Future Fund, a conservative group, is spending $500,000 bashing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) and Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter for their expressed support for using reconciliation to pass elements of the health care bill.
The ads cast reconciliation as a “legislative trick” being employed by Democratic senators because “they don’t have the votes;” the ad also uses clips of Democrats defending the filibuster — Reid described it as “a check on power [that] preserves our limited government” — when they were the minority party in the Senate. “The hypocrisy is breathtaking,” says the narrator at the close of the commercial. (AFF is already spending close to $1 million on ads in 18 Democratic-held House districts urging Members to scrap the bill and start over.)
Not to be outdone, Americans United, the leading spender of liberal outside groups, is plunking down a half million dollars on a series of television and radio ads on aimed at rallying African Americans behind President Obama’s plan. “The special interests are marshaling their forces for one last fight to save the status quo,” Obama says in the Americans United TV ad, which is running on Black Entertainment Television. “And we just can’t let that happen.” A similar message is being broadcast via radio ads to African American voters in 19 cities including Cleveland, Chicago and Louisville.
These ads — from the left and right — come on top of a promised $10 million in ads by a coalition of business groups to oppose the health care legislation. But It’s hard to see this strategy having any significant impact in the fight for public opinion on health care; a flooding of airwaves with political ads usually leads people to tune out all of the commercials — a phenomenon likely exacerbated by the pure length of time that health care has been in the news. ALSO READ: Democratic pollsters Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen on why passing (or not passing) health care will be a major political problem for their party.
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AFF’s TV Ad Featured on Roll Call
he American Future Fund, a conservative advocacy group, has placed a new $250,000 television ad buy targeting Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) over Democrats’ procedural maneuvering on the health care bill.
The 60-second spot, airing statewide on network and cable television starting Thursday night, comes as Republicans step up their rhetoric opposing Senate Democrats’ plans to pass a controversial health care overhaul via reconciliation.
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Pro-life Dems say Senate Health Care Bill is D.O.A.
The health care reform bill passed by the Senate on Christmas Eve appears to be dead on arrival in the House, as six anti-abortion Democrats intend to join the ranks of lawmakers who plan to vote against the legislation, Fox News has confirmed.
Six new no votes would be enough to kill the Senate bill, and several more fence-sitting lawmakers are under pressure from both sides of the aisle.
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Government workers feel no economic pain
The recession and the ongoing jobless recovery devastated much of the private-sector work force last year, sending unemployment soaring, but government workers emerged essentially unscathed, according to data released Wednesday by the Labor Department.
Meanwhile, the compensation for state and local government employees continued to easily outdistance the wages and benefits for workers in private business, a separate Labor Department report showed.
Private-industry employers spent an average of $27.42 per hour worked for total employee compensation in December, while total compensation costs for state and local government workers averaged $39.60 per hour.
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More than 55% believe ObamaCare will damage economy
The White House promised a “hard pivot” to jobs and the economy almost three months ago, attempting to put the ObamaCare debate on the back burner after the holidays. They had belatedly discovered that the electorate was much more concerned about the economic plunge than in retooling a health-care system that works for most Americans now. Instead of the hard pivot, Democrats have doubled down on ObamaCare — and the latest Rasmussen survey shows that a strong majority believe it to be the wrong direction on both issues:
Fifty-seven percent (57%) of voters say the health care reform plan now working its way through Congress will hurt the U.S. economy.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 25% think the plan will help the economy. But only seven percent (7%) say it will have no impact. Twelve percent (12%) aren’t sure.
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The health care campaign begins (again)
By: Chris Cillizza, Washington Post
1. With President Obama’s March 18 deadline to pass health care reform through Congress rapidly approaching, the American Future Fund, a conservative outside group, is spending $900,000 on television ads in 18 Democratic-held districts calling on members to scrap the current plan. The ads decry the “massive spending” and “backroom deals” including the now infamous “Cornhusker Kickback” in the legislation and quote President Obama’s “lipstick on a pig” comments during the campaign. “Tell Congress to start over and get health care right,” says the ad’s narrator.
The districts that AFF is targeting include: Arizona’s 1st, Arizona’s 5th, Arizona’s 8th, Indiana’s 2nd, Indiana’s 8th, Indiana’s 9th, North Carolina’s 2nd, North Dakota at large, Nevada’s 3rd, New York’s 24th, Ohio’s 1st, Ohio’s 6th, Ohio’s 13th, Pennsylvania’s 3rd, Pennsylvania’s 10th, Wisconsin’s 8th, West Virginia’s 1st and West Virginia’s 3rd. All 18 Democratic members targeted voted for the health care bill when it passed the House last November; eleven of the 18 districts went for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2008. (McCain carried 49 total districts currently represented by Democrats.) The AFF ads are almost certainly the leading edge of a cavalcade of spending by independent groups — both conservative and liberal — in the run-up to the vote.
ALSO CLICK: Saturday Night Live’s take on the politics of the health care vote.
2. Former Gov. Bob Ehrlich (R) is moving toward a rematch against Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) this fall, according to those familiar with his thinking on the race. Ehrlich is widely seen as the only Republican who could win statewide in Maryland, having already done so once — when he beat Kathleen Kennedy Townsend in the 2002 governor’s race.
Former Ehrlich aides are beginning to build the foundation for his campaign, according to sources familiar with the effort. A recent poll released by O’Malley’s campaign — conducted by Fred Yang — that showed the governor ahead of Ehrlich by a 51 percent to 41 percent margin. (O’Malley beat Ehrlich 53 percent to 46 percent in 2006.)
In expectation of Ehrlich’s candidacy, political handicapper Stu Rothenberg moved from the race from safe for O’Malley to only a “narrow advantage” for the Democrat.
3. Former Genesee County treasurer Dan Kildee dropped out of the Michigan governor’s race just two weeks after getting into the contest, the latest Democrat to end a candidacy for the state’s top office. Kildee’s exit from the race follows similar no-go decisions by Lt. Gov. John Cherry, University of Michigan Regent Denise Ilitch and former state treasurer Bob Bowman; Ilitch and Bowman were both eyed by national Democratic recruiters under the belief that their personal wealth and outsider profile could give the party a chance to hold what is a very difficult seat
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