The Senate, on a voice vote, today extended the expiring Patriot Act provisions:

One provision authorizes court-approved roving wiretaps that permit surveillance on multiple phones. A second allows court-approved seizure of records and property in antiterrorism operations. A third permits surveillance against a noncitizen suspected of engaging in terrorism who may not be part of a recognized terrorist group.

How's this for a compromise?

In agreeing to pass the bill, Senate Democrats retreated from adding new privacy protections to the USA Patriot Act.

Having a majority in the Senate doesn't seem to mean much in the age of compromise. The bill now goes to the House, which undoubtedly will do the same.

The White House has released President Obama's proposed health care plan. Big Tent Democrat has the White House recap and some preliminary thoughts. I add mine below, from the various pages of the White House release.

The President’s Proposal builds off of the legislation that passed the Senate and improves on it by bridging key differences between the House and the Senate as well as by incorporating Republican provisions that strengthen the proposal.

The overview says it changes the Senate-passed bill and "reflects policies from the House-passed bill and the President’s priorities." Among the key changes it touts: It ends discrimination on pre-existing conditions and closes the Medicare "donut hole" gap in coverage. It increases the excise tax threshhold "from $23,000 for a family plan to $27,500 and starting it in 2018 for all plans." For singles, it is $10,500. (Why are singles always discriminated against?) [More...]

With support for the [excise] tax eroding, Congressional leaders are searching for alternative sources of revenue. [. . . L]abor leaders have backed away from the [exise tax compromise] in the wake of the special Senate election in Massachusetts. “I do not believe there will be an excise tax enacted,” said Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America. [. . .]

[More...]

The letter:

Dear Leader Reid:

We respectfully ask that you bring for a vote before the full Senate a public health insurance option under budget reconciliation rules.

. . . . Although we strongly support the important reforms made by the Senate-passed health reform package, including a strong public option would improve both its substance and the public’s perception of it. The Senate has an obligation to reform our unworkable health insurance market -- both to reduce costs and to give consumers more choices. A strong public option is the best way to deliver on both of these goals, and we urge its consideration under reconciliation rules.

Respectfully,

Michael Bennet (D-CO), U.S. Senator
Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), U.S. Senator
Jeff Merkley (D-OR), U.S. Senator
Sherrod Brown (D-OH), U.S. Senator

The Hill:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is rewriting a jobs bill after Democrats complained of too many concessions to Republicans. Reid announced Thursday that he would cut back on the jobs bill Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) introduced only hours earlier, essentially overruling the powerful chairman.

[. . . ] The bill now include four components: tax credits for employers who hire new workers; a provision allowing businesses to write off the cost of capital investments; Build America Bonds, which allow state and local governments to lower their borrowing costs; and a one-year extension of funding for transportation programs in the Surface Transportation Act. Reid said he made the decision to rewrite the bill before meeting with skeptical Democratic colleagues on Thursday afternoon. Democrats complained the bill did not focus enough on job creation.

Thank Gawd someone still has some sense in DC.

Speaking for me only

Politico says John Aravosis of AmericaBlog makes a good catch on David Plouffe's op-ed in the Washington Post: Obama may be preparing to drop the ban on denying coverage for pre-existing conditions for all but children in the health care bill. Plouffe wrote:

Parents won't have to worry their children will be denied coverage just because they have a preexisting condition.

Aravosis says,

Their children? The original promise - even the bad Senate bill - protects everyone, of any age, from being denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions. Now it's just children?

Aravosis says it's unlikely Plouffe was just using kids as an example. But, could Plouffe have been talking about when the ban kicks in? His full paragraph reads:

If we do pass it, dozens of protections and benefits take effect this year. Parents won't have to worry their children will be denied coverage just because they have a preexisting condition. [More...]

The Senate Judiciary Committee finally approves a crime bill, and which one is it? The Webb Criminal Justice Commission bill ordering an 18 month study of criminal justice policies. Here's the amended bill voted out of committee today.

I hope this does not result in an 18 month moratorium on the passage of much needed crime bills that have been languishing for months and years, like bills to equalize the penalties for crack and powder cocaine and reduce or eliminate mandatory minimum sentences, or increase federal good time.

As I wrote ten months ago when this bill was introduced, we don't need another study. We know what's wrong. It's time to fix it, not issue yet another report. (The U.S. Sentencing Commission has issued multiple reports on the unfairness of mandatory minimums and crack-powder and not one has been acted on. Do we really need more?)

Brian Beutler:

[T]he House could simply pass the Senate bill unchanged, and Obama could sign reform into law. As recently as last week, a number of high-profile Democrats were saying that would never fly. But many are now suggesting that the House might still pull through, if House members are promised that the deal they agreed to last week will be passed separately--and quickly--through the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process.

What is that final deal anyway? We know the deal cut on the excise tax. But what about the rest of it? Will any other improvements survive? Defenders of the process (and persons opposing Coakley) have been arguing that the House and Senate bills are virtually the same. This is simply not true.

More importantly, Progressive House members should use their newly found leverage to demand more. For example, they should demand passage of a public option in exchange for this deal. This is especially true since, as Beutler notes, Blue Dogs and centrists in the House will be very leery about voting for ANY health bill. Progressives in the House may have backed themselves into a maximum leverage situation -- if they know how to use it.

Speaking for me only

Ezra Klein:

I'm fairly optimistic that health-care reform will pass, even if Martha Coakley loses to Scott Brown in Massachusetts. It certainly can pass, as the House could simply approve the Senate bill unchanged and then make modifications through the reconciliation process.

This news article in the Wall St. Journal makes the same points. Jonathan Chait at TNR has three options for the health care bill if Coakley loses.

Jake Tapper and Jonathan Karl at ABC agree. Either the House passes the Senate version so this election won't matter, or they use reconciliation.

The sky is not falling, despite the suggestion to the contrary by the influential Dems runnng to MA this weekend to stump for Coakely. [More...]

According to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Hoyer, the final health reform bill will be online for 72 hours before the House vote so Members and Americans can review.

You can follow the twitter feed of the Official House twitter account for the bill for updates.

d-day writes:

TPM reports that immigrants rights advocates and their allies in Congress will not block health care legislation that could include harsh anti-immigrant provisions, so long as they extract a promise on comprehensive immigration reform. [. . ] It’s kind of unclear who’s saying what here. Leadership appears secure that the Congressional Hispanic Caucus won’t block the health care bill. There are some anonymous sources claiming that, as trade, they will accept a promise to move on the immigration bill.

(Emphasis supplied.) A promise from whom? Clearly not Obama, who, we have been told, has no power over the Congress. From Speaker Pelosi? Since Ben Nelson decides what legislation passes the Congress, unless the promise is also from him, it seems an empty promise. As d-day argues, "Given the risk-averse nature of this White House and Nancy Pelosi’s vow not to tackle controversial subjects in the House without the Senate going first, it’s puzzling why the CHC would accept any kind of promise as an iron-clad guarantee to move to a bill." Obviously so. Are the CHC members suckers? I think not. They know they are getting nothing. This is a fig leaf.

Speaking for me only

Orrin Hatch and Kenneth Blackwell lead the "intellectual" charge:

First, the Constitution does not give Congress the power to require that Americans purchase health insurance. Congress must be able to point to at least one of its powers listed in the Constitution as the basis of any legislation it passes. None of those powers justifies the individual insurance mandate. Congress's powers to tax and spend do not apply because the mandate neither taxes nor spends. The only other option is Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce. [. . .] It is one thing, however, for Congress to regulate economic activity in which individuals choose to engage; it is another to require that individuals engage in such activity. That is not a difference in degree, but instead a difference in kind. It is a line that Congress has never crossed and the courts have never sanctioned.

Even if this were true (and it is not as the bill's enforcement mechanism is a tax on persons who do not purchase health insurance), Hatch's argument is faulty. While mandates applied to individuals is not an everyday occurence (the differentiation of participation in a federal pension and health insurance system (Medicare and Social Security) is not apparent to me), application of mandates to corporations is quite routine. Hatch would argue that businesses are "choosing to engage" in such activity, but it would be the only time ever Hatch will have made such a distinction. More . . .