Under the proposed 50/50 formula, utilities that are more coal dependent will need to purchase even more allowances than they would have if all allowances were allocated based on emissions.

Well, yeah. And under the current proposed 50/50 formula, the coal burners would also have to purchase more allowances than if Congress did nothing at all. But the whole point of the bill is to discourage the use of high-emission energies like coal by making them less affordable than cleaner alternatives. Sheppard explains further why the lawmakers’ argument makes little sense in the context of the global warming debate:

Of course, this would work against the entire logic of the proposed scheme, which is to offer utilities financial incentives to switch to lower-carbon fuel sources. [...]

Right now, the climate bill needs all the votes it can get from Democrats. So enviros worry that concessions to this bloc could ultimately result in a deal in which coal plants suffer no real penalties for the carbon they pump into the atmosphere. “Dirty coal polluters know their days are numbered and are lobbying for the largest piece of the pie they can get,” said Jason Kowalski, policy coordinator at 1Sky. “It goes against the spirit of this legislation to reward the polluters that caused this problem in the first place.”

Signing on to the letter were Democratic Sens. Carl Levin (Mich.), Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), Russ Feingold (Wis.), Herb Kohl (Wis.), Tom Harkin (Iowa), Al Franken (Minn.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Byron Dorgan (N.D.), Kent Conrad (N.D.), Roland Burris (Ill.), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Michael Bennet (Colo.), Mark Udall (Colo.) and Robert Byrd (W.Va.).

Last week, it was liberal Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) predicting that anti-abortion lawmakers in the upper chamber wouldn’t be able to rally the 60 votes needed to pass an amendment to health reform legislation restricting abortion. This week, it’s an influential moderate Democrat warning that the health bill won’t pass without such a provision. Roll Call reports:

“What is clear is that for this bill to be successful, there can be no taxpayer funding for abortion,” Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said, appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Conrad said he did not know whether the Senate would ultimately adopt the restrictive language that the House passed last week, which dictated that any new government-funded health insurance option cannot pay for abortions. But he said that some kind of abortion restriction is necessary for a bill to get through Congress.

The debate in the House is following a similar storyline, with conservative Democrats insisting that the abortion restrictions be included, and no small number of liberal Democrats hinging their support on their absence. With neither side appearing ready to back down, you can look for Democratic leaders to perform a very delicate scalpel job during conference negotiations to reconcile the two bills — something that would allow both sides to claim victory.

For likely supporters, click here.
For likely opponents, click here.

*Uninsured numbers come from 2008 U.S. Census Bureau data.

“It’s not fiscally responsible,” Mr. Bayh said. “I could not vote for a bill that raises the deficit by $240 billion, not at a time when we are already hemorrhaging red ink. The physicians’ issue needs to be addressed, but not in a way that increases the deficit.”

Mr. Conrad, who is chairman of the Budget Committee, was furious at the possibility that Congress might adjust payment rates for doctors without offsetting the cost. “I don’t agree with just adding that amount to the debt,” Mr. Conrad said, adding, “I won’t vote for it.”

A cloture vote is scheduled for Monday evening. But with Republicans also vowing to oppose the bill if it isn’t offset, the Democrats might not want to bet the farm on this one.

The vote was 10 to 13, with three Democrats — Sens. Max Baucus (Mont.), Kent Conrad (N.D.) and Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) — opposing the proposal.

Democratic Sens. Bill Nelson (Fla.) and Tom Carper (Del.), who voted against a similar proposal offered earlier in the day, both supported Schumer’s amendment.

We are tracking all of today’s developments on our Senate Public Option Scoreboard.

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and Rush Limbaugh (WDCpix, Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office)

Smelling blood in the water as Democrats made contradictory statements about what a Senate health care reform bill might contain, Republicans spent Tuesday pushing back against a possible compromise–non-profit health insurance cooperatives, an idea that Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) had pushed for months before the debate centered on a Medicare-style “public option.” Inside the Senate and inside the conservative third-party groups that have been working against the White House, “co-ops” are being framed as an attempt to engineer a stealth government takeover of health care.

Image by: Matt Mahurin

“It doesn’t matter what you call it,” Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) told reporters on a Tuesday conference call. “They want it to accomplish something that Republicans are opposed to. That is the step towards government-run health care in the country. The president himself said you can imagine a cooperative meeting that definition of a public option.”

Kyl, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, took advantage of a political opening created by a rift between Democrats in Congress. Unlike a public plan, the co-ops idea remains, as one Senate GOP staffer told TWI, “nebulous.” What began as a trial balloon from Conrad, to facilitate the formation of consumer groups that could purchase health care plans at a lower cost, has not been fleshed out since then. In June, when Conrad proposed the concept, it was promoted as a way to get the votes of moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats, based on a model that had worked in very different industries. “The co-op model has proven very effective across many different models,” Conrad argued in a June interview with The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein. “Ocean Spray in the cranberry business, and Land of Lakes in the dairy business, and Puget Sound [Health Alliance] in the health care business.”

Since then, Democrats have used the co-op concept as an out from the tougher aspects of the health care debate. Shortly after Conrad floated the idea in June, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who said that the idea “doesn’t come close to satisfying anyone who wants a public plan,” could meet some of the Democrats’ goals if a $10 billion start-up fund was created to launch the co-ops. In July, President Obama told Time magazine that some sort of public plan could survive Senate negotiations even if the “public option” didn’t, because “in theory you can imagine a cooperative meeting that definition.”

That statement from the president, which didn’t draw much attention at the time, was the basis of Kyl’s argument that co-ops were a “Trojan Horse” for “government-run” health care. Republicans and conservative activists are mining other statements in that vein to build the case that co-ops would be no compromise at all, and they’re doing it quickly.

“Three months ago, I think you could have had a compromise on co-ops,” another Senate GOP aide told TWI. “Today? No, forget about it. I think both parties have gotten wise to how things work, and Republicans see this for the fig leaf that it really is.”

Senate Republicans are getting help from conservative media on defining the co-ops. On his syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh blasted the co-ops idea as a unconvincing cover-up for the Democrats’ real plan to nationalize health care. “These co-ops, like we’re too stupid to know what that’s all about,” Limbaugh said. “Co-op? Why don’t they just call them communes? Look, I know liberal lingo when I hear it. A co-op? Yeah, let’s go to the farmers market. Let’s go to the community garden! What, do they think we’re idiots?”

That’s the message coming from the groups and activists who have defined the political battlefield this month with noisy protests and speeches at congressional town hall meetings. “It is a trick by the Democrats,” said Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, via email. “It’s a cosmetic change that’s not meaningful. It’s not in any way something that changes things for us. It’s something to try to give ‘moderate’/Blue Dog/terrified Democrats an excuse to support Obamacare.”

At a Tuesday meeting of conservative bloggers, held at the Heritage Foundation, Matt Kibbe, the president and CEO of Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks, speculated that “government-run co-ops” with mandates might have been what Democrats had wanted from the outset of the health care fight. “It’s possible that the so-called public option… has always been a disposable item in the legislation,” Kibbe said, “and what the proponents of government-run health care really wanted to do was throw it out there, have us all attack it, and go for the co-ops.”

According to Eric Odom, the web guru whose TaxDayTeaParty.com became an organizing and information hub for anti-tax rallies, “Tea Party” activists are primed to attack co-ops as another phase of a plan to take over health care. “I don’t anticipate that anyone in the free market movement can support this idea,” said Odom, whose group is readying for a nationwide bus tour to train conservative activists. “It’s a back door for government to get control of the [health care] system. The proposal you’ll get from Democrats is going to have boards made up of government officials. It’ll be the same thing as government run health care, except it won’t be owned by the government.”

A Senate GOP aide brushed aside the theory that a co-op compromise could bring Republican votes on board. “When [Sen. Chuck] Grassley (R-Iowa) says that he won’t vote for a bill that doesn’t have substantial Republican support, you can read that as him saying he won’t support the bill,” the aide told TWI. “The problem right now is that we have a large Democratic majority that Americans don’t trust. They don’t think something passed in this Congress would be helpful to them. We can start over two years from now, after we have a new Congress.”

In the shorter term, Republicans are working to brand “co-ops” as another toxic “public plan,” a scheme to take over health care. Appearing on Fox News Monday, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) blasted the Democratic plan, “Now, they — they may try to call it a co-op. They can call it a public option. But you know they are all on record saying they want a single-payer government system. So, any Republican now that helps them pass a bill is helping them pass a government takeover of health care.”

At the Heritage Foundation, Kibbe warned conservative bloggers that even if congressional Democrats view the removal of the public plan as a defeat, conservatives have to be ready to defeat co-ops.

“We need to be careful,” said Kibbe, “not to declare victory when they throw the government-run option off the side.”

For one thing, The Times indicates, the co-op would also need government backing in order to launch:

The government would offer start-up money, perhaps $6 billion, in loans and grants to help doctors, hospitals, businesses and other groups form nonprofit cooperative networks to provide health care and coverage.

Second, it takes a long while for co-ops to establish themselves as viable competitors to for-profit insurers:

Larry J. Zanoni, executive director of the Wisconsin plan, said: “We are a testament to the success of a health care cooperative. But it took us over 30 years to get where we are today.”

And finally, The Times reports that the co-op model hasn’t helped North Dakota, where a  co-op-style non-profit has monopolized the insurance market rather than promoting competition.

Mr. Conrad’s own state demonstrates the uncertainties surrounding cooperatives. Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota dominates the state’s private insurance market, collecting nearly 90 percent of premiums. As a nonprofit owned by its members, the company would hope to qualify as a co-op under federal legislation, said Paul von Ebers, its incoming president and chief executive. [...]

Any new insurer in North Dakota would probably try to take members from the local Blue Cross plan, but that would not be easy to do.

Representative Earl Pomeroy, Democrat of North Dakota, said the proposal for cooperatives was “a very worthy idea.”

“The market here is uncompetitive,” said Mr. Pomeroy, a former state insurance commissioner. “A cooperative could provide an alternative source of insurance and some interesting competition for premium dollars. A co-op could operate at lower costs, in part because it would not need to pay its executives so generously as the local Blue Cross Blue Shield plan.”

This revelation might be unremarkable, except that the public plan is only the most contentious issue surrounding the most sweeping health reform proposals in decades, and Conrad happens to be one of the Finance Committee’s “gang of six” — the group trying to hash out a health reform bill that would likely be the template for whatever bill passes this year.

Conrad, a key supporter of the co-op model alternative, has repeatedly said that the public option doesn’t stand a chance of getting 60 votes in the upper chamber. What he hasn’t mentioned is whether he’s part of the reason why.

Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), who head the Senate Ethics Committee, introduced legislation Thursday to force lawmakers to disclose the “full and complete” details of their mortgage arrangements — including dates, rates, the range of the amount and the creditor’s name and location.

The bill arrived one day before the Ethics Committee cleared Sens. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) of ethics violations surrounding special rates they received on loans taken out through Countrywide Financial Corp.

Apparently, clearing the senators was insufficient penance for the committee for having the audacity to investigate in the first place.  Like a battered woman who explains she brought the beating on herself, the committee faulted itself for failing to ‘provide more guidance to the Senate community about issues surrounding mortgage negotiations.’  Over a year has passed since CREW filed its complaint and the committee became aware of this issue.  Now would be a good time for the committee to start proactively providing its promised advice.

CREW filed a complaint with the ethics panel in June 2008, after Portfolio magazine reported that Dodd and Conrad had been given special loan rates as part of Countrywide’s “Friends of Angelo” VIP program.

After reviewing 18,000 documents related to the case, the Ethics Committee wrote in Aug. 7 letters to both lawmakers, the panel found that neither had “knowingly accepted a gift” or abused his position of power to secure the special rates. “The Committee also recognizes that it has not previously offered specific guidance to Senators, officers and employees on the matters they should consider when negotiating mortgages and other financial transactions.”