Noem Staffer Gets Million-Dollar Mansion

Expect a stoic silence from the Noem camp on this one...

Once upon a time, Senator Tom Daschle caught all sorts of guff from folks who wanted to beat him for having a two-million-dollar house (oops, sorry: mansion) in D.C. (or was it $3 million?). Nice houses in Washington, D.C., just don't reflect South Dakota values, do they?

With that in mind, let us turn to the McLean, Virginia, real estate transfers for October. Of 19 home sales recorded at the Fairfax County property tax office, only three were for less than $500K, all condos. Six homes went for over a million dollars. The bargain in that batch: 6134 Ramshorn Drive. Four bedrooms, three and a half baths, 3167 square feet, quarter-acre lot, sold July 30 this year for $1.02 million.

6134 Ramshorn Drive, McLean, Virginia

Whew! I've got four times the lot, but this swanky McLean house has 2.5 times the space and 10 times the mortgage of my humble South Dakota abode.

McLean is a nice neighborhood. Median family income is over $180K; poverty rate is 1.9%. Compare that to Castlewood, South Dakota, where median family income is about $37K and poverty is 7.1%.

Castlewood? What the—oh! I almost forgot to tell you who bought this piece of the American Dream. Please congratulate new homeowners Carine and Jordan Stoick.

Stoick... where have I heard...

Oh! Jordan Stoick! Mobridge boy made good! Successful Washington P.R. dude! And Kristi Noem's new chief of staff:

As I prepare to go to work in Congress, I’m focused on putting together a quality team of individuals that will help me serve South Dakota well. Jordan understands the issues important to our state, and his background and experience makes him a great person to help ensure we hit the ground running on behalf of all South Dakotans [emphasis mine; Representative-Elect Kristi Noem, press release, 2010.12.03].

Catch that? Stoick lives in a million-dollar house, worth seven times more than the median house in Sioux Falls. He lives in a swanky, exclusive D.C. neighborhood. And Kristi Noem thinks he "understands the issues important to our state." But having a big, expensive house doesn't have anything to do with one's ability to understand and fight for South Dakota, does it?

Oh, but I suppose there's a world of difference between Tom Dsachle and Jordan Stoick. Daschle was the elected Senator, the decision-maker, the man directly accountable to us South Dakotans in our $100K sod shanties. Jordan Stoick is just a staffer... the chief of staff, the man behind the scenes, the man who has Kristi's ear every day on every issue, telling her how to be a Congresswoman.

Million-dollar mansion. There's one more meme we won't hear in any future GOP attack ads. Thanks, Kristi!

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p.s.: Boy, I hope Stoick didn't have to sell the boat to swing the payments.

pp.s.: Is Kristi's house that big place by the Racota Valley Ranch sign on Highway 81? How much is her house worth?

Daschle: Do Your Job, Congress -- Stay in Washington

South Dakota Democrats Tom Daschle and Stephanie Herseth Sandlin lost their seats in Congress in part because many South Dakotans bought the argument that those leaders were spending too much time in Washington. In a new essay on how to improve the political climate in Congress and get the people's business done, Mr. Daschle contends that our Congresspeople might do better work if they spent a little more time in Washington, D.C.:

...[M]ost members fly home every week, usually leaving Washington on Thursday night and returning Tuesday morning. That leaves little time for bonding with colleagues.

Today, most families of new senators stay in their home states, putting even more pressure on lawmakers to spend less time in Washington.

Yes, contact with constituents is vital, but limiting lawmakers' time in the nation's capital means they are less able to respond to the issues that their constituents care about....

The Senate needs more, not less, socializing and relationship-building. We need more family outings, dinners with spouses, congressional delegation trips abroad and quiet nights spent in our beautiful Capitol building [Tom Daschle, "How to Govern in a Deeply Divided Congress," Washington Post, 2010.11.07].

Politics is an intensely social job. Politicians need to interact with the voters back home to hear their problems and ideas to inform their policymaking. But to perform the extraordinarily difficult work of melding the disparate needs of 50 states and 435 Congressional districts into a national governing agenda, Congresspeople need to interact with each other. They need strong social connections so they can view each other as colleagues, as real human beings with the same goals, not partisan enemies. Building such relationships and doing the job right requires spending lots of time in their workplace, our nation's capital.

Daschle Not the Story: Health Insurance Still Needs Fixing

The Right has had its fun jubilating over Tom Daschle's defeat, but the need for health care remains. One of Daschle's Aberdonians, David Newquist, offers this appropriately pointed explanation of what really matters:

The focus on Tom Daschle's belated tax payments and his choice to utilize a car and driver has trivialized the job he was nominated to do. His tax problems were a serious issue, but he addressed them and paid his bill. The inference promoted by opponents of health care reform that his lapses were deliberate fraud is a convenient way to block that reform by shifting the focus from the state of U.S. health care to tabloid gossip and speculation. Just as his house in D.C. was made a campaign issue in 2004 as an appeal to the sullen jealousies of voters who resent anyone's success, his use of a car and driver was inflated into a betrayal of South Dakota values. The puling petulance on the blogosphere defines what those values are in fact.

Daschle's withdrawal from the nomination occasioned great bipartisan elation on the blogosphere, but it leaves 50 million people who cannot afford health care with greatly diminished prospects for ever having it available to them. No one possesses the combination of knowledge of health care issues and the skill to guide real reform through Congress more than Tom Daschle [David Newquist, "When Political Games Displace Work," Northern Valley Beacon, 2009.02.07].

Let's get our eyes back on the ball. Love him or hate him, the Tom Daschle story doesn't amount to a hill of beans next to the impact spiraling health insurance costs are having on the economy and our fellow Americans.

While I'm thinking of it, Assurant just jacked up my premium at a 17% annual rate. That means my family will spend a thousand dollars more this year on health insurance, money on which, if we stay healthy, we will get no direct return. That also means we will spend a thousand dollars less at the lumberyard, the bookstore, and Dairy Queen (sorry, DeLon!).

If you're worried about the economy, you should be worried about health care. High premiums and inefficient for-profit health insurance is a huge drag on the economy. We don't have time for political games; we need health care reform now.

Janklow on Daschle: "What Else Do People Want?"

I yield the floor to former Governor and Congressman (and convicted felon) Bill Janklow, who can still be one of the straightest shooters in South Dakota politics:

"Tom has been held up to a lot of ridicule. Tom has been held up to a lot of obloquy. He's been held up to a lot of criticism over this but he said he was sorry, what else do people want?" Janklow said.

Janklow thinks it's a mistake that Daschle stepped down because he believes the former senator truly wanted to help make a difference in healthcare.

"The news says he's making $2 to $5 million a year. He's going to walk away from that to go make $150,000 a year. Why? Because it's something he liked doing," Janklow said [Ben Dunsmoor, "Janklow Reacts to Daschle's Withdrawal," KELOLand.com, 2009.02.03].

Some commenters keep clamoring for a post on Tom Daschle's withdrawal from consideration for Secretary of Health and Human Services. They don't really want to hear my thoughts on the topic; they just want to "generate some Daschle clutter," as one deleted foul-mouthed commenter admitted.

Daschle has no one to blame for this political defeat but himself and his accountant. But his loss is also our loss, as Daschle was the right man for the job of moving health care reform through Congress. It's also made South Dakota look bad, giving commentators the opportunity (as I heard on NPR Tuesday) to suggest South Dakotans are unsophisticated rubes who can't handle finances more complicated than a 1040EZ.

The only victors in Daschle's defeat are the political grandstanders who have no interest in or capacity for intelligent discussion of health care policy and reform. They are more interested in scoring points in the very childish game they make of politics.

Sunday Conversation: Daschle, Dobson, and Loving Thy Neighbor

An eager reader keys this sincere response to my earlier commentary on Secretary-Nominee Tom Daschle and the possibility of promoting family values through universal health coverage:

I read your article on Daschle Will Reform Healthcare and Family Values. I just want to say that I feel like you are not accurate about Focus on the Family and Dr. Dobson’s intentions. The thing is, sadly, the government is “not so good” at supplying health care. (If you know a Veteran, or had to help a Vet get healthcare, you would know.) My Father is a WWII 91 year old vet and he has to “still fight” to get coverage. My sister has taken over this task and it is almost a full time job. I believe that Conservative people are just concerned it will be “worse health care” and not better, and that is why they speak against governmental health care.

Dr.Dobson truly does love people, he has spent years studying psychology and he is a Christian, the last thing he wants for people is to ‘hurt’ them, this is why he fights for family values as he is trying to fight for what he knows really works for people. If you got on his site you would see there are groups for all kinds of people to get counseling and help with every day issues. He is against abortion because he believes every human deserves to have “life”, you can understand that I am sure. And on top of it, the procedure is beyond horrible, surely any caring human would not be ‘okay’ with it being done for reasons of birth control.

Anyway, I do hope that Mr. Daschle and all others do come up with a great plan, but history proves this does not work (governmental health care) just look at what is happening in Massachusetts where they have tried this program… it is a disaster. Those who speak against government healthcare ‘do’ care about people, they want them to be able to make their own choice of doctors, care, etc.

Thanks for listening....

I offer the following reply:

Thanks for reading and even more for taking the time to respond. I appreciate good conversation.

I maintain a respectful disagreement with your views on government health coverage and on the political focus of Focus on the Family. I would note first that neither or nor the incoming Obama administration are aiming for government-run health care. My preference, at least, is for government health coverage: we keep going to our same doctors and hospitals; those doctors and hospitals simply send the bill to Uncle Sam, just as they do in Canada, France, and several other countries. (If history "proves" government health coverage doesn't work, nearly every other industrialized country is not listening... or suffering.)

I've seen government coverage at work in Canada. They may not have gold-plated insurance policies for the wealthiest purchasers, but they have universal access to good health care for every citizen. My wife and I have friends who have been visiting Canada, suffered an injury, and were in and out of the hospital for treatment in no time, with no paperwork. We can't get treatment like that here.

Universal coverage is simply the logical extension of insurance. We join insurance plans to pool resources; the best, most efficient insurance would pool the resources of every American. Compare the overhead of Medicare (3%) to the overhead of private insurance plans (20-30%). I would rather pay $3000 a year in additional taxes to the government and see $2910 of that money go for actual medical expenses than pay $3000 a year for private insurance, see only $2100 of that money go toward medical expenses while the rest pays for executive bonuses and yachts, and pay higher deductibles and receive less coverage to boot.

We also pool coverage because we want to help others. If you and I are part of an insurance plan, I don't want to turn on you and deny you coverage just when you need it most, when you find you have MS or cancer or suffer complications from pregnancy. But our private insurance company would do just that, rejecting you or making your premiums prohibitively expensive. Neighbors don't treat each other like that. Government health coverage would let us treat each other like neighbors.

I won't delve into my theological problems with Dr. Dobson -- I'll simply say that I live with an actual theologian, so I know Dr. Dobson's interpretation of Christianity has some errors. In general, Focus on the Family seems not to focus on real family issues that affect everyone every day. It seems there are a raft of issues that Christians could rally to address (corporate greed, pollution, poverty, disease, sexism, rape) that would do much more to promote the actual economic and moral condition of families than the the focus on the typical social hot-button issues of abortion and homosexuality.

We're one nation. We've got to work together to solve problems. I happen to think we can do more practical good by working together on health care.

Sincerely,
Cory Allen Heidelberger
Madville Times

Daschle Will Promote Health Reform and Family Values

Cue the one-note chorus from Colorado Springs...

The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, chaired by Ted Kennedy, hears testimony from Health and Human Services Secretary-Nominee Tom Daschle today. This isn't a confirmation hearing, but it signals the high priority that both Congress and the Obama Administration plan to give to serious health care reform this year.

The prominence of health care on Washington's radar even in the midst of the economic mess should give hope to many Americans (the uninsured, those facing bankruptcy from medical bills, those of us with high-deductible plans that don't cover maternity...).

Leave it to Focus on the Family to try taking everyone's eyes off the ball. Denise Ross (who has some medical bills coming up soon—congratulations and best wishes for a smooth delivery, Denise!) points us toward a screed from the Dobson wolf-PAC exhorting voters to call the senators on the HELP committee and tell them to vote against Daschle's nomination. "Tom Daschle is a disaster appointment," says blogger Jill Stanek in the post. "Daschle ardently supports abortion... and he disdains abstinence education." FotF's Ashley Horne adds, "Citizens who care about family values should be concerned about Daschle's nomination."

Family values? I got your family values right here. While Jom Dobson's minions bloviate, Joe and Missy Urbaniak are fighting to pay their son Cooper's medical bills. Doctors have removed brain and spine tumors from the three-year-old boy, and now say he needs high-dose chemo and a stem-cell transplant. Cost; $400,000. Their insurer, Sanford Health Plan, is refusing to pay for the treatment, saying it's "experimental." A similar treatment worked for a Wisconsin boy, whose family also had to take their insurer to court to get coverage (the family won). The Urbaniaks' lawyer, Mike Abourezk, notes Sanford appears to be doing a selective reading of the medical studies on the treatment, citing only the parts that uphold their rejection [details in "Family Fights for Boy's Cancer Care," Mitchell Daily Republic, 2009.01.07].

Tom Daschle is coming to Washington to work on health care reform that would help Cooper Urbaniak and millions of other Americans get affordable health care without having to take big corporations to court. That sounds like a focus on the family to me. But you won't hear a word about that from the one-note chorus from Colorado Springs.

Jill Stanek claims, "The only reason Obama appointed Daschle was to assure Obama’s radical support of the abortion industry would be extended through HHS." That's absurd. But Focus on the Family needs to believe that absurdity. The radical right must cast every government action as part of a war on family values; otherwise, their raison d'être (and raison de fundraising) disappears.

Part of me wishes Jim Dobson would just accept his irrelevance. But another part me hopes he keeps up the nuttery. The more Focus on the Family brays, the more Americans will see the difference between fighting a contrived culture war (that's Dobson's need) and solving practical policy problems (that's Obama and Daschle's plan).

If you really value families, call your senators, and tell them to give two thumbs up to Tom Daschle and health care reform.

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Update 10:47 CST: Obama didn't pick Daschle because of abortion. He picked Daschle because Daschle knows how to pass legislation. See this smart piece by Carrie Budoff Brown, "Daschle's Approach: Anything But Clinton," in today's Politico.com.

Public Single-Payer: Health Insurance the Way It Should Be

What do my wife and I do on New Year's Eve? Think up e-mails on the need for universal health coverage to send to Tom Daschle and the Obama Administration. Here's a message I just submitted through Change.gov. Mr. Daschle, pay attention!

To Secretary-Nominee Tom Daschle:

A friend of ours told us about the hard times her sister and brother-in-law have hit. She is recovering from breast cancer and still undergoing some treatments. Her husband just received a heart transplant Christmas Eve. He has lost his job, because, of course, he missed a lot of work. He has thus also lost his health insurance. Chances of finding an affordable policy that won't exclude either him or his wife are slim to none. His employer-based health plan covered the transplant, but how they'll pay for the follow-up medicines and treatments is anyone's guess.

It occurred to us that if insurance worked the way it was supposed to—a bunch of us pool our money to take care of the few of us each year who will need health care, in return for the promise that if something bad happens to us, we'll be covered—these folks wouldn't have to worry. If they were in my insurance pool, I'd never deny them coverage. I'd say, "You can't work right now? No problem, neighbor. Come in the pool, we'll cover you, and then when you and your wife are better and can contribute to the pool, we'll expect you to help us if we're in a bind."

Why can't we do that? Because we, the insurance purchasers who provide private insurance companies with their capital, aren't the real stakeholders. Private investors buy stocks in health insurance companies, creating a distinct and conflicting interest group. We join the insurance pool for it to function; private investors buy stock in hopes that it won't function (i.e., won't pay out for health care).

I want my health care dollars to go toward health care, toward helping my neighbors, not toward profit. Health insurance should be one giant public pool in which every American pledges to help protect every other American (and anyone else who happens to be our guest).

Single-payer not-for-profit health care: it's decent, it's practical, and it's how insurance is supposed to work.

As we see from the case of of the couple paying bills for breast cancer and a heart transplant, it doesn't make sense to tie health insurance to jobs. You don't deserve health care because you are a good employee. You deserve health care because you are human.

Similar conversation about both the morality and practicality of universal health coverage was on MPR's Midmorning with Kerri Miller yesterday. Give it a listen, then get hold of Tom Daschle yourself and tell him to do health care reform right.

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Update 2009.01.02: See more reader response at TPMCafé!

All I Want for Christmas Is Health Reform...

Kids say the darndest things...

While judging the U.S. Extemp final at the Bell Debate Tournament last Friday, I heard one student channel Sibby and cry socialism over Daschle's coming health reforms. She gave an impassioned speech, which usually wins points in my book, but she got so wrapped up in warning us of the Red Menace—something about how the free market and consumers have pulled us out of every previous economic valley and how Daschle now wants to throw rocks down at us—that she forgot to give any specifics of what kind of health reform Daschle and his boss plan to bring us.

We don't know yet what form the Daschle-Obama health plan will take, though I will continue to urge the incoming HHS Secretary to stop by Dennis Kucinich's office on his listening tour.

The one concrete point the young made in her extemp speech before rocketing off into Sibby-Silly Land was that Daschle might not be able to get any health reform done due to the burgeoning Bush deficit and the further economic stimulus Team Obama will have to implement to get us out of the recession. On that note, Howard Gleckman at the Tax Policy Center points out another key player in the Obama Administration who is focused on the cost side of health reform:

Can we do reform without worrying about cost? Serious analysts, including Jennings, Feder, and Rother, know we cannot. And so does Peter Orszag, who Obama will name to run OMB. Orszag, currently CBO director, has made cutting medical costs his crusade for the past couple of years.

In what will likely be an environment of mind-numbing deficits, health costs will matter more than ever. Reform cannot be just about covering the uninsured, which is relatively easy. It also means reducing the unnecessary and wasteful spending that Orszag says inflates the nation’s health care bill by one-third, or almost $700 billion annually [Howard Gleckman, "Will Recession Make Health Reform Easier for Obama?" Tax Vox, 2008.11.24].

What's that? I thought America's vaunted free market health system was all about efficiency. Silly me.

I've also heard opponents of socialized medicine fret that if the government paid for health care, everyone would rush to the hospital and overutilize medical resources.... because going to the hospital is so darn fun. Right. That's why we see rich people spending all their vacation time getting knee operations and chemotherapy.

Anyway, Gleckman suggests overutilization is actually a problem of America's private system:

Today, we grossly misallocate health care dollars. Some of us get far too many, others not nearly enough. In the end, slowing medical cost growth will mean rationing care in a more, um, rational way. It will mean that somebody—insurance companies, government, and ultimately doctors themselves—will have to tell patients that exercise and pain management may be more appropriate than back surgery, or that they may not get costly drugs that may extend their life by only a few months. Comparative effectiveness research that looks at the benefits of specific treatments is all the rage now. We are still a long way from turning this analysis into a real decision-making tool. However, the far bigger challenge will be convincing consumers to accept the consequences.

If we are going to have health reform, especially in the face of massive deficits, Obama’s most important job may be to get Americans to change the way they think about medical care. More, we must all learn, is not always better.

As Daschle has said, we already ration health care, and we do it in the least rational way possible, based on ability to pay. And that leads us to the paradoxical situation where we spend more and get less.

I hope the student I judged last weekend will recover from the lump-of-coal-like ballot I gave her and bulk up the health care folder in her extemp file. I also hope we can all carry some Christmas spirit over into the New Year, apply it to health reform, and bring some comfort and joy to our fellow man with a single-payer, not-for-profit national health coverage system.

Daschle at HHS: Serious Budget Clout

President-Elect Barack Obama officially announces his appointment of former South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle to head the Department of Health and Human Services. [Photo by Jim Wilson, New York Times, 2008.12.11]

If we measure the power of a government official by the amount of money that official is in charge of, we could argue that President-Elect Obama just officially appointed South Dakota boy Tom Daschle the most powerful man in the Cabinet. Dsachle's soon-to-be bailiwick, the Department of Health and Human Services, spends just about one out of every four federal dollars.

Compare the budgets for HHS with Defense, State, Commerce, and everything else run from DC, and you'll see HHS actually takes the biggest single chunk of the federal budget. So by raw dollars, Secretary Daschle will have more power than Secretary Robert Gates at Defense. He'll be much more powerful than Secretaries Clinton, Richardson, and Napolitano combined. The only Cabinet position with more dollar oomph might be Secretary Geithner at Treasury, although all those bailout dollars are just figments of bookkeepers' imaginations, right? (Random note: maybe it's time to just give up on bailouts and let the economy sort things out?)

That's a lot of money, Tom, and a lot of responsibility. Use it well... and get us a single-payer system!

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Speaking of which, my correspondents often claim that America's health care system is great because we don't ration health care the way those socialists in Canada and Europe do. Ah, but Daschle says America does ration health care:

Mr. Daschle brings a kind of moral passion to the campaign for universal coverage. Health care, he says, is rationed on “the worst possible criteria: one’s ability to pay or one’s health condition" [emphasis mine; Robert Pear, "Daschle Will Lead Health Care Overhaul," New York Times, 2008.12.11].

Looks like Daschle will overhaul health care as well as the rhetoric the right uses to defend our failing private health coverage system. You tell 'em Tom!

Daschle and Obama to Push Universal Health Coverage? Let's Hope So!

I've had one face-to-face conversation with Tom Daschle. August 15, 2003, the Senate Minority Leader came to Madison and threw a picnic at Westside Park. In his remarks to the well-fed crowd, Senator Daschle mentioned health care. I had just discovered Dennis Kucinich and his argument that universal health coverage, Medicare for all, would actually save money. I wanted to know what the most powerful South Dakotan in the world at that moment had to say about single-payer, not-for-profit health insurance.

So I got in line with my neighbors to shake Senator Daschle's hand and see if he'd have time for a question. I thought maybe Daschle's Spidey-sense would detect my Republican registration (yup, I hadn't converted yet in 2003) and he would give me a quick hi-how-are-ya and move on.

Instead, after I opened with an invite for Daschle to come back and judge the State Debate Tournament (hey! offer remains open!) Daschle spent a good five minutes, maybe more responding to my questions about health care. On that hot summer evening, he said:

• A single-payer system was politically unsellable.
• The closest doable compromise system was a system of regional pools.
• The larger the risk pool the better; a nationwide risk pool would be best.

Daschle expressed no fears about a national health care system; he spoke favorably of the systems in other countries, citing the example of his son-in-law, who broke his arm in Germany and was able to get it treated without cost or paperwork. He noted that America had the highest health care expenditures in the world as well as terribly inefficient delivery of those services.

When I asked if we would be going too far if we declared health care a fundamental human right, he said no, with the qualification that we need to define exactly what health care we consider necessary in order to avoid overutilization of the system.

That was five years ago. Senator Daschle is about to become Secretary of Health and Human Services in a Democratic administration with a Democratic Congress. I would suggest that the political sellability of health care reform has changed. To wit:

• Senator Edward Kennedy has announced plans to introduce universal health care legislation in 2009 and has created three working groups headed by Senators Harkin, Mikulski, and Clinton to work on key issues.
• As Ezra Klein notes (hat tip to Professor Blanchard!), you don't pick a former Senate Majority Leader to run a bureaucracy. You pick him to help get a big reform plan through the Senate.
• GM spends more on health care than on steel. If GM and the other automakers can't get a straight bailout (and they shouldn't), but a federal plan to relieve them of their health care expenses could save them from bankruptcy and restore their cost-competitiveness with foreign automakers... none of whom are burdened with health care costs. Universal health care could be just the stimulus package every big business needs to free up capital and save jobs.

TPM's Greg Sargent says Daschle believes we need comprehensive, not incremental reform. A lot of Americans fed up with long waits, constant billing errors, and unaffordable, unportable coverage would agree.

My conservative friends are probably thinking, "Oh my goodness—Obama mght actually try to pass universal health care." This diehard Dennis Kucinich fan is saying the exact same thing... but with a tingly sense of wonder and a readiness to fight for it.

Tom, Ted, Barack—you have a moment in history, an opportunity to rally the country behind a great moral and practical reform that will save money and lives. Steam train a-comin'—Dennis, dust off HR 676! Single-payer, not-for-profit health coverage: let's make it happen!

Obama SF Rally: Daschle Primes the Crowd

McGovern delivered the benediction; now Daschle takes the stage to pump up the crowd. Podium gone, he's working the stage (and making the KELO cameraperson earn her/his pay). Policywise, Daschle notes his current policy focus, health care, and says Obama is the one to bring everyone quality, affordable coverage. He also says Obama will make it possible to pay teachers what they deserve (no mention of Obama's plan to take over the South Dakota Legislature to make that happen -- that part is up to us, I think!), tackle environmental issues, even reform government-to-government relations with the tribes.