Arizona contemplates more Death Panels

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Ariz. looks to cut more health care program funding

The Associated Press | Posted: Tuesday, December 14, 2010 11:10 am

Cash-short Arizona's budget troubles could put the state's Medicaid program on the chopping block again, with the possibility of hundreds of thousands of low-income people losing their government-funded health care.

Gov. Jan Brewer and the Republican-led Legislature have already cut payment rates for care providers and reduced services, including some medical transplants, but Brewer spokesman Paul Senseman said the program's costs remain "the largest single state budget problem that we're dealing with."

The Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System accounts for nearly a third of the state budget, providing coverage for approximately 1.4 million Arizonans, or about one in five,

Federal stimulus funding that has helped prop up state spending is drying up, and lawmakers won't have it when they begin work on a state budget for the next fiscal year.

That has Brewer and Republican legislative leaders eying a slightly smaller version of an AHCCCS cut they included in a budget-balancing plan for the current fiscal year. It would have eliminated coverage for up to 310,000 people now provided Medicaid coverage under an eligibility expansion approved by voters in 2000. That expansion raised Arizona's eligibility level above the federal minimum.

The eligibility cut was erased from the budget about a month last spring because the federal health care overhaul enacted in the meantime requires the state to maintain its Medicaid eligibility at early 2010 levels.

Now, with the flow of stimulus cash about to cease, an eligibility reduction is back on the drawing board for Arizona.

"This is crunch time," said Laura Tobler, a National Conference of State Legislatures health care policy analyst.

Arizona, like many other states, has already cut payment rates for providers and reduced services - to great controversy in the case of transplant funding eliminated Oct. 1 by Arizona. But the state still projects a $1.4 billion shortfall in the next budget.

Brewer said last week she'll ask the Obama administration for a waiver to permit the eligibility reduction. She's also urging the state's congressional delegation for federal legislation to loosen federal health care mandates and participating in a multistate lawsuit challenging the entire health care overhaul.

"We need flexibility from the federal government in order to get our state budget in line," Brewer said.

If those strategies don't work, Arizona should approve the eligibility cut to save a projected $750 million but also enact spending cuts in other programs that would take effect if the eligibility cut is blocked, said House Appropriations Chairman John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills.

"They would be everywhere, including education. That's the doomsday scenario."

Tim Schmaltz, a spokesman for a coalition of social-service advocacy groups, called the possible reduction of AHCCCS enrollment outrageous and irresponsible.

"How do you abandon several hundred thousand people's health care? It's just bad economics, and certainly it's bad for people," Schmaltz said.

Schmaltz said the state could pay for health care by getting more tax revenue by eliminating current sales tax exemptions for some transactions. That idea has been regularly proposed by Democratic lawmakers but never got any serious any traction in the Legislature.

An even drastic step being discussed by some lawmakers is withdrawing from Medicaid altogether, a step that would surrender roughly $7 billion of annual federal funding in favor of setting up a much smaller state-funded program.

"If we're not successful with granting a waiver from the feds, unfortunately other options have to be considered, even poor ones, and opting out of the program altogether and setting up our state program with state dollars is an option," said House Health Committee Chairwoman Nancy Barto, R-Scottsdale.

"It would have horrendous outcomes on Arizona's economy but Arizona is forced to look at these options," she added. "The medical budget is really threatening to overwhelm everything else. It really has to be addressed."

Brewer "is not pursuing" the idea of opting out of Medicaid and instead thinks the solution is to create a program "that is sustainable," Senseman said. "We'd like our policymakers to make the decision what is the right size for our state budget."

Kavanagh said considering a complete pullout from Medicaid reflects "frustration, brinksmanship, wishful thinking" but isn't realistic.

"You're talking about the collapse of $7 billion of medical payments that will cause the collapse of a lot of hospitals and you still have a lot of sick people around," he said.

The Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association declined to make a representative available for an interview by The Associated Press.

But the association said major reductions in AHCCCS eligibility would clog emergency rooms, burden individuals and businesses with higher health care costs and make the state an unattractive place to live and work.

Care providers are already feeling the pinch from the state's reduction of AHCCCS' payment rates. Banner Health Systems, the state's largest hospital system, said it will scrap employee pay raises in 2011, while John C. Lincoln Health Network cited AHCCCS reductions as a factor in closing a hospital's birthing center.

Copyright 2010 Arizona Daily Star. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

What Ike Got Right

December 13, 2010

By JAMES LEDBETTER

LAST week the National Archives released a trove of drafts and notes that shed new light on President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address, in which he warned America about the “military-industrial complex.”

The release comes just in time for the speech’s 50th anniversary next month. And so while scholars and historians use these documents to scrutinize the evolution of the speech’s famous phrase, it’s worth asking a broader question: does America still have a military-industrial complex, and should we be as worried about it as Eisenhower was?

By one measure, the answer to the first question is yes. Over the past 50 years there have been very few years in which the United States has spent less on the military than it did the year before.

This has remained true whether the country is actively fighting a war, whether it has an obvious and well-armed enemy or whether Democrats or Republicans run the White House and Congress. Despite regular expectations that the United States will enjoy a peace dividend, we continue to spend more on the military than the countries with the next 15 largest military budgets combined.

Such perpetual growth seems to confirm Eisenhower’s concern about the size and influence of the military. It used to be, he said, that armies should grow and shrink as needed; in the Biblical metaphor of the speech, he observed that “American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well.”

But World War II and the early cold war changed that dynamic, creating what Eisenhower called “a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.” It is not a stretch to believe that this armaments industry — which profits not only from domestic sales but also from tens of billions of dollars in annual exports — manipulates public policy to perpetuate itself.

But Eisenhower was concerned about more than just the military’s size; he also worried about its relationship to the American economy and society, and that the economy risked becoming a subsidiary of the military. His alarm was understandable: at the time the military represented over half of all government spending and more than 10 percent of America’s gross domestic product.

Today those figures are not quite as troubling. While military spending as a percentage of gross domestic product has been going up as a result of 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the overall trend since 1961 is substantially down, thanks to the tremendous growth in America’s nonmilitary economy and the shift in government spending to nonmilitary expenditures.

Yet spending numbers do not tell the whole story. Eisenhower warned that the influence of the military-industrial complex was “economic, political, even spiritual” and that it was “felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government.” He exhorted Americans to break away from our reliance on military might as a guarantor of liberty and “use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.”

On this score, Eisenhower may well have seen today’s America as losing the battle against the darker aspects of the military-industrial complex. He was no pacifist, but he was a lifelong opponent of what he called a “garrison state,” in which policy and rights are defined by the shadowy needs of an all-powerful military elite.

The United States isn’t quite a garrison state today. But Eisenhower would likely have been deeply troubled, in the past decade, by the torture at Abu Ghraib, the use of martial authority to wiretap Americans without warrants and the multiyear detention of suspects at Guantánamo Bay without due process.

Finally, even if the economy can bear the immediate costs of the military, Eisenhower would be shocked at its mounting long-term costs. Most of the Iraq war expenses were paid for by borrowing, and Americans will shoulder those costs, plus interest, for many years to come.

A strong believer in a balanced budget, Eisenhower in his farewell address also told Americans to “avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow.” Too many of today’s so-called fiscal conservatives conveniently overlook the budgetary consequences of military spending.

Eisenhower’s worst fears have not yet come to pass. But his warning against the “unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex” is as urgent today as ever.

James Ledbetter is the author of the forthcoming “Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex.”

Pence will vote against tax cut deal

By Michael O'Brien - 12/14/10 03:40 PM ET

A top Republican said Tuesday he would vote against President Obama's tax deal when it comes to the House floor. 

Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), the outgoing chairman of the House Republican Conference and a possible candidate for governor or president in 2012, joined the ranks of conservatives who have come out in opposition to the tax-cut plan before Congress.

"At the end of the day, I've just come to the conclusion: the American people did not vote for more stimulus," Pence said on conservative talker Sean Hannity's radio show. "Therefore, I will not vote for this tax deal when it comes to the floor of the House of Representatives."

Pence joins the ranks of conservatives, many of whom have ties to the Tea Party movement, who have opposed the deal. The Indiana Republican echoed their arguments against the bill; Pence said the 13-month extension of unemployment benefits would only bloat the deficit, and that extending the tax rates for only two years wouldn't provide adequate certainty in the markets.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), another opponent of the tax deal, had joined with Pence to float a bill to extend all expiring tax rates permanently. Pence said he would approach the House Rules Committee to inquire about an opportunity to vote on a permanent extension of tax cuts. 

If that doesn't succeed, Pence said he would rather wait for Republicans to take over control of the House on Jan. 5 and address the tax cuts at that point. 

Such a move could create political problems for House Republican leaders, who have more or less embraced the tax deal in its current form. Pence said he had the "highest regard" for fellow members of the leadership, and would know better sometime tomorrow where GOP votes in the House would fall on Obama's tax deal.

How Important is START?

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Five Deficit Reducing Plans Check them out......

Getting Back in the Black





The Moment of Truth


A Plan to Cut Spending and Balance the Federal Budget   

by Chris Edwards,
Director of Tax Policy Studies,
Cato Institute 
November 2010

Debt Reduction Task Force

November 17, 2010

Co-Chair Senator Pete V. Domenici
Senior Fellow, Bipartisan Policy Center
Former Chairman, Senate Budget Committee (R-NM)
Co-Chair Dr. Alice M. Rivlin
Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution
Former Director, Office of Management and Budget, Clinton Administration
Founding Director, Congressional Budget Office
Former Vice Chair, Federal Reserve Boar




Investing in America's Economy  

A single shot at Senate reform

Posted at 10:59 AM ET, 12/14/2010

By Ezra Klein

"Last week, the U.S. Senate failed for the first time in 48 years to pass an annual bill authorizing money for national defense," reports Philip Rucker and David Fahrenthold. But that's not all: Judicial nominations are stopped up. Congress hasn't passed an actual budget for next year. The filibuster is ubiquitous in a way that's not been true at any other point in American history. Rucker and Fahrenthold describe the Senate's problems piquantly: "An institution designed to chew over legislation slowly, refining and moderating bills passed by the House, now routinely chokes on them."

Yesterday, I argued that government is worst where it's not regularly pruned. The tax code is one example, and so is the regulatory state. But perhaps the best example is the Senate's rulebook, which is rarely reformed, and so increasingly misused.

Sen. Tom Udall has a plan to change that. And not just once. Where some senators are arguing for a specific reform to the filibuster, or a new rule on judicial nominations, Udall is arguing for a routine and predictable process whereby the majority will review the rules every two years and be able to change them by a majority vote. He calls it "the Constitutional Option," after the line in the Constitution guaranteeing that "Each House [of Congress] may determine the Rules of its Proceedings."

Udall argues that the Senate's resistance to revising its rulebook has signaled that there'll be no consequences for distorting and misusing the rules. The filibuster, for instance, has gone from a rarely invoked failsafe to a constant. As Rucker and Fahrenthold note, "during Johnson's three terms as majority leader, from 1955 to 1961, there was only one time when a vote was called to break a filibuster. In the past two years, there have been 84."

Udall doesn't want to tie the Constitutional Option to one or another reform. The point is the process, not the policy. He believes that the certainty of reforms will force restraint from the minority, lest the majority change the rules on them, and restraint from the majority, who realizes that the minority might win the next election and exact revenge. This sort of dynamic accountability, he says, is far preferable to a stagnant rulebook where sentences that meant one thing during one period in which certain norms governed the behavior of both parties are being exploited by parliamentary Machiavellians for entirely different purposes in another period with different norms and far more polarization.

For a longer introduction to the Constitutional Option, download this primer. The bottom line, however, is that Democrats are going to have to make a decision on this soon: The Constitutional Option can only be used on the first day of a new Congress. So they've got until early January to decide whether it's time to use it.

By Ezra Klein  | December 14, 2010; 10:59 AM ET

Reid warns: We’ll stretch this lame-duck out until Jan. 5 if we have to

Update: Omnibus-a-palooza!

By Michelle Malkin  •  December 14, 2010 02:36 PM

Scroll for updates…

Whatever it takes, eh, Dingy Harry?

The big buzz in Washington this afternoon is over Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s warning to colleagues that they’ll be working right up until Christmas — and perhaps beyond. Word is that he’ll try to keep the Senate in session until the very last seconds before the new Congress opens on January 5, 2011.

This means more time to pass all the last-ditch political pay-offs and massive expansions of government power, including DADT, the DREAM Act, and a little-noticed land grab omnibus bill which is the subject of my column tomorrow.

WSJ reports on Reid’s last stand.

And more from the National Journal:

Although Senate Democrats have said for weeks that they hope to vote on New START, many observers have doubted that the chamber will act until the next Congress begins in January.

In a floor exchange with Reid today, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said, “I assume all of our member should expect that we will press on this weekend.”

Reid replied, “We need to stay here until we finish.”

Reid wants to pass a tax-deal bill by Tuesday after a cloture vote today, although aides said a final vote might wait until Wednesday.

The Senate must also complete a bill extending government funding past the current continuing resolution’s expiration this weekend. Democrats tentatively expect to take up that bill after the tax measure but said the schedule is fluid.

Time to roll out the cots again…

***

Dems gone wild. Reid and company drop a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill, via Matt Cover at CNSNews.com:

Senate Democrats today introduced a 1,924-page omnibus spending bill for fiscal year 2011, forgoing a planned continuing resolution to fund the federal government until the next Congress could take up the issue after Jan. 3.

The massive bill, the FY2011 Omnibus Appropriations Act, includes funding for the new health care law backed by the Obama administration, an increased number of I.R.S. agents, and an unknown number of earmarks.

The Senate had been scheduled to adjourn on Dec. 17, meaning that unless Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) elects to extend the current session, which he has hinted at doing, the bill theoretically would be voted on in less than three days. Reid has said that Congress could return right after Christmas to finish up legislative business.

The current continuing resolution to keep the government running expires on Dec. 18, meaning that unless new funding is approved — either with another continuing resolution or the omnibus bill — the federal government will be forced to shut down.

The omnibus spending bill is reported to cost $1.1 trillion, according to The Hill.

GOP Sen. Jim DeMint:

Today, U.S. Senator Jim DeMint, chairman of the Senate Steering Committee and member of the Joint Economic Committee, made the following statement after Senate Democrats released a 1,924 page omnibus spending bill with thousands of earmarks attached.

“President Obama and Democrats have apparently learned nothing from this November’s election. This nearly 2,000-page omnibus filled with thousands of earmarks shows they are still determined to ram through as much big-government spending as they can in this lame duck session. Americans loudly demanded an end to the runaway spending, but Democrats are intent on raiding every taxpayer dollar that they can grab from the Treasury on their way out of power. This bill also funds the unconstitutional Obamacare law that Americans oppose and have asked Congress to fully repeal. Democrats haven’t given Republicans or the American people time to read the bill, but I’ll join with other Republican colleagues to force them to read it on the Senate floor.”

Via The Hill, here are Senate Republicans leaning yes. Omnibus-ted!

Despite strong opposition from Thune and Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), several Senate Republicans are considering voting for the bill.

“That’s my intention,” said retiring Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah) when asked if he would support the package.

Bennett said earmarks in the bill might give some of his GOP colleagues reason to hesitate but wouldn’t affect his vote.

“It will be tough for some, but not for me,” he said.

GOP Sens. Kit Bond (Mo.), George Voinovich (Ohio) and Susan Collins (Maine) also told The Hill on Tuesday they would consider voting for the omnibus but want to review it before making a final decision.

***

Dig through the omnibus spending bill here.

James Richardson and RedState readers are on the case:

One commenter, who picked a page at random (877), found that the bill has designated $350 million to create a new “San Francisco Bay Restoration Program.” Others have noted that $413,000 have been appropriated for peanut research in the deep South and nearly $250,000 for virus free wine grapes in Washington State…

According to Sen. John McCain’s office, the legislation includes 6,488 earmarks totaling nearly $8.3 billion. In a speech from the floor of the Senate, McCain blasted the bill, asking is his colleagues if they had been “stricken with amnesia.”

Two More Weeks

— By Kevin Drum

| Tue Dec. 14, 2010 1:45 PM PST

Greg Sargent reports on the latest maneuvering to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell:

The announcement this morning that House Dems will vote on their own stand alone bill to repeal don't ask don't tell catapults the ball back into Harry Reid's court. If repeal is going to have any chance, the Senate Majority Leader needs to indicate right now that the Senate will definitely vote on the stand-alone bill after the House sends it over.

Senate aides involved in the discussions want Reid to make it clear that this vote is a certainty before the end of the lame duck session, not just something on the wish list. They want the White House to urge Reid to commit. They point out that repeal got a major reprieve today, when the House agreed to introduce its own bill — and they want Reid and the White House to capitalize on this momentum.

There are three big things on the liberal wishlist for the remainder of the lame duck session: DADT, New START, and the DREAM Act. I might be wrong about this, but I suspect there's only time for one of them to pass. That being the case, my vote is very strongly in favor of repealing DADT.

There are a few reasons for this. First, if DADT fails now, it's dead for a very long time. With 47 Republicans in the next session of Congress, and probably about the same number for several years to come, there's simply no chance of passing it after the end of the year. It's now or never.

Second, it has the votes to pass. I don't think DREAM does. What's more, to put it bluntly, if I have to choose, I'll choose to expand the civil liberties of fellow American citizens before I'll choose to expand the educational opportunities of immigrants. I know that's a nasty choice, and I'll take both pieces of legislation if I can get them, but I don't think I can.

Finally, when all's said and done, I think New START probably can pass in the next session of Congress. Maybe I'm dreaming here, but New START simply doesn't push Republican hot buttons the same way DADT and DREAM do. Given the enormous support for New START among Republican foreign policy experts, I think it's possible to round up 15 or 20 Republican votes for it next year.

The opposing argument, I suppose, is that DADT is likely to be overturned by the courts even if it fails in Congress. But I'm not so sure about that. A district court might overturn it, and the right circuit court might concur, but I don't have a lot of confidence that the Supreme Court will agree. We have two weeks left to get DADT repealed, and I very much doubt we'll have a second bite at the apple from any branch of the government if we fail.

Pelosi says House will vote Wednesday on 'Don't ask' repeal

By Jordan Fabian - 12/14/10 04:37 PM ET

The House will vote Wednesday on a standalone bill that repeals the military's ban on openly gay service members with the hopes of forcing Senate action this week. 

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced on her Twitter account that the House will take action one day after the "Don't ask, don't tell" repeal bill wasintroduced in the lower chamber. 

"The House will vote on Rep. Patrick Murphy's standalone #DADT repeal bill tomorrow-Senate action on #DADT is long overdue," reads her tweet. 

The standalone bill is widely seen as the last chance Congress has to repeal the ban before the Republicans take control of the House next year. The lame-duck session could end as soon as the end of the week.

But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Tuesday threatened to keep the upper chamber in session after Christmas if work on key issues is not completed before lawmakers leave Washington. Repealing "Don't ask, don't tell" has been a top priority of the Obama administration. 

Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) have introduced a similar bill in the upper chamber.

 

Progress on Climate Fund, but Questions Remain

— By Kate Sheppard

| Tue Dec. 14, 2010 11:09 AM PST

By all accounts, the progress made on climate in Cancun last week was a modest step. At the conclusion of the summit, 193 world leaders formalized an agreement that follows through on some of the commitments they made at the climate summit the year before, but punted a lot of the big questions to the future. Among the more concrete steps was the official creation of a global climate fund—though much of the specifics on that front are also still unclear.

The agreement includes the establishment of a $100 billion fund by 2020 that will help poor countries both adopt clean-energy technologies AND? avoid the carbon-intensive development that got the world stuck in this climate change problem in the first place. The fund would also help those countries adapt to the changes that are already taking place and may be unavoidable in the future.

Developed nations agree to "mobilize" billions of dollars for what has been dubbed the "Green Climate Fund." But one of the key questions still lies in the use of that word, "mobilize." This doesn't just mean that developed countries are going to donate that amount through public funds; given the economic situation many governments are facing right now, few are expecting that to happen. Instead, those funds are probably going to come though more innovative mechanisms.

To address this issue of where those funds could come from, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon earlier this year formed the High-Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing, which was tasked with finding new ways of generating money for the fund. The options the group listed included an emission fee on international aviation and shipping, the revenues from the sale of emission permits, and the removal of subsidies for fossil fuels. But leaders gathered in Cancun didn't really address the question of where the funds would come from in their final agreement. So, right now, the fund is basically an empty account, and developed countries still have to figure out how they're going to put money in it.

Development groups are pleased, however, that they did establish the fund, and that the oversight bodies for it will represent a balance between developing countries and the donors. A transitional committee, which will spend the next year (or more) determining how exactly the fund will work, will represent a realistic balance between the developed/developing world, with a focus on the areas most impacted by climate change. It will have 40 members, 15 from the donor countries and 25 from developing nations, and will include seven members from Africa, seven members from Asia, seven members from Latin America and the Caribbean, two members from small islands, and two members from the bloc of least developed countries. The fund's governing board—the group that will decide how to dole out the funds when it is actually set up—will have 24 members, half each from developing and developed countries.

But there are a couple of big questions and potential issues. One is the role of the World Bank in the fund, as the agreement designates the multinational bank as the interim trustee of the fund. The interim trusteeship is scheduled for review three years after the fund is operational. The United States negotiating team fought to get the World Bank as the trustee, but developing countries aren't particularly enthusiastic about the bank playing any role in the fund. For one, the Bank specializes in loans, rather than donations. And it has a dismal recordon energy financing, most recently backing a massive new coal-fired power plant in South Africa earlier this year.

The World Bank, said Siziwe Khanyile of the Groundwork Project in South Africa in a statement, "should be allowed no role in the delivery of climate finance." "The World Bank has already harmed Africa enough, it cannot be trusted with the responsibility for responding to climate change, which threatens many Africans' very survival," said Khanyile.

There are also concerns about how the money will be spent. The short-term finance that countries have already started providing is going overwhelmingly to mitigation efforts, while just 10 percent is going to adaptation, despite the fact that the expenditures are supposed to be balanced between the two. And there is a good deal of concern that most of the funds are actually just repackaged from other development aid programs rather than representing new and additional spending. An analysis from the World Resources Institute found that many of the pledges made so far are "restated or renamed commitments already made in the past."

That's not to say groups aren't happy that the fund exists; whether it would even get off the ground was in question for most of the two-week negotiations. Its establishment is among the more noteable outcome of the two-week summit.

More Thoughts on Cancun

By Kate Sheppard | Tue Dec. 14, 2010 3:01 PM PST

---

I penned a wrap-up report [1] on the Cancun climate talks in the wee hours of Saturday morning, just before rushing to catch a flight back to the US. Now I've had some time to ponder the agreement.
In short, nearly everyone acknowledges that the broad goals nations agreed to in Cancun, which largely mirror those outlined in the Copenhagen accord [2], fall far short of what is actually needed to avert disastrous impacts of climate change. While leaders have, on paper, committed to limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), the pledges so far [3] won't meet that. Instead, they leave the world [4] on a path to a temperature rise of 3 to 3.9 degrees Celsius—dangerously high for the most vulnerable regions of the world. Meanwhile, small island states and other vulnerable nations are still arguing that 2 degrees is already too much; leaders should aim for 1.5 degrees.
The Cancun agreements also leave some of the thorniest questions about the legal status of international climate deals unanswered. Whether industrialized nations will extend the life of the Kyoto Protocol (excluding, of course, the US, which never ratified it) was a major subject of disagreement [5] at COP16. Japan and Russia said no way, while developing nations have stood firm that dropping the only legally binding instrument to curb emissions would be a deal-breaker for them. There was really no resolution on that issue in Cancun; instead, it was punted to next year's meeting in Durban, South Africa—even closer to the looming 2012 expiration date for the first commitment period for Kyoto. The debate probably isn't going to get any easier in the next 12 months.
I think Sivan Kartha of the Stockholm Environment Institute put it best when he noted that it's not yet clear whether the one-year delay will serve as "a lifeline or a noose" for Kyoto. Unless something changes significantly in the next year, it sure looks to me like the latter. This is largely because there's no real sense yet of where the separate track of negotiations, the one that would bring the US and China, into an agreement is heading in terms of its legal form. As many times as US climate envoy Todd Stern has insisted that the US doesn't have a say on Kyoto, it really does—if only because the tension around it is the fact that there's very little faith globally that the US is going to pass a new domestic climate law and/or ratify a treaty for at least another two years (if ever). So until the legal path of a new agreement takes shape, the fate of Kyoto will continue to plague negotiators.
That said, the outcome in Cancun was, I think, as positive as it could have been given the scaled back expectations. Negotiators accomplished what they set out to at the summit, and 193 of the 194 countries there left satisfied—or at least as satisfied as anyone really can be when you're trying to reach global consensus. But more than the outcome, it was heartening to see negotiators actually happy with the process, especially after the muddled end to the Copenhagen climate talks a year ago. Sure, President Obama and a small group of leaders were able to hash out a deal [6] last year that largely serves as the basis for the Cancun agreement. But it ended in utter chaos—with countries feeling betrayed and shut out, and the body unable to formally adopt the deal. Contrast that to the multiple rounds of standing ovations that the Mexican presidency received Friday night and into Saturday morning and the near-unanimous agreement on adopting the package.
The cheers were more for the process than the substance, but that means something in the context of these climate summits. It's really, really difficult to get the countries of the world to agree to anything. Doing so takes masterful mediators, trust among the parties, and it takes time—probably more time than the pace of climate change really allows us, unfortunately.
I'll have a few more posts in the coming days about specific portions of the Cancun agreement. In the meantime, here are a few other perspectives.

Here's Lisa Friedman reporting for ClimateWire [7]:

Throughout the halls, the mood was a mixture of jubilation and relief. Few cast the Cancun Agreements as major step forward, but most said it did repair the damage done to the U.N. climate negotiations by the chaotic and contentious meeting last year in Copenhagen, Denmark.

"We've definitely exorcised the ghost of Copenhagen," said Alden Meyer, director of policy and strategy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, as he hopped back on crutches from the Moon Palace after the initial vote.

"The emotion is a little ahead of the substance, but that's OK. It's a good night," Meyer said. Angela Anderson, director of the Climate Action Network, called it a Copenhagen "do-over."

Here's what Brad Johnson, of the Center for American Progress's Wonk Room, had to say [8]:

The first lesson of the Cancun talks is that the governments of the world can in fact work together on global warming, even though decoupling civilization from greenhouse pollution is a herculean task. However, the second lesson is that their leadership only gets humanity so far. Only the full mobilization of the present generation can overcome the institutional barriers to change and protect our fragile civilization from the raging climate system our pollution has created. The Cancun compact has restored hope around the world, but now the actual work has to begin.

"It represents a set of modest steps forward," writes Robert N. Stavins [9], director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program. "Nothing more should be expected from this process."
And here's Michael Levi [10] of the Council on Foreign Relations: "Politically, it takes what was a toxic agreement and obtains much more solid buy-in from the most important parties."

 

Audio: Wikileaks and the Cancun Summit

— By Sal Gentile

| Tue Dec. 14, 2010 12:07 PM PST

The US embassy cables released by the whistleblower organization WikiLeaks have rattled diplomats across the globe, revealing an unvarnished look at US foreign policy on a number of issues, from Iran’s nuclear program to relations with China.

But what about climate change?

Just as the United Nations conference on greenhouse gas emissions wraps up in Cancun, new cables have been released that suggest the US may have strong-armed developing countries, such as the Maldives and Saudi Arabia, into signing last year’s climate change accord in Copenhagen. The memos also reveal an astonishing amount of pessimism on the part of some world leaders, such as European Union President Herman Van Rompuy, regarding the chances of success at Copenhagen and Cancun.

The WikiLeaks revelations have prompted charges of "bribery" and "secrecy" at the Cancun conference. To get a sense of how the cables may complicate the negotiations, guest host Sal Gentile spoke with Lisa Friedman, deputy editor of ClimateWire, an online energy publication that covers climate change issues. Friedman has written about the cables, and joined Need to Know by phone from Cancun, where she’s covering the UN conference.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/?powerpress_pinw=5713-podcast
This podcast was produced by Need to Know for the Climate Desk collaboration.

Fourth Amendment Update

— By Kevin Drum

| Tue Dec. 14, 2010 1:26 PM PST

This is good news and bad news:

In a landmark decision issued today in the criminal appeal of U.S. v. Warshak, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the government must have a search warrant before it can secretly seize and search emails stored by email service providers. Closely tracking arguments made by EFF in its amicus brief, the court found that email users have the same reasonable expectation of privacy in their stored email as they do in their phone calls and postal mail.

I assume the good news here is obvious. The bad news is that I had no idea this was even in question. Go ahead, call me an idiot. But I didn't know that the Stored Communications Act or any other act even colorably provided the federal government with the right to retrieve personal email, regardless of where it's stored, without probable cause and a valid search warrant. Jeebus.

Corker assembling bloc to demand reforms ahead of debt vote

By Michael O'Brien - 12/14/10 10:36 AM ET

Republican senator thinks there will be resistance to raising the debt ceiling without spending cuts.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said Tuesday he's hoping to assemble a bloc of senators who will demand tax and spending reforms before agreeing to vote to raise the U.S. debt ceiling next year. 

Corker said he's begun conversations with colleagues looking ahead to a vote next spring on the debt ceiling, a highly anticipated moment that's seen as a possible turning point in the debate over deficits and U.S. debt. 

"I'm already talking to folks on both sides of the aisle," Corker said on CNBC. "I think you're going to see resistance to voting for the debt ceiling increase later this spring without us doing something that is real as it relates to all of these issues you are talking about."

Congress is expected to vote sometime in the first half of next year on legislation to raise the amount of money the government is legally allowed to borrow to finance its deficits. By that point, Republicans will control the House and will have strengthened their numbers in the Senate, and they hope to use the debt ceiling vote as a bargaining chip to secure spending cuts.

"I think there's momentum building for that," the Tennessee senator added. "I'm trying to develop with others a critical mass to make sure that we do not raise the debt ceiling without making sure that we cut expenditures and broaden the base in some way."

The report by President Obama's fiscal commission earlier this month has raised the prospect of tax and spending reforms next year. The president himself has expressed an interest in possible comprehensive tax reform, and the leaders of the House and Senate budget committees are already warning of spending cuts next year. 

The bipartisan support in Congress for elements of the fiscal commission's proposals have bolstered hopes that there might be an appetite for tax and spending reforms in the coming Congress. 

"The debt ceiling, obviously, is going to have to be increased if we're not going to default, so the question is, what do we get in exchange for that, and what kind of fiscal controls?" said Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the incoming chairman of the House budget panel, last week on Bloomberg Television.