A new day: immigration and health care
I really ought to be going to sleep right now--I've been up since early this morning, and need to be up in just a few hours again for work. But I thought it'd be best to get my thoughts down while the figurative iron is still hot.
A lot has happened in the last twenty-four hours.
This morning, I led worship at Sojourners/Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform's prayer service. It was an honor for me to sing the songs of God with the people of God, including guests from Washington state, California, New York, Arizona and a crew from Wheaton College who'd driven through the night to get here.
In the afternoon, I headed down to the National Mall for March FOR America, a massive rally--somewhere between 100,000 to 500,000, depending on who you ask--in support of just and humane immigration reform, which was preceded by a stirring interfaith service (also on the Mall).
To walk through the throngs of people of all different ages and colors, immigrants or descended from immigrants or friends of immigrants, was a glimpse for me of the vision in Revelation 7:9, where "there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages." In that vision, every knee bowed before the Lamb. In this present, people came together to show their commitment and support for comprehensive immigration reform, for just and humane legislation that kept families together. In standing with my immigrant brothers and sisters, in sharing our stories and our energy, in hearing not only Members of Congress but President Obama as well reaffirm their commitment to passing comprehensive immigration reform this year, my spirit was stirred and greatly encouraged.
(For a summary of the current state of our immigration system, check out this excellent piece from the Immigration Policy Center.)
And tonight, I saw history made as Congress passed comprehensive health care reform that provides coverage for 32 million more Americans and reduces the deficit by over $100 billion over the next 10 years and $1.3 trillion over the next 20 years. Which seems pretty win-win for me. It is not a perfect bill; it will require adjustments and tweaks. But it is a step, and a good step. As the President said in his address, shortly before midnight, "This isn’t radical reform, but it is major reform. This legislation will not fix everything that ails our health care system, but it moves us decisively in the right direction."
(See news coverage from the NY Times, BBC News and Al Jazeera. And for a summary of what the bill does, you can check out CNN.)
One of the most striking moments, though, was an unexpected one. My friend Liz, who is one of my favorite people in the world and a kindred spirit on so many levels, posted on her Facebook status that today's health care vote meant that her fiancé could never be denied health insurance on the basis of his diabetes. And that brought it home for me. I know the power of story; I recognize that statistics only go so far in a persuasive argument; I appreciate the importance of putting a face to every single number. I've helped people share their stories and heard many of them. But Liz's joy brought joy to me on a very personal level.
Yes, we can.
UPDATE (3/22/10): Here are 10 immediate benefits of the health care legislation.
Increased health coverage decreases abortion rate
As abortion is once again an issue for debate in the current health care bill--does it or doesn't it allow funding of abortions? I'd argue that the more relevant and useful question is whether or not it reduces abortions. Science, data, statistics, facts--whatever you want to call them--answer in the affirmative.
So let's pass this bill and start bringing down the number and rate of abortions.
Please.
[Notwithstanding the fact that the bill very clearly doesn't include federal funding of abortion. Sigh ...]
Jon Stewart on the Health Care Summit
As always, he puts it better than me. Plus, he's funnier:
Today’s Health Care Summit
So today's SEVEN hour health care summit is over. I had it on in the background for the first three hours. And then it was the lunch break. And I didn't come back. Coz I figured I could get a pretty good summary later on. (And I can. See Politico, HuffPo's live-blog coverage, and the BBC. Chris Cilizza of the Washington Post listed his winners and losers. More importantly, 
you can find White House pictures of the event here, and FactCheck.org's invaluable truth-telling here.)
From what I saw, far too many were trotting out tired old talking points, talking at each other rather than with each other, trying to score political points or to posture for their viewing audience. The President was at his community-organizer-best, trying to find common ground, trying to get people to cooperate and coordinate their efforts. But I have a feeling that, even though there is much in the present bill that Republicans agree upon, they've dug themselves into their positions to such an extent--both sides have, actually--that it's too difficult to climb out and work together. And that's one of the things that frustrates me about politics.
Anyway, it seems that the President has set an Easter deadline (or target, depending on how you want to look at it) for health care reform to pass. Which means we have four weeks to get this thing done. What happens if nothing gets passed? I dunno ... the millions of people without health insurance will continue to go without health insurance, insurance premiums will continue to go up, health care spending will continue to explode our deficit, and America will continue to be the only industrialized country where people can go bankrupt because they got sick.
That's all.
The stimulus, health care and progress
According to the latest CNN poll, nearly three out of four Americans think that at least half the money spent in the $787 billion federal stimulus package was wasted. Now according to Recovery.gov and ProPublica, it's actually more like $792 billion plus change. The stimulus spending in progress is reported in full on those two sites, but here's the main breakdown:
Spending totaling $580 billion, of which:
- $172 billion has already been paid out.
- $157 billion is in the process of being paid out.
- $251 billion has yet to be paid out.
Tax cuts totaling $212 billion, of which:
- $93 billion has already been issued.
- $119 billion has yet to be issued.
So actually, less than half of the stimulus package has even been paid out, let alone wasted, unless you want to call sitting around waiting to be paid out "waste," which is a little presumptuous. I think those who actually want to know where all the money is going can find out pretty easily with a spot of research.
A large part of the problem seems to be that, as Joe Klein writes (albeit a little more inflammatorily), people don't really know where the money's going; and for this the Administration deserves some blame for not being clearer and actually being rather rubbish at publicizing this (beyond those signs you see here and there letting you know where your stimulus money is at work). And the second part is that the stimulus package is being spent veeeeeeeeeery sloooooooooowly. Of course, this may be due to a lack of projects in which to invest, but still ...
Which leads me to (a) this very helpful (albeit slightly sarcastic) 16-step guide to help people--specifically, those who oppose health-care reform and the stimulus and tax cuts and ... well, most everything on the President's agenda--understand why they should actually support health-care reform and the stimulus and tax cuts and ... well, most everything on the President's agenda; (b) this very helpful (and less sarcastic) graphic from National Geographic, which I posted yesterday illustrating how freaking much Americans spend on health care--you knew that we weren't the best at everything in the whole wide world already, right?
I've been somewhat frustrated by the lack of progress in the last year. There've been little victories--SCHIP, equal pay for women, a moratorium on torture, an openness and humility in our foreign policy, to name but a few--but on bigger things such as health care, immigration, climate change, we've yet to see significant progress in reforming broken systems, revising unjust legislation and making wise decisions for long term stability and economic security.