Congress

 EASTSOUND, ORCAS ISLAND – Everyone knows Washington’s budget crunch is going to be really severe come next spring. But it wasn’t until I heard state Sen. Kevin Ranker’s take on the situation the other day – complete with new numbers – that I realized how impossible it will be to realistically expect money for enhanced environmental protections in 2011.

Addressing members of the volunteer but quasi-governmental Marine Resource Committees of north Puget Sound counties, the San Juan County Democrat laid out in stark terms why it will be so hard to cut $5 billion from a $31 billion state budget. That alone would represent a 16 percent reduction from an already-decimated budget. But it’s actually worse than it sounds. Much, much worse.

Here’s why: Of that $31 billion, some $23 billion comes from categories that can’t really be reduced, Ranker said: debt service, Medicaid, prisons, pensions, transportation, the capital budget and the constitutionally protected state contribution to public education. (Now, the Sunday Seattle Times seemed to anticipate efforts to make some fairly substantial cuts there anyway. Ranker seemed to have access to newer and scarier numbers, though.)

What does that leave? Three areas get the remaining $8 billion of the state budget: Higher education, government services and natural resources (a.k.a. environment). “Government services” sounds like a likely place to cut until you understand that it includes money for senior citizens, health care, the needy and so forth.

 So $5 billion – and it could grow to $5.2 billion, Ranker says – is supposed to be cut out of $8 billion for those three areas. Ugly, ugly, ugly.

Said Ranker:

Suppose an industry could profit by filing a lawsuit judged to be thoroughly without merit. That’s pretty much what critics say the Bush administration let the U.S. timber industry get away with. Now eight members of Congress from the Pacific Northwest are asking Congress's investigative arm,  the Government Accountability Office, to look into the deal.

It’s an enormously complicated story that I detailed for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. But essentially it comes down to this:

The U.S. timber industry filed charges against the Canadian timber industry in international trade courts. The Americans alleged the Canadians were getting unfair government subsidies.  The Americans lost at nearly every turn. But the U.S. timber industry – as it increased costs to American consumers – was bleeding the Canadian timber-cutters dry. How? With tariffs that boosted the price of Canadian timber on this side of the border.

Then, facing the prospect of endless appeals by the Americans, the desperate Canadians -- who had seen mills go dark and were starved for cash -- agreed to a really unusual deal, as international trade pact settlements go: The Bush administration offered to send back to Canada the $5 billion in tariffs collected -- so long as the Canadians agreed to then send $1 billion back across the border, with most of it going to the U.S. timber industry or to non-profit groups with ties to the U.S. industry.

With a couple of Washington and Oregon state cheese recalls fresh in our memories this month, and a history of fatal E. coli poisoning that swept through a Washington state fast food chain in the 1990s, we should pay attention to a new report that food-borne illnesses such as E. coli and salmonella cost this country $152 billion annually in health care and other losses.

The report, from the Pew Charitable Trusts, is much higher than the earllier figure of $35 billion reported by the Agriculture Department in 1997. The illnesses sicken some 76 million people annually.

Include in that list a college student from South Carolina, hospitalized for a week in May after developing an E. coli 0157 infection from eating a bite of packaged chocolate chip cookie dough. That strain of bacteria can cause severe illness, kidney failure and even death. The suspected source of contamination: flour, and the company, Nestle, recalled the refrigerated product after illnesses in 28 states, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Not all are so lucky as college student Margo Moskowtiz. The government estimates that 5,000 of those who become ill die.

New food-safety legislation would give the federal Food and Drug Adminstration new powers to enforce food safety laws and prevent food contamination. The House has passed a new food safety bill, and the measure awaits a full vote in the Senate.

Op-ed by Mark Trahant

What is the business model for the Indian health system?

On the surface this is a preposterous question because the U.S. government promised to fund the health care needs for American Indians and Alaskan Natives. It’s also supposed to be a simple business: Congress funds the system (the Indian Health Service, tribal contract facilities and urban programs), the agency spends that budget, and patients are treated.

But that’s why the question is not outlandish. The Indian health system has never had enough money – and therefore it’s essential to secure as many resources as possible in order to effectively treat the most patients.

“As we look at the Indian Health Service, we need to think of it as a business,” said Yvette Roubideaux, M.D., director of the Indian Health Service. “A lot of people think of the Indian Health Service as a service. It’s a service that provides health care to American Indians and Alaskan Natives. People who work in IHS think of their positions not just as jobs, but also as something important personally. Many people feel like they are on a mission working for the Indian Health Service – and I think that’s great. But I also think we have to recognize that we are a health care system – and that we’re a business. We have to look at how we run our organization, to improve the way we do business.”

Roubideaux calls this “Internal IHS Reform.” She began the business case by gathering data, listening to tribes and IHS employees.

Op-ed by Mark Trahant

I started my exploration of health care reform in July.

“The federal government accepts a double standard: Any discussion about rationing – or government care – is off the table unless you’re a member of an American Indian tribe or Alaskan Native community with a sort of pre-paid insurance program (many treaties, executive orders and laws were specific in making American Indian health care a United States’ obligation),” I wrote back then.

Six months later – or half way into this project – I am struck by how Indian Country is both a part of the health care debate and yet absent from its larger discussion.

We’re part of the conversation every time critics blast the Indian Health Service as a failure of government. We’re also included in the larger reform measure – the Indian Health Care Improvement Act – was added to the larger bill. That’s a good thing because this bill (unlike the original) has been awfully difficult to move through the Congress.

But we’re absent from the conversation because neither the Congress nor the Executive Branch has articulated what lessons can be learned from the history and experience of the Indian health system as it applies to the larger issue of health reform. It’s particularly frustrating to watch the politicians who are quick to point out the weaknesses of that system even though they have never proposed adequate funding or the dreaded idea of rationing.

Consider how the money question goes beyond Indian Country: If the federal government can’t deliver on this one, relatively small promise, how is it going to make good on remaking one-sixth of the economy in a few thousand pages of legislation?

The United Nations' refusal to accredit InvestigateWest journalsts to cover the global climate-change negotiations today in Copenhagen took up way too much of my day. How ridiculous! The UN, which can't even figure out how to open up to independent journalists the corridors outside where actual decisions are made* ... is going to be running an international treaty? One that likely will engender massive worldwide economic and energy-use changes?

Anyway, to recap the most important development in the climate story on this side of the Atlantic today, the Obama administration announced it would be treating greenhouse gases as pollutants. I first saw it on the front page of The Wall Street Journal this morning, and further checking suggests the Journal got the jump on others on this story (with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers' positions both mentioned before the jump).

Now, this is anything but unexpected. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced  months ago the agency would be taking the step it did today, which puts EPA on the path to regulating carbon dioxide and methane and the whole shootin' match as if they were, oh, say, benzene. The EPA was more or less obligated to do this by a 2007 court decision.

Jackson said nothing about today's announcement when she was in Seattle Friday.

[caption id="attachment_4715" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Seems the folks at Greenpeace were also focused on December. Photo courtesy Greenpeace."][/caption]

Well, President Obama should be landing in Copenhagen right around now. His mission: bring the Olympics to Chicago.

There's another job he has that even the president would admit is a lot more important. Sure would be good to see him arriving in Copenhagen in December.

Congress: Are you listening?

-- Robert McClure