Misinformation serves as placebo rather than actually curing our health care system

The Senate Finance Committee held a hearing Tuesday on overhauling the heath care system. Among those testifying was Steven Wojcik (left), vice president of public policy for National Business Group Health.

The country is about to have a very frustrating debate over health care, characterized more by misdirection than an honest discussion of the alternatives.

A good illustration was provided by the Monday confab at the White House, in which health care executives committed to reduce expenditures by $2 trillion over the next decade.

Or did they?

President Obama, in his remarks, said that they did: “They are pledging to cut the rate of growth of national health care spending by 1.5 percentage points each year – an amount that’s equal to over $2 trillion.”

The actual letter signed by the executives, however, says something importantly different:

“We will do our part to achieve your administration’s goal of decreasing by 1.5 percentage points the annual health care spending growth rate – saving $2 trillion or more.”

“Our part” is much different, and far more ambiguous, than “we will do the whole thing.”

This is best seen as collusion by the health care industry and the Obama administration to misdirect the American people.

In the first place, what health care expenditures will be over the next 10 years is unknowable. So, the “pledge” is written on water.

More importantly, the commitment was made by trade associations that don’t actually deliver health care. What happens on the ground with health care costs is unaffected by press events held by politicians and lobbyists.

Most important, what happens on the ground already provides incentives for true economies. There are serious distortions in the health care marketplace, but market share can still be gained by reducing costs and prices.

The real significance of the press event wasn’t the phony pledge of cost savings. The event signaled the political capitulation of the health care industry. They will now accept whatever role in the health care system the politicians assign them.

The more substantive event that happened that day was the release of an “options” paper for health care reform by Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus and Ranking Member Chuck Grassley.

But, again, “options” is a misnomer. This paper doesn’t really spell out fundamentally different approaches. Instead, the choices are all a variation on a single theme: a government-managed system of private health insurance.

Existing plans would be grandfathered in. But all future health insurance would have to be purchased through a government exchange.

The government would decide the benefit options insurers could offer, and insurers would have to offer all options. Pricing would be strictly circumscribed. Medical underwriting would be prohibited.

The fight over whether there would be a “public option,” a health plan actually administered by the government, is misplaced. If government controls the benefits and pricing of private plans, politicians and bureaucrats are in charge irrespective of whether there is a formal public plan.

The political need for action is driven by the uncertainty over coverage in the American system. The gaps in coverage are hugely worrisome even for those who currently have good insurance.

This uncertainty, however, is easily eliminated at no cost to the taxpayers. There already is a national health care plan, Medicaid for the low income. Universal access could be provided simply by allowing any legal resident to buy into Medicaid at the government’s cost.

The system as a whole, however, makes no sense. Obtaining health insurance through your employer is an artifact of World War II wage and price controls.

Some Republicans want to eliminate this dependence and stimulate a market for individual health insurance. That makes more sense, but the public is unlikely to be comfortable with such a radical restructuring without a government backstop, such as the ability to buy into Medicaid.

This debate will be sad and frustrating.

And the end result will probably be neither fish nor fowl – a system that provides neither the certainty and security of a European-style national health care system, nor the choice and freedom of a vigorous individual health insurance market.

Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic columnist, writes about public policy and politics in Arizona. E-mail: robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com

U.S. Army Gen. David D. McKiernan, commander of NATO's International Security Assistance Force and the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, is seen during a visit this month with U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to the Forward Operating Base Airborne in Wardak Province, Afghanistan. The Pentagon is replacing McKiernan as President Obama tries to turn around a stalemated war.

The Obama administration is struggling to confront a central reality of the Afghanistan war it inherited: More troops, more aid and a retooled strategy alone are not enough.

It wants to energize the effort with new ideas, too, and do it before American public patience runs out.

It’s a grim given that U.S. casualties are likely to increase in the months ahead as additional soldiers and Marines arrive to take on the Taliban in their southern strongholds. Already some prominent members of Congress, including from Obama’s party, are questioning whether Afghanistan is a lost cause.

That concern may explain, in part, the decision Monday to sack Gen. David McKiernan as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan and replace him with an officer known for innovative action, Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Pentagon chief Robert Gates said it was time for “new thinking and new approaches.”

Yet it seems unlikely the switching of commanders portends a new U.S. war strategy. Obama announced a revised plan just two months ago. Instead the administration is hoping that a military command shake-up will lead to a more effective implementation of the existing strategy, which is aimed at defeating al-Qaida terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan and preventing their return to either country.

William Fallon, the retired Navy admiral who was responsible for U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and the broader Middle East in 2007-08, is optimistic that new leadership will make a difference.

“I have the highest confidence in his judgment,” Fallon said of McChrystal. “He gets it.”

The change at the top in Afghanistan won’t mean new marching orders for arriving Marines, said Lt. Gen. Dennis J. Hejlik, a U.S.-based Marine commander. However, Hejlik, too, suggested that McChrystal will do things differently.

“He really does understand that you’re not going to win the war by killing all the enemy. That’s just not going to work,” he said.

McKiernan recently described the war as “stalemated, at best” in the southern part of Afghanistan where the Taliban are strongest. For months he has called for an increase in U.S. forces, but during the Bush administration his requests went unmet as Iraq dominated the White House’s focus.

Obama entered the White House promising to make Afghanistan and Pakistan the higher priority, arguing that stopping al-Qaida from launching new attacks was of greater strategic importance than the task in Iraq. He also said he would “not blindly stay the course” in Afghanistan and would regularly review his approach. Since then the situation — militarily and politically — has arguably gotten worse.

The boldness of the insurgency was underscored Tuesday. Eleven Taliban suicide bombers struck government buildings in a daylong assault in the eastern city of Khost. The assault led to running gunbattles with U.S. and Afghan forces that killed 20 people and wounded three Americans.

At the heart of Obama’s approach to the war is his view, shared by senior commanders, that military power alone will not lead to success — and that stability in Afghanistan is not possible without stability in neighboring, nuclear-armed Pakistan, where the radical Taliban movement has been on the rise.

That means Obama will look to McChrystal to find more effective ways of linking military action with an accelerated effort to build workable Afghan government ministries, to expand and improve Afghan security forces, to promote Afghan reconciliation with more moderate elements of the Taliban, and to improve the U.S.-led coalition’s ability to overcome remarkably effective propaganda efforts by the Taliban and al-Qaida.

It also means that turning around the war in Afghanistan will require changes beyond Obama’s control – perhaps most importantly a more effective Pakistani government response to the Taliban insurgency in Pakistan.

Two months after announcing his new strategy, Obama has little to show for it, although the extra 21,000 troops he approved as reinforcements are only now beginning to arrive and there is the prospect of a further restructuring of the U.S.-NATO command in Afghanistan. Also, the new U.S. ambassador in Kabul, retired Army Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, just arrived in the capital last week.

The outlook is not bright. At a hearing Tuesday, Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, painted a grim picture, saying he was stunned by a lack of progress in Afghanistan, which he called a “black hole” with no bottom.

“It is just breathtaking, the amount of money, the American lives we’ve spent there, and you have a government that has control maybe to the outskirts of the capital,” Risch said.

The man to whom Risch was speaking, Richard Holbrooke, the veteran diplomat who is coordinating the administration’s policy on Pakistan and Afghanistan, responded that his own initial assessment was not much different. Holbrooke insisted, however, that the administration has a workable strategy and that dismantling the terrorist network that attacked the U.S. on 9/11 is too important not to press ahead.

Obama needs Congress to go along with the piece of his strategy that calls for providing billions more in aid to Pakistan with the aim of preventing a collapse into chaos that could spill over into Afghanistan. But it was evident from Holbrooke’s appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that some of the most skeptical and reluctant members of Congress are from Obama’s own party.

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., said he feared that adding U.S. troops in southern Afghanistan would only expand the trouble in Pakistan.

“You are absolutely correct that an additional amount of American troops, particularly if they are successful in (southern Afghanistan), could end up creating a pressure in Pakistan, which would add to the instability,” Holbrooke said. He said this would require closer coordination with the Pakistani government.

Another obstacle to progress in Afghanistan that has seemed beyond U.S. efforts to overcome is the recurrence of civilian casualties. It’s a problem that has undercut Afghan public support for the U.S. mission and assisted the Taliban in promoting the notion that the Afghanistan government is a U.S. puppet.

One more problem demanding an innovative solution.

Robert Burns has covered national security affairs for The Associated Press since 1990.

US-Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi waves as she talks with media in Tehran, Iran, on Tuesday. Saberi had been freed from prison Monday after an appeals court suspended her eight-year jail sentence. Roxana , a 32-year-old dual Iranian-American citizen, was convicted last month of spying for the U.S. and sentenced to eight years in prison. An appeals court reduced her jail term on Monday to a two-year suspended sentence.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – The judicial reversal that led to the release of an Iranian-American from prison in Tehran on Monday could now offer hints of moderation by Iran’s ruling Islamic clerics – making room for possible overtures by the Obama administration.

The release of Roxana Saberi may also seek to boost hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s goodwill credentials before next month’s re-election challenge from reformers.

“It was certainly in the interest of Iran to close this case,” said Nadim Shehadi, a Middle East analyst at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. “No one wanted this to linger on.”

Shortly after the journalist was detained in Iran in late January, President Obama was busy sharpening his appeals for Tehran’s leaders to “unclench their fist” and move toward greater dialogue with Washington.

Saberi’s release – after an appeals court suspended her eight-year prison sentence on charges of being an American spy – ended a showdown that threatened to bring an abrupt halt to the overtures at thawing a nearly 30-year diplomatic freeze.

But it’s far from the only detention drama that had complicated possible wider Iran-U.S. engagement.

Ahmadinejad made less-than-subtle comparisons between Saberi’s appeals fight in Iran’s courts and Tehran’s demands for the freedom of three Iranians who have been detained in Iraq since a 2007 raid by U.S. forces.

Tehran claims the three are diplomats, but the U.S. military has raised possible links to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard – the powerful military force under direct control of Iran’s Islamic rulers. Saberi’s release could increase pressure by Iran for Washington to free the detained Iranians or publicly substantiate the allegations.

U.S. lawmakers, meanwhile, have pressed the Obama administration to demand answers from Iran about an ex-FBI agent who was last seen on Iran’s Kish Island in 2007 as he investigated cigarette smuggling for a client of his private security firm.

But the timing of Saberi’s release – a month before the June 12 national elections in Iran – suggests pragmatic objectives by Iran’s rulers, some analysts say.

It appears to signal to Washington a sense of stability and willingness to move forward on possible exchanges after the elections – and perhaps seek ways to ease Iran’s standoff with the West over its nuclear program.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the Obama administration insists that Saberi was wrongly accused, “but we welcome this humanitarian gesture.”

The decision also gives Ahmadinejad a chance to soften his image before facing reformist challengers at the polls.

Ahmadinejad’s direct sway of judicial affairs is extremely limited, but his supporters in the ruling establishment hold that power. Saberi’s release handed Ahmadinejad a key opportunity to appear merciful and in tune with the ruling elite.

Last month, Ahmadinejad urged Tehran’s chief prosecutor to ensure Saberi be allowed a full defense during her appeal.

“Ahmadinejad perhaps sensed that the appeal might go in Saberi’s favor because of the intense international pressure,” said Mehrzad Boroujerdi, a researcher in Iranian affairs at Syracuse University. “He’s learned well how to take advantage of political opportunities. This could work in his favor in the elections.”

Ahmadinejad faces two reformist candidates in his bid for a second four-year term, but neither of the challengers appears to have yet tapped into the crucial youth vote that carried former President Mohammad Khatami.

“The regime has a great deal to gain at the moment by appearing moderate,” said Ilan Berman, an Iranian affairs specialist at the American Foreign Policy Council.

He believes Iran’s leaders worried that a prolonged dispute over Saberi could backfire by widening the divide with moderate Iranians who favor some level of dialogue with Washington.

“The thing the regime most worries about – even more than being taken to task by the West over nuclear development – is any political decision that exposes the very deep fault line between the people and the regime,” Berman said. “The Saberi case was beginning to look very counterproductive for them, and it was time to end it.”

Brian Murphy, Associated Press chief of bureau in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, has covered Iranian affairs since 1999.

Questions linger on detainees who cannot be tried but are too dangerous to release

Mike Morice (center) and other members of World Can't Wait group perform a live waterboarding demonstration outside the Spanish Consulate in Manhattan last month to urge prosecution in Spain of the alleged involvement of Bush administration officials in the torture of terror suspects.

When President Obama declassified and released legal memoranda from the Department of Justice, he opened the door to a drawn-out battle over the Bush administration’s use of coercive interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists.

We believe that any subsequent attempts to subject those who provided such legal advice to prosecutions are a mistake. They will have a chilling effect on the candor with which future government officials provide their best counsel.

The country must move on from debates about the past, because pressing questions about U.S. detention policy in the war on terror requires us to make difficult choices – and to make them soon.

In January, the president announced via executive order that the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay will close within a year. The announcement was easy – but it left unanswered the hardest questions about detainee policy for the future.

How do we prosecute detainees suspected of committing war crimes now that military commissions have been suspended? How should we handle those detainees who cannot be tried, but who are too dangerous to release? Where will we house them?

How should we deal with detainees who, if released, would return to the fight against us? How do we deal with prisoners held at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, where some detainees captured outside Afghanistan are being held?

There are no easy answers. As senators who have struggled with these issues for years, we believe some basic principles can help us find a common path forward.

• First, do not confuse war with common criminality. The majority of detainees held at Guantanamo are not common criminals, but warriors fundamentally committed to the destruction of our way of life.

The appropriate legal foundation upon which detainee policy should be built is the law of war, along with procedures adapted from our military justice system.

• Second, military commissions remain the appropriate trial venue for these individuals. We would strenuously oppose any effort to try enemy combatants in our civilian courts.

By an overwhelming bipartisan vote in 2006, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act, which set forth procedures for trying enemy combatants for war crimes.

Our domestic criminal laws – including their treatment of classified information – are ill-suited for the complex national security issues inherent in the trial of enemy combatants. We have great faith in our military justice system – appropriately modified for war crimes trials – and we believe that military judges and lawyers render fair and impartial justice not only for our troops, but for enemy combatants as well.

• Third, preventive detention will continue to have a place in the war on terror. Under the law of war, the idea an enemy combatant has to be tried or released is a false choice. Rather, it is well-established that combatants can be held off the battlefield as long as they present a military threat.

While there is little doubt that we initially cast the net too broadly in determining who merited enemy combatant status, the Department of Defense estimates nearly 1 in 10 detainees released from Guantanamo have returned to the battlefield.

This includes Said Ali al-Shihri (second in command of al-Qaida in Yemen), and Abdullah Gulam Rasoul, who reportedly now serves as the Taliban’s operational commander in southern Afghanistan.

We cannot let this continue.

A significant group of detainees still in custody at Guantanamo may be too dangerous to release, but they are not suitable for war crimes trials.

In these cases, a system needs to be devised in which a designated national security court, with a uniform set of standards and procedures administered by a civilian judge, hears the petitions for habeas corpus authorized by the Supreme Court, and an annual interagency review is conducted to determine whether the detainee remains a security threat to the United States.

• Fourth, we must address the detainee situation at Bagram in Afghanistan. An improved system for reviewing the need for further detention of detainees is required at Bagram – but we must not lose sight that Afghanistan is still an active theater of war and we cannot impede the ability of our Armed Forces to fight the enemy.

We are encouraged that the Department of Justice has appealed a ruling by the D.C. district court that extended habeas corpus rights to detainees held on the battlefield in Afghanistan.

In its motion, the Department of Justice argued that allowing the ruling to stand would harm our military’s ability to win the war.

• Finally, Congress must be involved in crafting detainee policy. It is critical for all branches of government to work together to develop solutions to the complex legal problems presented by this war.

We believe that the time has come to focus on these urgent issues, rather than spend the nation’s energy on the debates of the past.

We stand ready to work with President Obama to develop an enemy-combatant detention process that is transparent, provides robust due process consistent with the law of war, involves an independent judiciary, and protects us against a dangerous enemy.

The American people and the international community will see such a system not as an arbitrary exercise of power, but as an intelligent balance of due process and national security.”

John McCain is a Republican senator from Arizona. Lindsey Graham is a Republican senator from South Carolina.

Sen. John McCain

Sen. Lindsey Graham

By John McCain, Lindsey Graham

When budgets are cut, it’s easy to focus on the dollars and cents and forget that real people are affected.

That may explain why the state Legislature is moving ahead with cuts to the state Department of Economic Security – cuts that will deeply affect the lives of developmentally and mentally disabled people.

Even if legislators brush aside the human toll and look only at the finances, these are cuts that should be reversed. In the long run, Arizona taxpayers will end up spending far more if the DES budget is cut than if spending levels are maintained.

Legislators are in an unenviable position, with state spending needing to be cut by at least $3 billion for the fiscal year beginning July 1. Some of the cuts could be avoided if lawmakers embraced a proposal by Gov. Jan Brewer to ask voters for a temporary tax increase.

Brewer seems to have backed away from the idea, but it makes sense. The alternative is eviscerating cuts that would return crucial state services to levels not seem in decades.

That’s what DES is facing.

The current budget proposal would cut about $41 million from state-funded disability programs and an additional $50 million to $60 million for long-term care for the most severely disabled.

And those cuts would come on top of a 10 percent cut to DES to balance the current year’s budget.

In a story published Tuesday in the Tucson Citizen, Jim Walsh of The Arizona Republic wrote about how the cuts would hurt 2-year-old Gabriel Saucedo, who was born without hands. With the help of a therapist from a state-funded program, the boy has learned how to feed himself, fasten his shoes and hold a pencil in his mouth to draw.

Without the program, Gabriel and 2,000 other children would require full-time care for the rest of their lives. That’s not only unconscionable, it would be a far larger financial burden for taxpayers than eliminating the proposed cuts.

One Arizonan who works with disabled residents says the cuts were proposed because his clients are an easy target.

“I believe it was a convenient decision . . . to make because it’s a vulnerable population and they can’t speak for themselves,” said Randy Gray, president and CEO of Marc Center in Mesa.

Gray said the proposed cuts would revert “our entire system of quality care back to the early 1970s.”

That must not be allowed to happen. The state must stand up for the most needy among us – even in the toughest of times. The cuts to DES must be re-evaluated.

If we can’t look out for the most vulnerable, who is safe?

Russian soldiers stand at a checkpoint at the entrance to the Georgian village of Akhmaji, 38 miles northwest of the capital Tbilisi, on the boundary line with Russian-controlled South Ossetia. Georgia President Mikhail Saakashvili faces four of his fiercest opponents in talks this week after a month of street protests and demands for his resignation. Saakashvili has refused to step down as president of this former Soviet nation until his term ends in 2013.

As President Barack Obama courts closer relations with Russia, U.S. ally Georgia has plenty of reasons to be nervous.

After all, Russia invaded Georgia in August, recognized the independence of two wayward Georgian territories and has ramped up its military presence in those territories in the face of Western condemnation.

So far, the Obama administration is saying all the right things: That it rejects Russian assertions of a sphere of influence; that both Georgia and Ukraine are on track for NATO membership; that Moscow should respect Georgia’s territorial integrity.

Georgian officials, who have visited Washington, say they are pleased with the administration’s approach so far and are confident of continued U.S. support.

It also is clear, however, that the Obama administration is not eager for a showdown with Moscow over Georgia, or anything else.

Last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made his first trip to Washington under the new administration and met with both Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The two sides set a cordial tone, emphasizing new cooperation on arms control and a host of issues.

“We have expressed on several occasions our concerns about Georgia,” Clinton said. “But it is, I think, old thinking to say that we have a disagreement in one area, therefore we shouldn’t work in something else that is of overwhelming importance.”

Both Lavrov and Clinton also expressed an interest in maintaining stability in Georgia, although they might not agree on how to achieve it.

Despite all the calming rhetoric, Lavrov’s visit came during an active time for geopolitical gamesmanship in the Caucasus. Russia recently declared that it was posting border guards on Georgia’s de facto borders with its two breakaway regions.

Last week, as NATO prepared contentious military exercises in Georgia, the Georgian government broke up what it said was a mutiny by its soldiers that it initially said Moscow had orchestrated.

Against this backdrop, Georgia’s opposition is intensifying protests and demanding President Mikhail Saakashvili resign.

The American-educated president has enjoyed strong backing in Washington since he rose to power in the 2003 Rose Revolution and won plaudits as a champion of democracy.

More recently, he has lost some of his support both at home and abroad amid accusations that he has used state power to silence critics and bears responsibility for the August war with Russia.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration, still early in its tenure, is formally reviewing U.S. policy on both Russia and Georgia. While the administration has promised unconditional support for Georgia and its budding democracy, it has not promised the same for Saakashvili.

As much as the Obama administration would like to keep Georgia from disrupting its rapprochement with Moscow, recent events show that U.S.-Russian maneuvering in the Caucasus is unlikely to end. If tensions flare, or the Kremlin should decide to test American resolve, Georgia may learn how it fits in the Obama administration’s priorities.

Desmond Butler covers European affairs for The Associated Press in Washington.

President Obama leaves the State Dining Room of the White House after speaking about health care reform Monday.

The White House trumpeted the news: health care providers taking a $2 trillion scalpel to their costs and pushing the U.S. toward Barack Obama’s vision of health coverage for all. But don’t line up yet for those insurance cards.

First, a reality check for the nation’s 50 million uninsured.

Medical providers have a long track record of avoiding fiscal constraints, as witnessed by the government’s efforts to tamp down Medicare costs.

And none of the groups that went to the White House can actually dictate prices to their members. Doctors in New York or hospitals in Los Angeles are free to charge what the market can bear.

There’s one more catch: Even if every penny of the promised savings shows up, not all of it would be used to help cover uninsured Americans. Actual savings to the government are all that can be counted as Congress tries to pay for subsidies that will be needed to help make health insurance affordable for everyone.

The medical groups’ pledge is “a very hopeful sign,” said economist Robert Reischauer, head of the Urban Institute. “But when we get down to hammering out the details, health care reform remains both complex and philosophically and politically difficult to accomplish.”

Costs could still turn out to be the greatest obstacle to Obama’s health care plan.

Outside experts estimate the taxpayers’ tab could total between $1.2 trillion and $1.5 trillion over 10 years. Some go as high as $1.7 trillion. Obama’s budget proposal includes a down payment that may cover less than half the bill.

Pledging restraint on costs Monday at the White House were groups representing hospitals, doctors, drug makers, medical device manufacturers and a major health care labor union – a who’s who of health care interests. The president posed proudly with them and called it “a watershed event.”

Obama wants to build on the current system in which most people get coverage through private insurers. But he wants to change the rules so the sick can’t be turned down. And he wants to provide subsidies to help low-wage workers and even some in the middle class afford their premiums.

House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio isn’t impressed. “Today’s announcement promises savings with no concrete plan to achieve them and no enforcement mechanism if they don’t,” he said Monday.

Indeed, it’s too early to tell whether the White House meeting will be remembered as a turning point or as a political mirage. The administration is projecting an image of a new coalition for health care, with Obama and most of the health care industry and consumer interest groups claiming the political center.

Left out, for now, are conservative Republicans, who oppose Obama’s direction but have yet to articulate their own vision, and liberal Democrats who have been hoping to move toward a nationalized system like Medicare for all. As the debate heats up, the voices from both ends of the political divide will get louder – and the pressure on the center will increase.

Still, the sight of health care industry leaders volunteering to hold back spending is pretty unusual.

By joining Obama, providers are acknowledging at least some responsibility for a bloated and dysfunctional system that economists say is unaffordable.

In the 1990s, when President Bill Clinton attempted to overhaul health care, the battle lines quickly hardened. Obama, who has gone out of his way to woo the interest groups, praised their willingness to sacrifice on Monday.

The groups don’t just have the national interest in mind. Industry is worried that Congress will create a government health plan to compete with private insurers.

Such a plan would quickly become the biggest in the country and could use its power to set lower payment rates, driving costs down on the backs of medical providers.

“I think the reason all these groups want to actively participate in the process is they don’t want to see a blunt instrument used to get spending down,” said Mark McClellan, who ran Medicare for President George W. Bush. “This is an opportunity to get everyone behind a better approach to improve the way health care works.”

That’s just what the groups say they want to do. Their proposals include coordinating care for people with chronic illnesses, rewarding quality not quantity, and using technology to root out waste and prevent errors that get patients sicker.

But it’s hard to put numbers next to any of those ideas. For example, what if better care for chronically ill patients turns out to increase costs? None of the groups has set a target for how much its members should have to pony up.

Congress is going to need hard numbers to pass Obama’s plan this year.

Robert Laszewski, a former health insurance executive turned policy consultant, said he’s betting the consensus won’t last.

“When Congress comes up with mechanisms to reduce costs that actually take money out of the hands of doctors, hospitals and insurance companies,” he said, “that’s when we’re going to find out if things are really different this time.”

Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar reports on health care policy for The Associated Press.

Arizona legislators who have been roundly criticized for slashing education spending, are striking back.

Unfortunately, truth was a casualty as at least one lawmaker threw unsubstantiated and inaccurate allegations at school officials, accusing them of “illegally and secretly stockpiling millions of dollars.”

It makes for a great press release. But little of it is true.

As they dig in the sofa cushions looking for every unsecured dime to balance the state budget, lawmakers have turned their eyes on school funds. That’s understandable because education represents the single largest area of state spending – as it should be.

But in trying to grab money from schools, lawmakers showed that they really don’t understand the complexities of education finance.

In a recent press release, state Sen. Pamela Gorman, a Republican from the Phoenix suburb of Anthem, claimed school districts had more than $2.3 billion “cash” in the bank.

“A relatively small portion of this cash balance could be used” to help balance the budget for fiscal 2010, Gorman claimed.

Then she started lobbing grenades, accusing schools of “blatant deception and hypocrisy”

“Districts have been violating state law and illegally amassing larger and larger cash balances while crying out that we at the Legislature are decimating public education,” Gorman said. “It is shameless!”

If Gorman has any evidence of illegal activity, let’s see it. Every school district is audited every year and no allegation of illegal cash hoarding has ever been raised before Gorman’s broadside.

It is true that Arizona school districts have money in the bank. To not do so would be incredibly poor financial management. The Legislature often has challenged school districts to act like businesses – and that is what they are doing.

Money is held in reserve for many reasons. Hundreds of millions of dollars come from the federal government for the school lunch program. Some are gifts or school tax credit money waiting to be spent.

Other money is held in self- insurance accounts to pay health and liability claims. And if school districts collect property taxes in excess of what they are allowed to legally spend, the money is used to reduce property taxes in the following year.

The Legislature does have a difficult task facing it as it struggles to balance the state budget. But stealing money from school districts, then trying to distract the public with wildly inaccurate allegations of illegal activity is not going to make the job any easier.

Legislators should balance the budget based on honest and transparent discussion. Gorman’s statements were neither.

Republican-turned-Democrat Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill.

When Arlen Specter announced he was quitting the Republican Party to become a Democrat, who knew he would be joining the Joe Lieberman wing of the Democratic Party?

Well, that is apparently what he’s done. While the Pennsylvania senator’s decision late last month to switch parties brought great joy to the ranks of congressional Democrats, some of his actions since then have made a lot of Democrats wonder where his loyalties really lie.

Lieberman is a faux Democrat who lost his party’s nomination in Connecticut’s 2006 Democratic primary. He ran in the general election as an independent and won a third term in the Senate. Lieberman, who remains a registered Democrat and continues to caucus with Senate Democrats, calls himself an “independent-Democrat.”

Last year, Lieberman campaigned for Republican John McCain — and against Democrat Barack Obama — during the 2008 presidential campaign.

“Sen. Barack Obama is a gifted and eloquent young man who I think can do great things for our country in the years ahead. But my friends, eloquence is no substitute for a record, not in these tough times for America,” Lieberman said during a campaign speech.

Specter was officially welcomed to the Democratic Party’s ranks by President Obama, who promised to support the senator’s 2010 re-election campaign.

It was the prospect of being challenged in the Republican primary by a staunch conservative that pushed Specter, a political moderate, to switch parties.

So how did he respond to Obama’s welcoming embrace? Four days later, Specter tried to put some distance between himself and his new party during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“I did not say I would be a loyal Democrat,” he said sternly to David Gregory, the show’s host. “I did not say that.”

And as if to punctuate those words, Specter quickly began to behave like a disloyal Democrat. He voted against a Democratic budget resolution and helped defeat a White House-backed bill that would permit bankruptcy judges to alter the terms of a homeowner’s mortgage.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Specter told The New York Times that Minnesota’s Supreme Court should “declare Norm Coleman the winner” of the state’s still unresolved 2008 Senate race.

The outcome is expected to be decided this summer by Minnesota’s high court. After a statewide recount, Democrat Al Franken emerged with a 312-vote lead over Republican Coleman, who is appealing that decision.

If the court affirms Franken as the winner, Democrats will have the 60 votes they need to stop Republicans from using filibusters to block legislation. So why would Specter — a newly minted Democrat — want Coleman to prevail?

“In the swirl of moving from one (party) to another, I have to get used to my new teammates,” Specter said.

His retreat came amid a howl of protests from Democratic Party operatives and reports that he had been taken to the woodshed by Obama aides.

What’s certain is that Specter will have to decide very soon if he wants to run for re-election as a loyal Democrat, or as a Lieberman Democrat. Having just shed his Republican cloak, it may be tempting for him to stake out a position of independence within the Democratic Party — but it wouldn’t be wise.

Given the choice between a real Democrat and one who joined the party just to keep his re-election hopes alive, Pennsylvania’s Democrats may bring Specter’s tenure as a Senate Democrat to a screeching halt.

DeWayne Wickham is a Maryland-based columnist who writes for USA TODAY. E-mail: DeWayneWickham@aol.com.

From the political notebook:

• Within the spending lobby, there is no more firmly held belief than that Arizona is an inexcusably low-tax state.

The basis for this belief is a report on state and local tax collections from the Census Bureau.

For 2006, the most recent year for which figures are available, Arizona ranked 39th among the states in tax collections per capita. Hence the conclusion that, compared to other states, Arizona is among the bottom dwellers.

Too much was always made of this. Arizona ranks 35th in per capita personal income. So, the proper conclusion all along was that the state taxes roughly proportionate to the body politic’s ability to pay.

As it turns out, even that seriously understates Arizona’s tax load.

The Census Bureau figures aroused the suspicions of the indispensible fiscal sleuths at the Arizona Tax Research Association. So, they started digging into the data’s details.

They found that Arizona’s figures were missing huge sums of money. The state education sales tax revenue wasn’t included. The Maricopa County transportation sales tax was omitted. More than half of Arizona’s vehicle license tax was missing.

In all, ATRA found almost $2 billion in unreported tax collections.

If these missing revenues are included, Arizona’s rank increases to 32nd in per capita tax collections. As a percentage of personal income, or capacity to pay, it rises to 15th highest in the country.

So, rather than being a low-tax state, Arizona actually ranks more toward the middle in terms of nominal tax load, and higher than average based upon ability to pay.

Based upon ATRA’s research, the Census Bureau already has added $1.2 billion to Arizona’s tax collections and is studying the rest of the claims.

ATRA has done a lot of good work over the years. This sleuthing is one of its most valuable contributions.

• As much as public policy debates in Arizona are driven by these kinds of cross-state comparisons, the Legislature should take action to ensure that Arizona’s reported data is accurate.

The local government figures for the Census, for example, were being collected by an ASU professor with limited help. It’s just too big of a job, with too little incentive on the part of the entities with the raw data to cooperate, to do it that way.

Arizona expenditure data in the Census reports are undoubtedly as flawed as its tax collection data. Arizona’s reporting on education expenditures for national studies has also been spotty. Sometimes, the Arizona figures have had to be extrapolated.

To ensure accuracy, the Legislature should assign the job of collecting and reporting this data to the Auditor General’s Office.

And it should make the distribution of state-shared revenues to cities and counties and education assistance to school districts dependent on cooperation with the Auditor General’s efforts.

• The historical importance of Jack Kemp was generally understated in the reporting of his passing last week. Kemp changed the central focus of Republican economic policy.

Prior to Kemp, the Republican central focus was on the need to balance budgets through limiting spending.

Kemp argued that instead the central focus should be on fostering expanded economic opportunity through reductions in marginal tax rates.

Ronald Reagan made Kemp’s idea the principal domestic proposal of his 1980 presidential campaign, enacted it after being elected, and it has been the Republicans’ central economic focus ever since.

Kemp was a graduate of Occidental College in Los Angeles. He gave a series of lectures there while I was serving as editor of the campus newspaper. So, I was able to follow him around and get to know him a little. His intellectual appetite for information and policy analysis was nearly exhausting.

Kemp practiced a different kind of politics as well. Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove sought Republican victories by highlighting divisions in which more people sided with Republicans than Democrats.

Kemp was frankly bored when talking to Republican and conservative groups, people who agreed with him. His politics was that of an evangelist. He was always trying to make converts.

He passionately believed that expanding private sector opportunity was a better way to help the disadvantaged than government programs. His sincerity and commitment to building better ladders to success for those at the bottom were transparent.

As Republicans consider how to regroup and regain political traction, they would do very well to try to recapture the spirit of Jack Kemp.

Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic columnist, writes about public policy and politics in Arizona. E-mail: robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com

The state budget for next year that passed out of the House Appropriations Committee last week illustrates that a nominally balanced budget can be achieved without a tax increase.

Whether that is the best course of action is a very difficult question.

As always, some historical perspective is valuable.

After the last recession, state revenues stabilized in 2003. State general fund spending that year was $6.6 billion.

State spending peaked in 2008, at $10.5 billion, or a 60 percent increase in just five years.

The House budget for next year comes in at $9.3 billion. So, that’s a real decrease of more than 11 percent in two years.

But since 2003, it still represents an increase of 41 percent. That’s more than 5 percent a year.

The proposed budget cuts are not small, and certainly not painless. But the proposed end result hardly amounts to a barbaric return to poor houses and one-room schoolhouses.

Instead, the House budget reduces state spending to around where it would have been if it had grown more prudently during the days of plenty.

On the other hand, state general fund revenues are expected to fall $2 billion short of funding that spending. The House budget makes up for that by using federal stimulus money and stealing money from other accounts.

Given that there is still a $2 billion shortfall even after reducing spending growth to a modest level indicates that profligate spending during the Napolitano era is hardly the exclusive culprit.

Nor would the problem not exist if tax cuts had been eschewed during the days of plenty. If state income and state property tax rates were as they were in 2003, they might produce an additional $600 million in revenue, still leaving a $1.4 billion hole.

Simply put, state revenues have run into a severe cyclical downturn that exceeds everyone’s blame game. The conventional wisdom from all sides of the ideological spectrum is pretty much useless and pointless in confronting this situation.

So, what to do?

The House budget is based upon the point of view that the worst thing to do in the current circumstances would be to increase taxes. There is considerable merit to that position. Raising taxes in an economic downturn is a monumentally bad idea.

The House budget illustrates that avoiding a tax increase is doable.

It steals $265 million from cities and counties, which is monstrously unfair and shouldn’t be done. They have their own budget woes and are handling them much more responsibly than is the state.

The other maneuver getting some gas, using excess school district balances, is completely justified. These are funds that should have been used to reduce property taxes and that the districts cannot legally spend anyway.

The money taken from the cities and counties could be replaced, including by deferring some payments if necessary. So, the state could get through next year OK without increasing taxes or borrowing.

But, given a structural deficit of $2 billion, the very same problem faces the state in 2011, with considerably less federal stimulus money to cover it up.

Gov. Jan Brewer says the Legislature should bite the bullet this year and really fix the problem with a tax increase. She’s being less than candid about how much of a tax increase that would take and for how long. But hers is also a position with considerable merit.

The problem – the imbalance between spending and revenues – isn’t going away, and the House budget doesn’t do much to shrink it.

If the Legislature bit the bullet this year, it would make for a much more stable environment for state government and politics.

There are no rights and wrongs here. There are no responsible vs. irresponsible positions. Ideological conventions don’t get you to an end game.

You kick the state government problem down the road until what you hope is a more propitious time to deal with it. Or you fix state government’s problem at a very bad time for the state’s private sector economy.

I’d kick the problem down the road. But I’m not going to reproach those who reach a different conclusion.

Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic columnist, writes about public policy and politics in Arizona. E-mail: robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com

Copies of President Obama's fiscal 2010 federal budget books are seen at the White House. After a line-by-line scrub of the federal budget, Obama has signed off on a roster of 121 budget cuts totaling $17 billion.

From cuts in water projects to elimination of nuclear waste and weapons programs, President Obama’s modest proposal for $17 billion in spending cuts is as much a political document as it is a budget blueprint.

The list of 121 programs he wants to cut or eliminate drew immediate ridicule Thursday from opponents, who called it a drop in a $3.6 trillion federal budget bucket.

And it’s a misnomer to call some of Obama’s proposals cuts, because they are either replaced by spending elsewhere in the budget, or would simply push spending back to later years.

Still, Obama is making a statement. Some cuts are campaign promises. Others, like the elimination of a proposed Nevada nuclear waste facility at Yucca Mountain, address concerns of powerful Obama allies. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has fought that facility for most of his 23-year Senate career.

Among the major points of Obama’s proposed cuts released Thursday:

• About half are in the Defense Department, and include previously announced reductions like the C-17 transport plane, that fit into his pledge to make the military more streamlined, modern and cost-efficient. For example, he proposes pushing back construction of a new Ford Class aircraft carrier that has had cost and design problems.

Obama also is proposing $793 million in cuts in the military’s $7.7 billion recruitment and retention budget. That spending more than doubled from 2004-08, when the military was stretched thin with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Obama said that “interest in joining the military generally rises in a challenging economic environment,” so there’s less need for advertising, recruiting and retention bonuses. But critics are likely to argue that military is still stretched as it sends more troops to Afghanistan.

• Obama said he would not fund a planned $60 million down payment to update the nation’s nuclear warheads because “it is not consistent with presidential commitments to move towards a nuclear free-world.”

• Obama wants to cut $91 million out of a $288 million program to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Critics like Reid have said it poses environmental and safety risks. Obama directed that no more money be spent on Yucca and that the reduced funds be used to find a different way and location to store radioactive waste from nuclear power plants.

• The president returned to a campaign promise to roll back “earmarks” – pet project requests by individual legislators – by proposing to peel back $145 million for 301 wastewater and drinking water projects already in the 2009 budget.

But even if he gets his way – and the lobbying to keep money flowing to these projects could be fierce – some of these projects could go forward. Obama said the earmarks should compete against all other proposals, and that he is roughly doubling, to about $4 billion, federal spending on such projects.

Obama was criticized for going against a campaign pledge by signing a $410 billion spending bill in March that included billions in special projects left over from the previous Congress.

• In aiming cuts at big farmers, Obama makes a similar argument he makes on tax cuts. He wants to focus government subsidies to the middle- and lower-income farmers.

He’s proposing to eliminate subsidies altogether for farmers with sales over $500,000 and to limit payments to any one farmer to $250,000, for $3.8 billion in estimated reductions over five years.

But previous attempts have been rebuffed in Congress.

Chuck Raasch is political editor for Gannett News Service. E-mail: craasch@gns.gannett.com.

———

Raasch’s blog

Get more behind-the-scenes reports, context and analysis about politicians and the political process in Raasch’s Furthermore blog. Look for it here.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (right) flies in a Blackhawk helicopter over Kandahar, Afghanistan, Thursday en route to visit the Ramrod Forward Operating Base. While in Afghanistan, Gates was asked about civilian casualties.

The slaughter of dozens of Afghan civilians — either from a U.S. airstrike or from Taliban grenades, or both — sent President Obama and his aides grasping for the right words at a delicate stage in their efforts to win Afghan support for an expanded war.

U.S. success in Afghanistan depends on the trust and good will of ordinary Afghans to defeat a resourceful Taliban insurgency, and every time civilians die it becomes easier to distrust the Americans.

Obama, along with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, have offered condolences about the deaths. At the same time, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, suggested the U.S. military may have been framed.

The awkward U.S. response reveals the fragile foundation of Obama’s expanding military campaign in Afghanistan.

“Civilian casualties in Afghanistan, however they occur, pose a risk to our efforts here,” Gates said Thursday during a visit to the war zone.

His unenviable chore: Express sorrow for civilian deaths without taking blame for an incident about which the details still are murky.

“We regret any, even one, innocent civilian casualty and will make whatever amends are necessary,” Gates said. “We have expressed regret regardless of how this occurred.”

Perhaps by Taliban design, the reported deaths came on the eve of Gates’ visit to the country and the symbolic joint visits of the Afghan and Pakistani presidents to Washington.

Continued confusion over just what happened Sunday in the western Farah province revealed how easily the high-tech efficiency of the U.S. military can be thrown off course by low-tech tactics of ambush and propaganda.

The U.S. and Afghan militaries are investigating Sunday’s incident together. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said it was not clear how long the inquiry would last.

Defense officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, said it was likely that in the end some of the deaths would be attributed to the U.S. bombing and some to the Taliban.

Gates said he was aware of a report that the Taliban had used grenades to kill civilians at the site and put the blame on the Americans, but he said that possibility was still under investigation.

“We all know the Taliban use civilian casualties, and sometimes create them, to create problems for the United States and our coalition partners,” Gates said.

Gates went out of his way to show that Washington wasn’t tone-deaf. He opened a news conference with U.S. and Afghan reporters by saying he had reminded the troops he saw about “the importance of showing respect and courtesy to our friends and hosts, the Afghan people.”

An Afghan official said Thursday he collected the names of 147 people who residents say were killed in the disputed incident involving U.S. forces and Taliban militants.

The incident rubs salt in the growing Afghan outrage over the deaths of villagers and farmers who military officials say often are used deliberately as human shields.

Air strikes can be effective — McKiernan said Sunday’s bombing killed some Taliban militants — but they are necessarily overpowering and thus sometimes imprecise.

“Our technical capabilities provide certain assets, but in reality at the end of the day this is a war on the ground, in rural areas, village by village, block by block,” Gates said with a touch of weariness. “Very often modern techniques are very limited in what they can contribute to this fight.”

Gates’ visit, ostensibly to measure U.S. preparations for the addition of more than 20,000 new fighting forces and trainers, was shadowed by questions about the incident.

“What is critical for the success of the Afghan government and for us as the government’s and the Afghan people’s partner is that the Afghan people believe that we are on their side,” and that Americans respect and want to protect them, Gates said.

“Whenever civilian casualties occur, it tends to undermine that important point.”

Anne Gearan and Lara Jakes cover national security issues for The Associated Press. Jakes reported from Kabul.

By Anne Gearan, Lara Jakes

News industry’s depression has spillover implications

The Rocky Mountain News sign is removed from the Denver Newspaper Agency building March 1. Americans more than ever need newspapers as watchdogs whose mission transcends self-interest.

These are depressing days in news, and those still in the profession don’t talk nearly enough about how that affects Americans and their way of life.

Maybe it’s because we’re sensitive to being seen as defending dinosaurs, or too timid after endless ideological attacks on “the mainstream media.”

Newspapers in big cities like Denver and Seattle have folded. The Tucson Citizen’s future is uncertain.

Experienced journalists are being forced out of the business, often leaving to write speeches or press releases for politicians or corporations. State capital press corps have been decimated.

If not there already, we could soon be living in a world where government and politicians spend more on public relations and propaganda than an independent media spends to watch them.

Whether you’re a fan of the news media or not, this is anathema to honest self-government.

Imagine Richard Nixon with a 10 million-member e-mail army behind him, with legions of bloggers attacking his political foes, with a much larger phalanx of taxpayer-paid public relations people defending him, and with no independent investigative reporters raising questions others dare not ask.

If Nixon had survived the “third-rate burglary” at the Watergate, how long would his enemies list have grown, and how emboldened would he have become in spying on political rivals?

At a time when government is growing at an unprecedented pace, veteran Associated Press reporter Bob Lewis says it best: “There has never been a greater need for honest, truthful reporting than now. Sadly, there has never been less support for it than there is now. Invest in freedom. Buy a newspaper.”

In this season of scapegoating, Americans more than ever need watchdogs whose mission transcends self- interest. But it’s open season on the one industry that has tried to fill that role.

When comedian and cable political-show host Jon Stewart beat up on cable business-show host Jim Cramer, some cheered it as a righteous upbraiding of the news media for sleeping – or cheerleading – while Wall Street ran off with the nation’s piggybank.

There are fundamental problems with this claim.

First, as Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen pointed out, the dons of Wall Street were assuring shareholders and business journalists, including Cramer, of the genius behind the complicated financial “products” that later unraveled at investment houses and insurance giant AIG.

As Cohen noted, Wall Street big shots were putting their own money into their own businesses. No red flags there.

Former President George W. Bush assured Americans that the fundamentals of the economy were strong, even as crisis loomed.

Those with government regulatory subpoena and enforcement powers were slow to act or did not act at all. Members of Congress proclaimed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in good shape while the home-loan giants were apparently rotting from within.

Someone needs to be blamed, and what better target than the cartoonish Cramer? Ironically, cable news, where Cramer works, is the news medium that has weathered the financial crisis the best.

Why? Because people watch it, shouting and all. Perhaps because of the shouting.

But the picture is bleak for independent news gathering at a lower decibel. People are migrating to the Internet, where news and advertising have diverged, and where consumers have come to expect news for free.

Coupled with a crippling recession, these trends have cut advertising revenues by nearly a quarter in two years, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Massive layoffs have followed, while independent media race to invent a new business model.

“The problem facing American journalism is not fundamentally an audience problem or a credibility problem,” the Project for Excellence in Journalism said in its annual report. “It is a revenue problem – the decoupling . . . of advertising from news.”

Americans, the group concluded, “hunt and gather what they want when they want it, use search to comb among destinations and share what they find through a growing network of social media.”

The question is not whether platforms for public debate will be available.

Indeed, information overload is a bigger challenge to consumers today. In a world where niche news providers are growing at an explosive rate, consumers are forced to triage their choices. Under such conditions, it’s tempting to create a comfort zone of self-affirming opinion in which compromise and common ground are vilified as weakness.

The media universe may become warring information camps funded by rigidly ideological tribes or multimillionaires who see the public interest as an obstacle to personal success. If that happens, Americans will have a lot more to worry about than a few loud mouths in prime time.

Chuck Raasch is political editor for Gannett News Service. E-mail: craasch@gns.gannett.com

An average weekday afternoon at the Department of Economic Security office at 195 W. Irvington Road, where people file for unemployment and other benefits.

At a recent community meeting on the state’s budget crisis with Republican and Democratic legislators, a courageous Karen Ickes of the Phoenix area shared her family crisis.

She and her husband both are unemployed, but her family had to survive eight weeks without an unemployment check after she lost her job.

She told legislators how deeply this affected her family.

She held back tears as she revealed some of the tough questions she struggled with daily:

“How do you tell your kids you’re close to being homeless?”

“How do you tell your children they may not be able to afford to keep the pets that have always been part of your family?”

And, “How do you respond when your daughter offers her birthday money to help pay the rent?”

Karen’s family is not alone.

Arizona’s antiquated unemployment processing system leaves most workers waiting weeks for their first check.

Half of those qualifying for unemployment benefits wait at least six weeks, according to the state Department of Economic Security.

Although the check comes with payment for the missing weeks, families are in financial crisis, not knowing when or if their check will come.

Foisting such added suffering upon struggling families is intolerable.

The federal stimulus package includes $150 million for Arizona to upgrade this system, enabling faster processing.

The governor and Legislature have not accepted it, however, because the federal government requires us to do more for the unemployed in order to qualify.

For $50 million, Arizona would have to allow workers to include the last full quarter they worked before they lost their job if it helps them meet the minimum earnings requirements to qualify for unemployment insurance benefits.

Under current law if you lost your job this month, the last quarter of earnings that would count toward your unemployment insurance eligibility would be the one that ended five months ago, in December.

April to May is an incomplete quarter, and the last full quarter, January to March, is excluded.

Back in the pre-electronic submission age, such delays were necessary because earnings paperwork would not yet have been received and processed by the state.

But in an age where you can pay your bills online, the state doesn’t need those extra months to keep records up to date, and it unnecessarily prevents many workers from qualifying for benefits.

For the remaining $100 million, Arizona would have to do just one of three things to expand eligibility or benefits in order to qualify:

We could add $15 a week per child for families with children or, alternatively, enable those seeking part-time work or permit those enrolled in qualifying work training programs to qualify for unemployment insurance benefits.

These are relatively simple options, and the $150 million stimulus funds would not only pay to modernize our processing system, but also cover about 10 years of the cost of the added benefits, according to the National Employment Law Center.

The Legislature has shown a capacity to act.

Just a few weeks ago, it passed a proposal expanding the weeks of benefits those unemployed might qualify for, but in that case, the federal government made it easy.

Legislators said the state could sunset the extension when the federal government stopped paying for it.

But when the federal government offers to pay to modernize our processing system and to cover added benefit costs for a decade, we should take them up on the offer instead of doing nothing.

Just ask Karen Ickes – or her daughter.

Dave Wells has a doctorate in political economy and public policy and teaches at Arizona State University.

DAVE WELLS