Author Archives: HelaineCopley

Beto’s first major 2020 policy proposal is a $5 trillion climate plan

Not to be outdone by Elizabeth Warren’s public lands bill or Cory Booker’s environmental justice proposal, Beto O’Rourke announced a $5 trillion climate plan on Monday. The presidential hopeful unveiled what he called “the most ambitious climate plan in the history of the United States” in a 40-second Twitter video, gesticulating wildly on a backdrop of luscious flora in Yosemite Valley, California.

Beto’s first major policy proposal of the election season has four components: slash pollution, invest $5 trillion, reach net-zero by 2050, and protect communities on the frontlines of climate change. Each of those categories includes sub-agenda items, like re-entering the Paris climate agreement, phasing out the mega-pollutants hydrofluorocarbons, clamping down on methane leaks, creating a federal “buy clean” program for cement and steel, and halting the sale of new fossil fuel leases on federal lands. O’Rourke aims to accomplish at least part of this agenda by way of executive order.

The meatiest portion of the former Texas congressman’s plan is the investment bit. He plans to propose a bill that would invest $1.5 trillion in innovation, infrastructure, and “people and communities,” which will mobilize $5 trillion invested in climate change over the span of a decade. The money will be parceled out for different initiatives: tax incentives to bring existing green technologies to scale, researching and developing new ways to bring down greenhouse gases, housing and transportation grants for front-line communities, and more.

Story continues below

How will he pay for it? Good question. The massive investment will be funded through changes to America’s tax code. Corporations and the nation’s wealthiest citizens will be expected to pay their “fair share,” and O’Rourke said he would put an end to the billions fossil fuel companies receive in tax breaks. The candidate promised that this would be the very first bill he’d send to Congress as president.

“Given the gravity of the work that lies ahead, this fight will require much more than a president signing executive orders,” O’Rourke wrote in his plan. But it’s unclear how the Texan expects his bill to pass a Congress that will surely remain at least relatively divided in 2020, even if Democrats manage to flip the Republican-controlled Senate.

Other climate-oriented 2020 candidates, like Washington Governor Jay Inslee, have advocated for eliminating the legislative filibuster, in addition to taking action through executive order. (The filibuster, a long-standing Senate rule that requires a supermajority to pass legislation, is a major obstacle between Democrats and their sweeping proposals to accomplish everything from climate to health care to gun reform.) O’Rourke makes no mention of the rule in his climate plan*.

Despite O’Rourke’s promise to make climate change a day-one priority, some climate activists weren’t entirely convinced by the Democrat’s enthusiastic unveiling. “Beto claims to support the Green New Deal,” climate activist group the Sunrise Movement said in a statement, “but his plan is out of line with the timeline it lays out and the scale of action scientists say is necessary.” The group wants O’Rourke to move his 2050 timeline up to 2030, and take the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge, a vow not to take donations over $200 from the fossil fuel industry. O’Rourke was removed from the pledge last year when an investigation found that he had taken money from fossil fuel executives during his Texas Senate race.

But the more established League of Conservation Voters commended the candidate for taking an ambitious stand on climate. This is “the kind of leadership we need from our next president,” the group wrote in a press release.

*Update: In March, Beto told reporters he’d “seriously consider” ditching the filibuster. 

Originally posted here: 

Beto’s first major 2020 policy proposal is a $5 trillion climate plan

Posted in Accent, alo, Anchor, Citizen, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Beto’s first major 2020 policy proposal is a $5 trillion climate plan

Obamacare Can Help Keep People Off Disability

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Lydia DePillis tells us today about Paul Khouri, who has a rare and expensive medical condition. After steadily losing hours at his job, he finally lost his health insurance:

So instead of going out and trying to support himself with another job, Khouri took the safer option: Applying for Social Security disability insurance and Medicaid. It was a long process, requiring visits to doctor after doctor. Finally getting approved brought some relief — until he realized that returning to work would bring new complications. If he earned more than about $1,000 every month, he would quickly lose the medical assistance he desperately needed.

“It’s really scary when you’re worried about how much money you can make, because you don’t want to make too much,” Khouri says. “But at the same time, the benefits aren’t enough.” The average federal disability check is about $1,200 a month, which puts people right around the poverty line; Khouri is staying in his parents’ house to save on rent.

The prospect of falling over the “cash cliff,” as the sudden dropoff in disability insurance is known, is part of what’s keeping people with disabilities out of the workforce, despite many programs put in place over the years to reduce that disincentive.

DePillis spins this out as a way of explaining some problems with the Social Security disability program, but this is a little unclear. Khouri was apparently able to get a new job that paid $30,000 per year, but couldn’t accept the full salary because he wanted to stay eligible for Medicaid benefits. But he can’t be turned down for Obamacare, so why not sign up for that? With an expensive condition, Khouri would likely pay the full $2,000 annual premium plus the $6,600 out-of-pocket max every year, but that would still leave him with $21,400. Even after taxes, this is more than he gets from disability payments, and he wouldn’t have to limit his future promotions.

Maybe I’m missing something. It’s true that Medicaid is more reliable, since you can’t lose it regardless of whether you have any income. More generally, this stuff can be tricky and there are sometimes details that aren’t obvious from the outside. Still, while a better, more universal health care system would certainly help here, even Obamacare seems like it would help a lot.

See more here:  

Obamacare Can Help Keep People Off Disability

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Safer, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Obamacare Can Help Keep People Off Disability