The AFL-CIO issued a statement on LieberCare, and the labor federation isn’t happy. President Richard Trumka says the current bill is “inadequate,” is funded “the wrong way,” and stops short of outright opposing the whole package for now.

Arrogance like this gets people killed.

Current Fed Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke has been recommended for confirmation to a second term by the Senate Banking Committee this morning by a vote of 16-7. In the end, all Democrats on the committee but Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) voted for confirmation.

Can’t wait to donate to her primary opponent in 2012.

Jonathan Cohn is trying to defend the individual mandate in this bill by claiming the Netherlands also has an individual mandate. The problem is the health care system produced by the Senate bill would be nothing at all like the health system in the Netherlands. I have long maintained the progressives should accept an individual [...]

Progressives who have turned against the individual mandate in health care reform may want to highlight their one-time ally in that fight: President Barack Obama.

I took the time to transcribe the exchange between Mary Landrieu and Howard Dean last night on Hardball because I wanted to be absolutely sure of what Landrieu says and place it in context.

It’s a patent absurdity to claim, as she does, that the President didn’t campaign on a public option. It was in his health care platform, for those like Landrieu who weren’t paying attention. But her assertion to Howard Dean about what the Senate always intended is gobsmacking.

I was on MSNBC with Dylan Ratigan this morning. I was still laughing about David Axelrod’s contention earlier on Morning Joe that the insurance companies hated this bill and that’s what they were fighting against it so hard.

Seriously? They were fighting tooth and nail to get the public option out of the bill so all of the money would flow directly to them, and when it came out, they declared victory.

The current Senate health care reform bill has changed to include more subsidies for those between 300 and 400% of the poverty level, an improvement over previous iterations for the middle class. But it would still leave a family of four that had experienced a significant health care event with just $13,620 to pay for everything besides food, housing, health care, and income taxes.

This is one of the first times that any union has publicly called on President Obama to actually use his power as President. It’s significant, in that context.