CBS News is reporting that President Obama has decided to send nearly 40,000 additional combat troops to Afghanistan, honoring the majority of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s request for that country. The administration still says that troops aren’t the only answer and Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai bears a lot of responsibility for cleaning up corruption in his country.

Giving his general what he says he needs is the right course of action for President Obama (if only he’d done it a tad more expeditiously, but that’s beside the point). It would be irresponsible to do nothing at all or even to draw down troops, and the distancing from Biden’s counterterrorism strategy is in my opinion (and others) the more prudent way to go. The buildup will be gradual, leaving some to think it will be too slow of  a trickle to make much of a difference:

The first combat troops would not arrive until early next year and it would be the end of 2010 before they were all there. That makes this Afghanistan surge very different from the Iraq surge, in which 30,000 troops descended on Baghdad and the surrounding area in just five months.
Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute says a slow motion surge will produce slow motion results. “If they’re going to be sort of trickled in very slowly over the course of a year than it’s unlikely to have a very decisive impact in the course of 2010,” he said.

I’m willing to give the strategy the benefit of the doubt for the time being. Let’s hope it works.

That’s assuming, of course, that this is what the Obama administration plans on doing. The CBS article now contains this major caveat:

Editor’s note, 9:57 p.m. EDT: The White House has issued the following response to this story, attributed to White House National Security Advisor James Jones:

“Reports that President Obama has made a decision about Afghanistan are absolutely false. He has not received final options for his consideration, he has not reviewed those options with his national security team, and he has not made any decisions about resources. Any reports to the contrary are completely untrue and come from uninformed sources.”

Hmmm… Kinda makes you wonder, doesn’t it? It could be the administration was already getting flak over the report from its liberal supporters and was forced to make a retraction of sorts. We shall see.

Update: Looks like CBS was fed some bad info or was a bit hasty. Wouldn’t be the first time. Obama’s national security advisor Jim Jones is dismissing the reports as premature. That’s what we get for trusting in a “real” news organization, I guess.

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Twenty years ago today, a decades-long symbol of division and oppression came crashing down. The roar of its falling stones was felt across Europe, across Russia, across America, across the entirety of the whole of planet Earth. It signalled the beginning of the end of Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe and sounded a knell of freedom and hope that is still moving to this day.

A flashback to that time:

And who can forget President Reagan’s admonition to “tear down this wall”?

We all still share the same thrill of victory that the German people felt twenty years ago. That day was a day that belonged not to one political party or nation, but to all of mankind. Freedom was on the march that year throughout all of Eastern Europe, but no event so encapsulated it as the overjoyed Germans standing astride a barrier that had divided their city for so long – and tearing it down with their bare hands.

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A little after 11 pm on the East Coast, Democrats in the House were able to get the votes needed to pass the bill introduced by Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The margin, however, was extremely close for a party with a commanding majority – 220-215, with 39 Democrats opposing the bill and one lone Republican, Joseph Cao of New Orleans, voting to pass the bill, saying it’s what his constituents wanted and that President Obama has promised to work with him on some project in his home state.

Liberals are giddy with the victory, and there’s some momentary depression on the right. Passage seemed almost assured in the House, anyway, however, and it was only some last-minute wrangling with Bart Stupak and the passage of his abortion-funding amendment that got some wavering Dems back on board. Republicans stood on principle and supported the Stupak amendment, though its passage guaranteed the bill’s passage, and they may have been better served tactically by declining to approve the amendment. Stupak seemed to indicate that it wouldn’t have mattered in either case, but you can be sure of this – the amendment won’t last in the conference committee version. If it gets stripped out, I wonder if Stupak’s Democrats will still support the bill. My guess would be yes, which makes the whole exercise meaningless.

There’s a lot of talk of “history” and “landmarks” being bandied about by people who seem to be more concerned about a legislative win than the actual content of the legislation. Pelosi’s bill imposes an individual mandate and penalizes those who don’t go along, as well as imposing obligations on employers who may just decide to let their employees go on the included public option. Taxes and fees are levied to pay for the monstrosity that has been estimated will cost $2 trillion after the spending kicks in. All of this for a public option that seems less like an option to keep insurers honest, but more like a first step toward a single payer system with all other regulations penalizing private insurance and gradually funneling people into the public program, creating more government dependence and, yes, socializing medicine.

I still question why Pelosi had to rush this through after 8 days of its introduction with a late-night Saturday vote when most of the nation wasn’t watching. Is that legislative deliberate, or even responsible? I have extreme doubts that any of those who voted for it had time to read most of the nearly 2,000 pages – if they bothered to read it at all.

Though it’s a setback for those seeking fiscal responsibility and responsible limited government, Ed Morrissey thinks this might be the high water mark for this version of health care. The spotlight now goes to the Senate, where the minority has more tools at its disposal and the going will be much tougher. Majority Leader Harry Reid still hasn’t unveiled his own bill, and if he simply substitutes in Pelosi’s, he’s going to have an even rougher time.

In the meantime, Doctor Zero gives an eloquent and powerful essay on why the path Congress is taking is absolutely the wrong one for health care reform and for America. I couldn’t say it any better myself. I have to say, I’m getting awfully tired of the weak canard that those who oppose the current versions of health care reform just want people to die or don’t want health care reform at all. There are ways of reforming the system piece by piece instead of a massive all-or-nothing bill that creates massive new bureaucracy and massive deficits that still won’t be covered by the crushing taxes levied to pay for it. There are ways of reforming the system that don’t threaten to reduce health care choices and drive down our the quality of care.

That’s why this current effort isn’t “reform,” it’s not a benign attempt to just offer a government plan as competition, it’s an effort that seeks to place government as the controller and driving force of national health policy. It’s why proponents are looking to single payer European states for inspiration, hardly reassuring to those who believe the government option won’t remain an option for long. And it’s why this effort has less do with fixing health care than it is about accumulating power and sticking it to those who don’t agree with you.

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Speaker Nancy Pelosi had hoped to have a vote on her behemoth health care bill in a rare Saturday vote in what seemed to be a rush to hurry through unpopular legislation before any more issues could be raised about it. Today, however, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer indicated the vote may be delayed until Sunday or early next week. The reason? Democrats don’t have the votes to pass it as opposition to the bill is coming on multiple fronts, from both a fiscal perspective and a concern about federal funding for abortion led by Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak.

What’s even more comical is that Hoyer tried to pin the delay on those darn obstructionist Republicans. Um, don’t you have much-celebrated massive majorities in the House and Senate, Mr. Hoyer? The truth is the Democrats don’t need a single Republican vote to pass the bill, but Pelosi’s legislation is so bad that moderate Democrats are shying away from it. Tuesday’s election results didn’t go anywhere towards calming their fears, either.

There’s still a good chance that a vote will still happen tomorrow, but Democrats seem increasingly skittish, especially in the face of a new CNN poll (complete with a lame spin headline) that shows a 53/43 split in opposition versus support for the current bill and reveals a whopping 72% want Congress to either start fresh, make major changes, or quit altogether. That includes an astounding 60% of independents who reject the current proposals. Looking at all that, you can’t blame Democrats for getting heartburn and cold feet, but their fear of Pelosi may outweigh their fear of their constituents, as Byron York posits. Just the way the Founders would have wanted it, I’m sure.

It should be an interesting weekend in Washington.

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(See below for image credit.)

The latest unemployment figures continue to show a bleak picture for job hunters as the unemployment rate climbed to 10.2% in October. Counting those who have settled for part-time jobs or have stopped looking, the rate is 17.5%. It’s the first time that America has reached double digits in 26 years, but many in the government continue to insist that the recession is over and the recovery is underway. Yet these same people remain perplexed as to why the “expanding economy” has yet to translate into jobs, shrugging it off as unemployment being a lagging factor in economic recoveries and taking heart in the slowing of the rate of decline. (Not that we’re gaining jobs, mind you, just that we’re losing them at a slower pace now.)

Part of the reason the expansion hasn’t resulted in more jobs is that the expansion, happily celebrated in the Commerce report last week and recounted by numerous pundits, was driven primarily by short-term government spending programs. The sectors that had robust growth in the third quarter, durable goods and residential investment, just happen to be the same areas that saw government payouts in the form of Cash for Clunkers and the first-time home buyer tax credit. No government spending program can be counted on as a lasting remedy for the nation’s woes, and now that these two have ended, it will be interesting to see how those sectors perform in the next quarter.

The elephant lurking in the room is the $787 billion economic stimulus package rushed through Congress in February that was billed as a jolt to our sagging economy and a surefire method of keeping unemployment under 8%. To be blunt, it has done little to nothing of value. Jobs that have been billed as “created or saved” have been either overblown or not in any danger in the first place. Indeed, 25% of California’s count for saved jobs weren’t in jeopardy at all, along with nearly 7,200 education jobs in Ohio. Hot Air has details on seven other states that overstated the number of jobs “created or saved” by the stimulus, and it all adds up to a less than inspiring picture.

Stimulus supporters will then protest that most of the money has yet to be spent. Really? That’s supposed to be an acceptable excuse for the lack of performance by one of the biggest spending bills in history? So if I understand that line of thinking, a bill promoted as a quick jolt to the economy – hell, they even called it a “stimulus” – can’t possibly be expected to have better results because the majority of the money, by design, isn’t going to be spent until next year. That’s not a stimulus, that’s unnecessarily prolonging our economic troubles only to have a convenient election-year influx of government cash to save the day.

It’s all put in stark visual contrast when you look at graphs at Innocent Bystanders (which I’ve reproduced at the top of this post) and the GOP’s website (which, as Ed Morrissey says, is just a stylized version of the former). I don’t know how you can better illustrate the absolute failure of the stimulus and government spending to result in economic growth.

Instead of engaging in a timeless government solution and throwing taxpayer money at a problem, America needs to address its manufacturing problems and figure out how to keep blue-collar workers in the job force. Or pass a trillion-dollar health package and a cap-and-trade energy tax. No big deal, whichever one you can get around to first.

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House Democrats have scheduled a rare Saturday vote in an attempt to rush through Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s health care reform bill before any more moderates have a chance to get queasier in the wake of eye-opening GOP wins in Virginia and New Jersey. The bill is still getting text added into it, and the Speaker’s office seems to be on the verge of breaking a pledge of putting the final text of the bill up for 72 hours before a floor vote.

For a document that now runs north of 2,000 pages, even 72 hours seems like an inordinately short amount of time to digest what’s in the bill. Even supporters of the Democrats’ plan should take pause at the unprecedented lack of transparency and legislative stewardship on display here. Anyone who says that Congress doesn’t need time to pore over the bill because it’s too complicated is absolving Congress of a lot of  intellectual responsibility. And anyone who claims that all of the bill’s components have been looked at individually is missing the big picture. Without enough time to examine the legalese, who knows what may have crept in? Besides, the bill’s benefits won’t even begin to be paid out for at least another eighteen months, so what’s the urgent need for speed?

The answer has nothing to do with health care and everything to do with political strategy. Pelosi knows that the longer the bill sits out in the open, the longer critics will have to pick it apart. Furthermore, the longer she waits, the greater the chance that moderates will balk at the cost and the scope of the bill. Principled leadership would work to achieve a middle ground with moderate Democrats and Republicans (who, by the way, have received a fairly favorable CBO report for their own health care reform package that costs only $61 billion over 10 years). Instead, Pelosi has gone full-bore with tactics of partisanship and ideological rigidity by rushing to force through a bill that will please the left wing of her party but is growing increasingly unpalatable with the American public.

What’s tactically stupid is that it may all be for nothing anyway. The bill still lacks enough votes to pass through moderate Democratic opposition over budgetary concerns and federal funding for abortions. Throw into the mix an injection of nervousness by the GOP wins in Virginia and deep blue New Jersey, wins that despite the spin concern many Democrats on Capitol Hill, particularly in the utter defection of independents away from the Democratic candidates, one of whom had substantial support from President Obama.

And after all the heartburn in the House, it’s an even tougher sell in the Senate where Sen. Reid’s bill has a very real chance of being substantially modified or not even brought to a vote, period. Pelosi is essentially telling her own moderate members to walk the plank and risk electoral defeat in an effort that may be stymied by the upper chamber of Congress anyway. She may be attempting to provide leadership for the Senate by passing the bill, but she’s doing her own caucus members and the American electorate a vast disservice by hurrying her legislation through to please a segment of her party.

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Tragedy struck the military here in America as an Army psychiatrist opened fire with two handguns at Fort Hood in Texas. Twelve people have died as a result of the attack, and 30 were wounded in the attack by Major Nidal Malik Hasan, recently promoted and due to be deployed to Iraq on his first combat tour. My thoughts and prayers go out to all the victims and their families.

There were numerous conflicting reports coming out as the story developed, with some reports that there were multiple shooters using M-16’s. It was even reported that the shooter was killed, but it now appears he’s alive and in custody. What’s clear, though, is that Hasan was upset about his upcoming deployment, but even more disturbing, had made some comments about, among other things, Muslims rising up according to a co-worker. In addition, he’s been on the radar of federal law enforcement officials for some Internet postings made discussing suicide bombings.

Something smells fishy here, but I can’t put my finger on it. In any event, I’m not going to go overboard and say that Hasan’s actions prove that American Muslims are some kind of enemy within. I’m also not going to justify Hasan’s atrocities by the fact that he was called names because of his faith or that he was stressed about an upcoming duty tour. Those are cop-out explanations that try to absolve the killer of a measure of responsibility, and I’m not buying into it.

We’re sure to hear more about this in next few days, and hopefully we can eventually all make some sense out of it. In the meantime, remember the dead and wounded.

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On an issue of local importance to the Miami Valley, independent challenger Gary Leitzell has pulled ahead of Democratic incumbent Rhine McLin in the race for mayor of Dayton, OH. Leitzell leads McLin by 4 points with 94% of precincts reporting in. I’m making an executive decision and making a call (purely as an amateur) for a Leitzell victory.

McLin seems like a nice enough person, but after two terms as mayor that has seen hemorrhaging jobs and budget shortfalls, the city has little to show for her efforts. It was time for a change, and here’s hoping that Leitzell can do a better job (should he end up winning, of course).

I wonder, though, if McLin does lose, will she follow the path of her predecessor Mike Turner and run for Congress? That might be an interesting matchup, one that McLin won in a contest that sent Turner out of the mayor’s office and to Washington, D.C. Turner, though, now has a pretty good track record on the national level, and the district is larger than just Dayton. It’s some food for thought.

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Of the three heavily watched national races, the governor’s race in New Jersey was the one that most on both sides looked toward most closely as a bellwether for the national mood and the fortunes of both political parties. In an upset that is sure to send shock waves to Washington, D.C., Republican candidate Chris Christie won against incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine in a deep blue state that went heavily for Obama just one year ago.

This was to be an extremely close contest, but the AP and NBC called the race with 20% of precincts not yet reporting. There was a lot of dissatisfaction with Corzine in New Jersey, but this win is an upset and an eye-opener no matter how you look at it.

Extrapolating this win forward to 2010 is a dicier proposal. Trying to say that New Jersey is now a red state would be an absolutely laughable assertion – Democratic influence will continue to remain strong there. It’s also absolutely correct to say that in an off-year, you have lower turnout, especially among the demographics that turned out heavily for Obama last year. In addition, it’s also fair to say that these races hinge on local and state matters that may have no bearing on national elections.

On the other hand, it’s foolish to look at the wins in Virginia and New Jersey in a complete vacuum. Voters in those states, like the rest of the country, are unhappy for a reason, and Congress and the administration play a role in that national dissatisfaction, however large or small you want to make that role.

But particularly in New Jersey, the President spent a lot of time campaigning for the Democratic candidates. Obama made five trips to the Garden State and sent his campaign team to manage Corzine’s effort there. A loss for Corzine is obviously a reflection on his failed governorship, but it also points to Obama’s declining influence in even the bluest of states to turn the tide with a massive amount of energy on his part.

I was hopeful about this race, but I’m still shocked that Christie was able to pull it off. So far we have an impressive duo of wins for the GOP tonight.

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In a race where the only uncertainty was the margin of victory, Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell annihilated Democrat Creigh Deeds by a margin of 18 points. Going into Election Day, the margin in the polls had been widening, leaving this race in little doubt. Republicans won the other two statewide positions of Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General easily as well.

And yet, such a large margin of victory is quite surprising in a state that just a year ago went for Barack Obama fairly handily. A consistent message being pushed by pollsters and pundits tonight is that these elections aren’t a reflection on Obama and that the President himself isn’t a factor. That’s certainly true to a degree, as the races boil down to two candidates and issues that matter to a state electorate, not a national one.

Still, the addition of Virginia to the Democratic column was a major feather in the cap in 2008, and such a dramatic swing the other way for statewide offices doesn’t happen in a vacuum. In any event, it’s an impressive win for McDonnell and Republicans in Virginia.

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Vice President Joe Biden was in upstate New York today stumping for Bill Owens in the heated NY-23 Congressional special election. You know, the one that doesn’t matter and has no national portent whatsoever, except if Owens wins, of course. In any event, Biden had a few words to say about Scozzafava’s departure and the GOP:

We aren’t asking you to switch your party. We are just saying join us in teaching a lesson to those absolutists who say no dissent is permitted within your own party … This is a different ideology. This is different than anything I’ve known in my 45 years of being familiar with this district. You know, they may not have any room for moderate views in the Republican Party upstate anymore, but let me assure you, we have room, we have room.

What’s ironic about Biden’s statement about “absolutists” is that it ignores his own party’s attempts at minimizing the effects of Blue Dogs and moderates on a variety of issues including health care reform. Concerns about the public option and potential costs are to be swept aside and steamrolled under the weight of an ideologically driven liberal agenda, moderate Dems be damned if need be (Pelosi has said as much in saying she’s willing to lose Blue Dog districts as long as her agenda gets through). Indeed, Mr. Biden, your own voters didn’t seem to have room for Joe Lieberman, who was primaried by the liberal faithful and still found victory as an independent. The threat of primary races still hangs over many moderate Democrats who don’t toe the liberal line well enough, and indeed, hangs over Arlen Specter, who the Democrats initially championed as a great moderate before working to ensure he will receive a challenge from a more liberal Democrat next year.

And let’s get a few things straight. Scozzafava got a lot of monetary support from the national party, and she was only forced out when her poll numbers dropped so low that it was obvious the voters of NY-23 didn’t see her as a viable option in the race. And about Scozzafava’s “moderate” status -  it isn’t as though she’s a mostly solid Republican that had some pro-choice leanings. Her record is solidly liberal, with an award from Planned Parenthood for her abortion stance, her support of gay marriage, her support for card check, her support for the economic stimulus plan, her ties to unions, and her ties to ACORN and the Working Families Party. Those who have worn the “moderate” moniker like Tom Ridge, Rudy Giuliani, or John McCain are easily to the right of Scozzafava, so let’s be honest about what she is: a liberal, not a moderate.

That’s fine for her to hold those views, but it doesn’t take an “absolutist” to have issues with a Scozzafava candidacy. Disagreement on one or two or several issues is perfectly fine and quite healthy within a political party, as long as there are fundamental areas of agreement. But with a constellation of policy stands that are hard to accept, it becomes less of an ideological purity test and more of a practical argument along the lines of, “What will really be the difference in Congress if this liberal Republican candidate wins over the liberal Democrat?”

It’s a point I was trying to make yesterday, and a point I’ve been trying to make over the last year throughout the rhetorical fluctuations about Colin Powell and Arlen Specter. No one is trying to force moderates out of the party (or they shouldn’t be anyway), but at some point a fundamental question must be asked: what does it mean to be a Republican? If it means nothing besides being a “not-Democrat”, then the entire reason for the party’s existence is obliterated. This is why the GOP, if it is to have any success, must not simply hope for Democratic failure, but must create and articulate a series of core principles and positive plans for action if it is to have any chance at regaining the national electorate.

Democrats and liberals are hoping to forestall that examination by playing up the tension between factions of the Republican party, suggesting that the GOP is becoming too “extreme” or “too right-wing,” or that litmus tests of ideological purity are being administered and destroying the GOP’s inclusiveness. The truth is that the tension is originating not from factions within the party, but between a party leadership that is focused solely on statistical pandering for mathematically based victory and a Republican and conservative base that is yearning for its representatives to stand for something more than “not-Democrat.”

Update: Cross-posted at The Moderate Voice.

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The drama over the special election in NY-23 has taken a variety of surprising turns over the past few weeks. The Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava, was selected by a county board of GOP supervisors and got a load of initial cash and support from the national Republican establishment. But a plethora of her policy stands made many in the base question why she was selected in the first place. There are her positions on social questions that rub many the wrong way (including winning an award from Planned Parenthood), but besides that, she also favors card check and the stimulus package.

Many in the national GOP electorate reacted with growing anger after already being served with a moderate Republican candidate in the presidential race who fared rather poorly. Complicating matters was the presence in the race of a Conservative Party candidate, Doug Hoffman. After the national spotlight was shone on Scozzafava, and after Hoffman began to make significant gains in the polls, several national figures endorsed Hoffman, including Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint, and George Pataki. Other party leaders, seeming motivated more by party affiliation than policy positions, continued to stick by Scozzafava, like RNC chair Michael Steele and Newt Gingrich.

On Friday, however, beaten back by plummeting poll numbers and an influx of national cash and ground support for Hoffman, Scozzafava dropped out of the race. She shortly endorsed her Democrat opponent, Bill Owens, apparently after urging from numerous members of the Democratic party, including Sen. Charles Schumer and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. It’s hard to see how her endorsement, along with its coordination with national Democrats, blunts any criticism that Scozzafava was basically a Democrat with a different letter after her name; indeed, it underscores the truth of it.

The NRCC and the RNC look like huge dupes for blowing $1 million on a candidate that angered their national base and ended up stabbing them in the back anyway. Now the headline is a predictable, “Is there room for moderates in the GOP?” It was the same blather that was spouted after Arlen Specter defected, but like Scozzfava, his defection solidified criticism that he was basically a Democrat with a different letter after his name. Never mind that many of Scozzafava’s position are more in line with a liberal Democrat than a moderate Republican, but it returns to an issue that many are trying to foist on Republicans in the hope of reducing their appeal and their influence.

I would respond that a political party must have a set of core principles that it must expect its members to adhere to the majority of the time, and the local GOP ran a candidate that in many ways is indistinguishable from the Democrat. On one level it may be advantageous to have more numbers in your caucus, but if the liberal GOP rep goes to Congress and votes with the Democrats on the big issues like health care reform, cap and trade, and card check, then nothing of substance is gained at all. Instead, you’ve jeopardized your party’s goals at the expense of the base’s trust, all for the sake of having a few more people with the same letter after their name on your team.

There are some places where a more moderate candidate is absolutely necessary to win. NY-23, which has voted reliably Republican for quite some time, wasn’t one of those places. If this had remained a two person race, many probably would have grumbled but been OK with a Scozzafava win. But with the presence of Hoffman, it was too much for conservatives to see the national party prop up a liberal candidate at the expense of an actual conservative in the race.

It may be that this will be the right’s Ned Lamont moment, although that’s a somewhat flawed analogy as Lamont was the liberal faithful’s answer to a sitting incumbent that didn’t fit their tastes. In any case, I have no idea how this race will turn out. PPP says Hoffman has a double digit lead, but a lot of other polling outfits have the race much closer, and while the late momentum seems to be in Hoffman’s favor, I’m not going to say anything for sure.

Now the shouts are coming that this race shows the GOP is becoming too ideologically driven and the base too needful of “litmus tests” for its candidates. This criticism rings hollow as most of the Democratic agenda in Congress is coming straight out the liberal playbook with threats against moderate members to go along if they know what’s good for them. No, the question that NY-23 poses isn’t whether the GOP can be more inclusive in its principles, it’s whether the party will have any principles at all.

Whether Hoffman wins or loses, the message has been sent to the GOP leadership that an “R” after the name isn’t enough any more. Whether that’s “inclusive” enough for some is immaterial because a party cannot merely become the milquetoast version of its opponent to survive. Instead of statistically based pandering, it needs bold contrasts and recognizable differences, and more importantly, it needs workable ideas and solutions. NY-23 showcases the vast divide between the expectations of the Republican base and the cynical vision of the RNC leadership.

If it is to have success in 2010 and 2012, the GOP can’t simply bank on Democratic failure. It must provide positive solutions of its own. But beyond that, Bush’s second term and McCain’s candidacy utterly disillusioned a vast swath of the conservative base, and if the GOP is to flourish, it cannot continue to be not just apathetic but antagonistic toward its core voters. Regardless of whether Hoffman wins or loses, NY-23 may represent the beginning of a shift away from political expediency and back toward principled leadership.

Update: Cross-posted at The Moderate Voice.

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In a deal brokered by senior US diplomats, an agreement has been reached that will potentially reinstate Manuel Zelaya as President of Honduras after he was was ousted in June. Under the agreement, interim President Roberto Micheletti will step down and Zelaya will resume his office until upcoming presidential elections at the end of November. The deal must still be approved by Honduras’ legislature, but it’s expected that both of the main presidential candidates will urge their governing body to act swiftly and ratify the agreement so that the Honduran elections may be recognized by the world community.

I had personally hoped that Zelaya would not be able to regain control inside his country after he attempted, in my opinion, to set in motion a path towards amending the Honduran constitution and allowing him to hold on to his power. What happened in Honduras was not a coup, as the legislature and the judiciary all acted in accordance with the Honduran constitution, which the Honduran military then executed (although their mistake was kicking Zelaya completely out of the country). It’s an opinion that’s shared by the Law Library of Congress, which concluded that Honduras was within its rights to remove Zelaya from power, and have stood by their report after shameful calls from Sen. John Kerry and Rep. Howard Berman for its retraction out of concerns for political expediency.

The one good thing about the deal is that Zelaya’s return will be extremely short-lived. Presidential elections take place on November 29th, and the head of the Honduran legislature has signalled they’re in no great rush to ratify the agreement. It would amount to giving Zelaya only a few short weeks back in power, which minimizes any chance of mischief.

And yet … nah. Zelaya surely isn’t be crazy enough to try to seize power in a kind of bizarre counter-coup. Though with Daniel Ortega and Hugo Chavez as buddies, you never know. Chances are good, though, that Zelaya will get a few more nights in the presidential mansion before becoming a footnote in Honduras’ history. Here’s hoping, anyway. Stop over at Fausta’s Blog for more reaction and roundup.

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We’ll get to why they’re worried in a second. The big headline is that the American economy grew at an annual rate of 3.5% between July and September. The report by the Commerce Department boosted world stock markets and was the biggest rate of growth since the third quarter of 2007.

But this news, encouraging on its face, must be tempered by cold realism. This rosy report came from strong performance in two sectors – durable goods and residential investment. Much of the growth there was fueled by government spending in the form of the Cash for Clunkers program that propped up the auto industry and an $8,000 tax credit for first time home buyers that has boosted home sales. Both of those programs cost the taxpayers money ($24,000 per incentivized sale in the case of Cash for Clunkers), both contribute to our national debt, and both of those programs are ending.

It’s telling that if you remove the output of the auto industry, the growth rate was only 1.9%. Granted, that’s still growth, but not quite the headline grabber form before. It leaves economists worried that the gains will be fleeting and insignificant, especially when you consider that business investment fell by 2.5%, indicating that the third quarter doesn’t reflect a fundamental strengthening of the economy but a flurry of spending by the government.

And while it may produce temporary benefits, the permanent damage to our debt is very real, which is yet another reason that individuals and nations cannot merely spend their way out of a recession.

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In a ceremony closed to the public, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unveiled to much fanfare her version of health care reform that includes a public option. Weighing in at an astounding 1900 pages, it has an estimated (emphasis on estimated) net cost of $894 billion, making each word worth roughly $2.24 million. I say net cost because the CBO said the plan would cost $1.055 trillion over 10 years but estimated revenue on penalties on employers and individuals would bring in $161 billion. Additional revenue comes in the form of other tax increases, some of which have been highlighted by Americans for Tax Reform.

The rests of the costs are offset by cuts to programs like Medicare Advantage, but the biggest shell game in the cost comes in the fact that the estimate doesn’t cover the $245 billion needed to keep Medicare reimbursement levels from decreasing. This is supposedly covered in a separate bill to be introduced in the House (a similar bill was just defeated in the Senate), but it’s an extremely dishonest way to decrease the representation of costs for the House plan.

House Democrats can claim a compromise in backing off their plan to tie doctor reimbursements to Medicare under the “consumer option” (this is the poll-tested term of the week for the plan now, apparently). However, it’s done by shifting costs to states by increasing Medicaid eligibility from 133% of the poverty line to 150%. In addition, some of the cost structures may be skewed based on the fact that benefits aren’t paid until 2013 letting the program run surpluses for the first five years before running deficits the last five. That doesn’t seem like a very favorable trajectory if the goal is saving money.

With such a massive bill, there should be no rush to quickly pass this legislation, especially since benefits aren’t being doled out for years to come. The CBO estimate may be helpful to some now, but the actual scoring of the bill will be interesting, particularly in assessing the program’s cost decades down the road. The size and scope of the public option remains a gigantic sticking point, especially for some moderate Democrats, as well as abortion funding and coverage for illegals.

But three big problems still remain:

• The individual mandate. Despite Nancy Pelosi’s dismissal of a question regarding these concerns, forcing Americans to buy health insurance may be unconstitutional.
• A penalty structure that may make it advantageous for some businesses to drop coverage for their employees. If a small business has a payroll of $500,000 and yearly health costs of $51,000 for 14 employees, they can merely pay an excise tax of 2% equaling $10,000, saving $41,000 a year and forcing their employees to go to the government option.
• Making insurers accept anyone at anytime which increases the likelihood that people will only buy insurance when they get sick. If the yearly penalty is something like $500 a year but the cost of a policy is $1000 a year, then it would be advantageous for an individual to merely pay the penalty until they require coverage, which they will be required to receive. This drives up costs to private insurers and reduces the risk pool, making those with coverage pay more in premiums to cover those who wait to buy in until they need it.

There are  many questions that need to be addressed, and there’s still a long way to go in this debate. With all these uncertainties and areas of concern, I remain strongly unconvinced that what Congress is churning out will favorably impact the cost and quality of American health care.

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