Americans paid off $21.6 billion in credit card debt and other consumer loans in July. That is the biggest decline in consumer debt since 1943, when the Federal Reserve started keeping track. The Takeaway's business contributor, Louise Story, a finance reporter for the New York Times, says the economy will fundamentally change if Americans take on a new attitude about spending money they don’t have.
Last night in front of a rare joint session of Congress, President Obama addressed the issue that has been on everyone's minds: health care reform. His speech was to-the-point, tackling issues such as insurance reforms, pre-existing conditions, malpractice insurance reform, and calling to task members of Congress for their failure to move more quickly. The president seemed to endorse much of the latest draft of a health care reform bill, one being circulated by Sen. Max Baucus, but hinted that he may be willing to pass the bill without bi-partisan support. For more we talk to our Washington correspondent Todd Zwillich as well as David Herszenhorn, the congressional correspondent for the New York Times, who was live blogging the speech.
In case you missed the presidential address, here it is in its entirety:
The BBC documentary "Aftershock" takes a close up look at how Americans are getting on one year after the economic collapse. To record “Aftershock,” our partners at the BBC World Service asked Steve Evans, the host of BBC show “Business Daily” to go to Nevada and chronicle the lives of those impacted. Steve Evans joins us to talk about the documentary.
Watch a promo video of "Aftershock":
The hotly contested "public option" for health care coverage is up for debate on Capitol Hill next week. Some say it's essential for reform while others, such as Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, say it's not critical. Sebelius said last month that the public option was “not the essential element” of the president’s health care plan.
For a closer look, we talk to Xavier Becerra (D-California), Congressman from California and the vice chair of the House Democratic Caucus. (click through for the full interview transcript)
"I believe the president is fighting hard to get reform passed, but he himself has said, to make this meaningful reform, you have to include competition that will give people choices and keep costs down. You can’t do that if you don’t have, inserted into this reform, a real plan that will compete and force others to compete to try to get business from the consumer at the best price." — Xavier Becerra (D-California), Congressman from California and the vice chair of the House Democratic Caucus
S.E.C. Inspector General David Kotz released a report stating that the agency had missed numerous opportunities to bust Bernie Madoff and his 16-year Ponzi scheme. Madoff's scam cost investors billions of dollars, shuffling money away from retirement funds, charitable donations, and trusts. Madoff is currently serving a 150-year sentence for his crimes, but what can the S.E.C. do to redeem themselves? We talk to David Scheer, S.E.C. reporter for Bloomberg News.
Tom Ridge entered the federal government as President Bush's Homeland Security advisor, and later became the first Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the mega-agency formed in the months after the September 11 attacks. He’s the man who brought America color-coded terror alerts, ramped-up airport security checks, and of course, a new appreciation for duct tape. We talk to him today about his experiences in the Bush administration and specifically, about a meeting that occurred just days before the 2004 election where he may have been pressured to raise the nation's security level. In his new book, The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege…and How We Can Be Safe Again, he says the internal debate left left him wondering whether a move to raise the threat level had to do with security or politics. (Click through for a full interview transcript.)
<div><p>"After 9/11, I suspect as congressmen and congresswomen made decisions, and as senators made decisions, and as other people in the government made decisions, some nature of politics ... the whole question of terrorism, became embedded in our political system."<br /> —Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge on the inevitable entwining of politics and security.</p></div>
The White House announced an addition to the president's agenda next Wednesday; he will speak about health care reform before a joint session of Congress. Obama's oration skills have long been considered one of his strengths, but pundits wonder if a few words from the bully pulpit can bring about agreement on the challenging health care bill. Joining us with a preview of what the president might say is Jay Newton-Small, Washington reporter for Time Magazine. We also speak to presidential historian Allan Lichtman, from American University, for a look at how presidents have waged their battles with Congress in recent decades.
"The president has got to come up with some kind of plan. And the members of Congress have got to zip their lips, and zip their egos and do one thing and one thing only, get that plan through."
—Presidential historian Allan Lichtman on how President Obama can pass health care reform
On September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 93 was brought down by passengers in Southwestern Pennsylvania after the plane was hijacked. The federal government announced this week that it has finally reached a land deal—the Flight 93 National Memorial is set to begin construction this fall. We speak to two family members who were involved in the process: Patrick White, the cousin of Flight 93 passenger Louis Joseph Nacke II; and Carole O'Hare, the daughter of passenger Hilda Marcin, who sat on the design committee for the memorial. Patrick is leaving tomorrow on a motorcycle ride to retrace Flight 93's intended path from Newark to San Francisco.
Track Patrick White's motorcycle ride to retrace Flight 93's intended path.
We also talk to WNYC reporter Matthew Schuerman about why there has been no construction at the World Trade Center site in New York City, eight years after the attacks of September 11th brought down the twin towers. Is it money, politics, or both that are delaying re-building at Ground Zero?
We speak to Nicholas Lemann, Dean of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and author of "The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy
Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mi.) joins us to remember Senator Ted Kennedy as a political colleague. We also have New York Times Reporter John Broder, who wrote a piece in for The New York Times on Senator Kennedy.
Attorney General Eric Holder will appoint federal prosecutor John Durham to investigate alleged prisoner abuses at CIA prisons during the Bush administration. Durham has a long reputation as a no-nonsense, under-the-radar prosecutor who’s gone after career criminals and corrupt government officials for decades.
For more on this elusive figure, we talk to Durham’s old boss Kevin O'Connor, former U.S. Attorney for the State of Connecticut. And for more on the ramifications of the decision to investigate the CIA's interrogation techniques, we turn to New York Times Reporter Scott Shane.
The Justice Department recommended yesterday that Attorney General Eric Holder re-open and examine cases of alleged abuse of suspected al-Qaeda members. The abuse allegedly took place in secret CIA prisons during former President George W. Bush's administration. To go over the details, we have Vijay Padmanabhan, visiting assistant professor at the Cardozo School of Law in New York City, and Mark Danner, author of the book “Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror.”
Read the Inspector General's report on interrogations (via NYTimes)
All this week, we'll be hosting mini-roundtable discussions about how health care reform could affect different groups of Americans. We kick it off this week with one of the groups who stands to be the most affected by any systematic reform: doctors themselves.
With us today are Dr. Kevin Pho, a primary care physician in Nashua, New Hampshire who also blogs at KevinMD.com, Dr. Charles Prestigiacomo, a neurosurgeon and associate professor at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, and Dr. Tyeese Gaines Reid, who is currently in her third year as an emergency care resident at Yale-New Haven Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut.
For more on the doctors from today's roundtable continue reading...
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is in Jackson Hole, Wyoming today at the annual meeting of economists and central bankers. Bernanke will address the group with a speech entitled “Reflections on a Year of Crisis.” We speak with Jesse Eisinger, a senior reporter at ProPublica, asking him to provide his own reflections on Bernanke's actions during this economic "year of crisis."
We’ve heard it before, but this time it might just stick: The Department of Transportation announced yesterday that the popular Cash for Clunkers program, which allows you to trade in your old gas-guzzler for up to $4500 towards a new fuel efficient car, is done as of Monday, August 24th. Although Congress added $2 billion to the program just weeks ago, the program's popularity means the money has run out far sooner than expected. To explain what is happening we talk to Micheline Maynard, senior business correspondent for the New York Times. We also talk to Brian Willian, the sales manager at Albany Honda in Georgia. He is awaiting a check from the government to reimburse him for the clunkers he's paid for under the program.
The debate over reforming the nation's health care system has been raging for months, and it seems one of the groups watching the tussle most closely are senior citizens. Most people tend to head to the doctor more as they get older, after all, and as they do, see their health care costs and time spent navigating the bureaucracy increase dramatically. Also increasing dramatically are the number of American seniors; as the Boomer generation moves into retirement, there are going to be many, many more people who require health care.
Today we talk to Julie Mason, White House correspondent for the Washington Examiner, about how senior citizens have ended up at the center of Washington's tug-of-war on health care reform. We also talk to four senior citizens who have their own opinions on where the debate is going: 67-year old Mary McKinney of the Bronx, New York, 80-year old married couple Dick and Barbara Mitchell of Yukon, Oklahoma, and 86-year old Geraldine Powe in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Older members of our society are the biggest consumers of medical care, and they have been vocal participants in the debate over reforming the health care system. What do the elderly think of the president's plan? The Takeaway talks to Trevor Hughes, a 77-year-old Jamaican immigrant and retired optician, who says the government should "butt out" of the health care. He recently underwent major spinal surgery which was covered by the insurance Hughes pays for out of his own pocket; he says that we can't afford to re-configure a system that just needs minor tweaks.
Health care, health care, health care. It’s all you see on the news, read in the papers, and hear on the radio. Will it pass? When? What will it look like if it does? What will things look like if it doesn't? We've been looking both at the broad strokes and picayune details of the various plans; today, we take a look at the potential ramifications of this debate on the political landscape.
The Democrats practically swept the 2006 elections and handily won the 2008 presidential elections, while the Republicans struggled with an identity crisis. But with this health care battle, has the G.O.P. found the grounds for a resurgence? Joining us with their take are Reihan Salam, from the New American Foundation, and Melissa Harris-Lacewell, professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton University.
With summer coming to a close, the United States is preparing for autumn's flu season. The Department of Health and Human Services said only 45 million doses of the vaccine against H1N1 (or "swine flu") will be ready in October, rather than the 120 million doses they had expected. While pregnant women and health care workers will be the first to get the two-dose vaccine, school-age children and teens are next in line. So who better to deliver those H1N1 vaccines than the schools themselves? In what could be the largest campaign since the polio vaccine in the 1950’s, schools across the country are preparing to inoculate their students. Joining us for a look at the supply of and demands for the H1N1 vaccine – and how it will be administered – is Dr. Maria Simbra. She’s the medical reporter for KDKA TV in Pittsburgh.
The facts. The skinny. The straight dope. If you're talking about health care reform (and who isn't, these days?), the truth has been thoroughly muddled lately with a lot of buzzwords, misnomers and outright fabrication. That's why The Takeaway is talking to Art Caplan. He's the director of the Center of Bio-Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania, and he's going to put the health care debate and such concepts as the potential "co-operative insurance consortia" into plain-speak.
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