With Record Profits, Insurers Hiking Rates

March 10, 2010

CBS News

By Sharyl Attkisson

As the battle over health care reform resumes this week, Democrats remain split over whether a bill will pass before the end of the month. But the White House is now ramping up its case that time is money and Americans who need insurance are the ones getting stuck with the bill as CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports.

As Obama administration officials push the president’s health care plan, exhibit A is a stunning series of rate hikes by private insurance companies.

“15,000 people a day lose their insurance, and some of those folks are being actually priced out of the marketplace,” said Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

In fact, major insurers are seeking premium hikes for individual policies – people not covered through work: 56 percent in Michigan, more than 25 percent in California, and 20 percent or more in Oregon, Maine, and Connecticut. And double digit increases are completed or pending in at least eight other states.

That’s why the president has often co-opted the maddening rate hikes to make the case for health care reform, mentioning them in this weekend’s address and in a Super Bowl interview with Katie Couric when he noted that “one of the major insurers in California just announced in the individual market they are increasing their premiums by 39 percent.”

That company is Anthem Blue Cross, and Ilene Lisak is one of the unlucky customers. The company notified her by letter that her $525 a month premium is going up to $708, an almost 35 percent hike.

“I was so overwhelmed. I just started crying,” Lisak said.

Other customers recently told their stories to congress.

“This is outrageous. My benefits have not improved in any way, and I don’t go to the doctor that often,” said Jeremy Arnold

With so much controversy, Anthem has been forced to put off rate hikes until May 1, while state officials review them. Anthem’s parent company, Wellpoint, made $380 million profit in just the fourth quarter last year. But executives argue they have no choice but to raise rates.

“Hospital costs are going up over 11 percent. Pharmaceutical costs are going up over 13 percent,” said Wellpoint executive vice president Brad Fluegel. “That’s what we really need to be focused on.”

Click here for the full report.

Dems Work to Push Congressman Out Due to ‘No’ Vote

March 8, 2010

Politico.com

By Tim Grieve

Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) says the House ethics committee is investigating him for inappropriate comments he made to a male staffer on New Year’s Eve — and that he’s the victim of a power play by Democratic leaders who want him out of Congress because he’s a “no” vote on health care reform.

“Mine is now the deciding vote on the health care bill,” Massa, who on Friday announced his intention to resign, said during a long monologue on radio station WKPQ. “And this administration and this House leadership have said, quote-unquote, they will stop at nothing to pass this health care bill. And now they’ve gotten rid of me, and it will pass. You connect the dots.”

A spokeswoman for House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) rejected Massa’s charge out of hand.
“That’s completely false,” said Katie Grant. “There is zero merit to that accusation.”
Massa insisted that he did not know the basis of a House ethics committee investigation into his conduct until after he announced his retirement last Wednesday, and he took Hoyer to task for going public with information related to the probe before it is completed.

In the monologue — an audio recording of which has been posted by Rochester’s WHAM-TV — Massa said he first heard that the ethics committee was questioning his staff in early February but had no idea why.

He said he now understands the basis of the committee’s investigation — and dismissed it as a matter of “political correctness” gone awry.

“I have to come find out that on New Year’s Eve, I went to a staff party — it was actually a wedding for a staff member of mine,” Massa said. “There were 250 people there. I was with my wife, and in fact we had a great time. She got the stomach flu, I went down to sing “Auld Lang Syne.” And with cameras on me — I’m talking three of them — filming me, I danced with the bride, and I danced with the bridesmaid. Absolutely nothing occurred.

“I said goodnight to the bridesmaid. I sat at down at the table where my whole staff was, all of them, by the way, bachelors. One of them looked at me and — as they would do after, I don’t know, 15 gin and tonics and goodness only knows how many bottles of champagne — a staff member made an intonation to me that maybe I should be chasing after the bridesmaid. His points were clear, and his words were far more colorful than that.

“And I grabbed the staff member sitting next to me and I said, ‘What I really ought to be doing is frakking you,’ and then tossled the guy’s hair and left, went to my room, because I knew the party was getting to a point where I shouldn’t be there.”

“Was that inappropriate of me? Absolutely.”

Click here for the full report.

States Seeking to Ban Mandatory Health Insurance

February 1, 2010

AbcNews.com

By David A. Lieb

Although President Barack Obama’s push for a health care overhaul has stalled, conservative lawmakers in about half the states are forging ahead with constitutional amendments to ban government health insurance mandates.

The proposals would assert a state-based right for people to pay medical bills from their own pocketbooks and prohibit penalties against those who refuse to carry health insurance.

In many states, the proposals began as a backlash to Democratic health care plans pending in Congress. But instead of backing away after a Massachusetts election gave Senate Republicans the filibuster power to halt the health care legislation, many state lawmakers are ramping up their efforts with new enthusiasm.

The moves reflect the continued political potency of the issue for conservatives, who have used it extensively for fundraising and attracting new supporters. The legal impact of any state measures may be questionable because courts generally have held that federal laws trump those in states.

Lawmakers in 34 states have filed or proposed amendments to their state constitutions or statutes rejecting health insurance mandates, according to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a nonprofit group that promotes limited government that is helping coordinate the efforts. Many of those proposals are targeted for the November ballot, assuring that health care remains a hot topic as hundreds of federal and state lawmakers face re-election.

Legislative committees in Idaho and Virginia endorsed their measures this past week. Supporters held a rally at the Pennsylvania Capitol. And hearings on the proposed constitutional amendments were held in Georgia and Missouri. The Missouri hearing drew overflow crowds the day after Obama urged federal lawmakers during his State of the Union address to keep pressing to pass a health care bill. The Nebraska Legislature plans a hearing on a measure this coming week.

Supporters of the state measures portray them as a way of defending individual rights and state sovereignty, asserting that the federal government has no authority to tell states and their citizens to buy health insurance.

“I think the alarm bell has been rung,” said Clint Bolick, the constitutional litigation director at the Goldwater Institute in Phoenix, which helped craft an Arizona amendment on this November’s ballot that has been used as a model in other states.

“These amendments are a way to manifest grass roots opposition” to federal health insurance mandates, Bolick said. “They kind of have a life of their own at this point. So while some of the pressure may be off, I think that this movement has legs.”

Separate bills passed by the U.S. House and Senate would impose a penalty on people who don’t have health insurance except in cases of financial hardship. Subsidies would be provided to low-income and middle-income households. The intent of the mandate is to expand the pool of people who are insured and paying premiums and thus offset the increased costs of insuring those with preexisting conditions or other risks.

The federal bills also would require many businesses to pay a penalty if they fail to provide employees health insurance that meets certain standards, though details and exemptions vary between the House and Senate versions.

Obama and Democratic legislative leaders were working to merge the two bills when Republican Scott Brown won the Massachusetts Senate seat long held by the late Edward M. Kennedy on Jan. 19, leaving Democrats one seat shy of the number needed to break a Republican filibuster.

Since then, the federal legislation has been in limbo. But state lawmakers have not.

“We need to move ahead no matter what kind of maneuvering continues in Washington, D.C.,” said Missouri Sen. Jane Cunningham, a Republican from suburban St. Louis.

Since suffering resounding defeats in the 2008 elections, Republicans have seized upon voter unease over the federal health care legislation to help revitalize their fortunes.

A USA Today/Gallup poll conducted the day after the Massachusetts vote found that about 55 percent of respondents — including a majority of self-described independents — favored putting the breaks on the current health care legislation. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

State laws or constitutional amendments clearly could bar lawmakers in those states from requiring individuals to purchase health insurance, such as Massachusetts has done. But it’s questionable that such the measures could shield state residents from a federal health insurance requirement.

“They are merely symbolic gestures,” said Michael Dorf, a constitutional law professor at Cornell University. “If this Congress were to pass an individual mandate, and if it is constitutional — which I believe it is — the express rule under the supremacy clause (of the U.S. Constitution) is that the federal law prevails.”

Many Democratic lawmakers are skeptical of both the intent and the effect of the state measures, entitled in many states as the “Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act.” Some have derided it as “political theater” or an attempt to merely shape the public debate.

“We need to do something about health care,” said Idaho Rep. Phylis King, a Boise Democrat. “And the federal government is trying to do something. It hurts our companies and it hurts our people to be uninsured.”

Click here for the full report.

Dollar Crisis Looms If U.S. Doesn’t Curb Debt

January 18, 2010

CNBC.com

By Reuters

The United States must soon raise taxes or cut government spending to curb its debt, and failure to act will risk a crippling dollar crisis as investor confidence ebbs, a panel of experts said on Wednesday.

“It has got to be done. It will be done some day. It may be done with enormous pain. Or it may be done more rationally,” said Rudolph Penner, a former head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget office who co-chaired the 24-strong Committee on the Fiscal Future of the United States.

President Barack Obama’s administration will present his budget for fiscal 2011 early next month amid intense pressure to live up to election campaign promises not to raise taxes on middle class Americans, while confronting a record deficit.

As a result, Obama is expected to focus on long-term fiscal discipline, while maintaining policy support for an economic recovery in the near-term as the country rebuilds after its worst recession since the Great Depression.

The two-year study by the panel, assembled by the highly respected National Research Council and the National Academy of Public Administration, said that the White House had some time on its side to restore growth, but must then act.

“In the next year or two, large deficits and more borrowing are unavoidable given the severity of the economic downturn. However, action ought to begin soon thereafter,” they said.

The national debt has risen above 50 percent of GDP (gross domestic product) from 40 percent two years ago, and within 20 years will blow past a previous record above 100 percent of GDP set after World War Two without stern official steps.

Mounting debt could sap investor confidence in the economy, and the nation’s ability to honor its obligations, pushing up interest rates and causing a steep fall in the value of the dollar as international creditors seek safer returns elsewhere.

Cut Health Care

The committee identified curbing Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security spending as the top challenge, and had a lukewarm assessment of cost containment in health care reform currently before Congress that Obama hopes to sign soon.

Committee co-chair John Palmer said the reforms might lay the foundation for improvements in the future, but he was skeptical about presumed saving levels and said that “passage would not change in any substantial way our analysis.”

The committee, which included three former heads of the CBO, outlined a range of options to lower the ratio of the national debt to 60 percent of the size of the economy.

The 60 percent threshold of debt to GDP, a target that is also used by the nations sharing the euro common currency, was a “judgment choice”, said Penner, who is a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, a Washington think-tank.

He said it was deemed to be the most that could be borne without incurring debt levels that would drive up long-term interest rates, and the least that was politically feasible in terms of reductions in government spending.

At one end of the options, the committee reviewed a policy mix based on low spending and low taxes. This envisaged payroll and income tax rates staying as they are, around 18-19 percent of GDP, but healthcare and retirement program costs sharply curtailed and defense and domestic spending cut 20 percent.

The other end of the scale looked at a high spending/high taxes policy mix that would maintain the projected growth in Social Security and allow higher spending on federal programs.

However, this would see taxes rise above 40 percent of GDP, or in the neighborhood of Denmark or Sweden, in order to hold the national debt to 60 percent, unless a value added sales tax was also introduced to augment government revenue.

Between the two were several intermediary solutions relying on a blend of higher taxes and lower spending. The committee made no recommendations but warned there was no time to waste.

“If action is taken soon, the country has a wide choice of options to help achieve fiscal sustainability. All are difficult; but if action is postponed, the options will be fewer and the choices even more difficult,” they said.

Click here for the full report.

Youth of America to Pay for Current Healthcare Insurance Mandate

January 13, 2010

Fox News

Young adults are in for a wake-up call if health care reform passes.

For the first time ever, the federal government is going to require that everybody obtain health insurance coverage. For those who have insurance through their employers, the so-called individual mandate may have very little impact. But for young adults, many of whom are not currently covered, the health care bill will add a new and costly expense to their budgets.

“The Census Bureau tells us there are 18 million people between the ages of 18 and 35 who are uninsured — roughly half of the uninsured population are younger people in that age group,” said Anne Kim, with the non-profit think tank Third Way.

The individual mandate has teeth to it, and anyone who refuses to get coverage will be fined under the health care package.
related links

*White House, Democratic Leaders Meet on Health Overhaul Compromise

*Health Care Countdown: Senate Bill Could Hit Middle Class Hard

In the Senate bill, the fines start low at $95 a year in 2014, and they eventually rise to between $750 and $2,250,  depending on the income of the person being fined. In the House bill, the fine is calculated as 2.5 percent of the income of the person being penalized.

Jim Capretta, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, said the fines are “relatively low” when compared to the costs of coverage that people are being told to assume.

“Some of the costs of an individual coverage or a family policy could be as high as $10,000 or $14,000 in a few years’ time,” he said. “And so there’s thousands of dollars of premiums at stake and the fine is maybe only $750.”

The federal government wants to require young, healthy people to buy insurance because if they don’t, premiums for everyone else will go up. Insurance companies need low-maintenance, young customers on their rolls so they can raise money to cover benefits for less-healthy people the health care bill will require them to insure.

“If you don’t have a mandate that gets in the young people who are cheaper, you’re going to see average premiums rise,” said Jim Kessler, vice president for policy with Third Way. “There’s no way around that.”

But both houses passed two other reforms that create an incentive not to buy insurance.

First, the bills allow patients to basically purchase insurance whenever they want.

“You can literally buy an insurance policy in the ambulance on the way to the hospital,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office. “You could imagine a situation in which you would pay the fines, stay out of the insurance pool, and at the moment when you need it, you go out and buy it.”

The other disincentive is that both houses change how much older customers can be charged relative to younger customers. Analysts agree this will drive up the cost for young people, though it’s not clear by how much.

Click here for full report

Amish Exempt from Health Mandate

January 12, 2010

Watertown Daily Times

by Marc Heller

 

Federal health care reform will require most Northern New Yorkers — but not all, it turns out — to carry health insurance or risk a fine.

Hundreds of Amish families in the region are likely to be free from that requirement.

The Amish, as well as some other religious sects, are covered by a “religious conscience” exemption, which allows people with religious objections to insurance to opt out of the mandate. It is in both the House and Senate versions of the bill, making its appearance in the final version routine unless there are last-minute objections.

Although the Amish consist of several branches, some more conservative than others, they generally rely upon a community ethic that disdains government assistance. Families rely upon one another, and communities pitch in to help neighbors pay health care expenses.

The Amish population has been growing in the north country, as well as in New York generally. The state ranks sixth nationally in Amish population and posted the biggest net increase in Amish households — 307 — from 2002 to 2007, according to the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania.

Lawmakers reportedly included the provision at the urging of Amish constituents, although the legislation does not specify that community and the provision could apply to other groups as well, including Old Order Mennonites and perhaps Christian Scientists.

A professor and lawyer at Yeshiva University in New York complained last summer that exempting groups for religious reasons could run afoul of the Constitution. Marci A. Hamilton, who teaches at the University’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, wrote at Findlaw.com in August, “If the government can tolerate a religious exemption, then it must do so evenhandedly among religious believers with the same beliefs. This is sheer favoritism for a certain class of religions, or even for one religion.”

In her column, Ms. Hamilton speculated that lobbyists for the Christian Science Church were responsible for the provision, given their public stance that health care reform bills around the country should include religious exemptions. In an e-mail message Friday, she said she was unaware of the Amish interest in the bill and that their objections to the mandate surprised her because the Amish do buy vehicle insurance, for instance.

Ms. Hamilton said the exemption could harm the health of children whose families avoid medical care for religious reasons, although the Amish objections relate more to insurance than to medical care itself.

Click here for full report

7 Storylines Obama Doesn’t Want Told

November 30, 2009

Politico.com

By John F. Harris

Presidential politics is about storytelling. Presented with a vivid storyline, voters naturally tend to fit every new event or piece of information into a picture that is already neatly framed in their minds.

No one understands this better than Barack Obama and his team, who won the 2008 election in part because they were better storytellers than the opposition. The pro-Obama narrative featured an almost mystically talented young idealist who stood for change in a disciplined and thoughtful way. This easily outpowered the anti-Obama narrative, featuring an opportunistic Chicago pol with dubious relationships who was more liberal than he was letting on.

A year into his presidency, however, Obama’s gift for controlling his image shows signs of faltering. As Washington returns to work from the Thanksgiving holiday, there are several anti-Obama storylines gaining momentum.

The Obama White House argues that all of these storylines are inaccurate or unfair. In some cases these anti-Obama narratives are fanned by Republicans, in some cases by reporters and commentators.

But they all are serious threats to Obama, if they gain enough currency to become the dominant frame through which people interpret the president’s actions and motives.

Here are seven storylines Obama needs to worry about:

He thinks he’s playing with Monopoly money

Economists and business leaders from across the ideological spectrum were urging the new president on last winter when he signed onto more than a trillion in stimulus spending and bank and auto bailouts during his first weeks in office. Many, though far from all, of these same people now agree that these actions helped avert an even worse financial catastrophe.

Along the way, however, it is clear Obama underestimated the political consequences that flow from the perception that he is a profligate spender. He also misjudged the anger in middle America about bailouts with weak and sporadic public explanations of why he believed they were necessary.

The flight of independents away from Democrats last summer — the trend that recently hammered Democrats in off-year elections in Virginia — coincided with what polls show was alarm among these voters about undisciplined big government and runaway spending. The likely passage of a health care reform package criticized as weak on cost-control will compound the problem.

Obama understands the political peril, and his team is signaling that he will use the 2010 State of the Union address to emphasize fiscal discipline. The political challenge, however, is an even bigger substantive challenge—since the most convincing way to project fiscal discipline would be actually to impose spending reductions that would cramp his own agenda and that of congressional Democrats.

Too much Leonard Nimoy

People used to make fun of Bill Clinton’s misty-eyed, raspy-voiced claims that, “I feel your pain.”

The reality, however, is that Clinton’s dozen years as governor before becoming president really did leave him with a vivid sense of the concrete human dimensions of policy. He did not view programs as abstractions — he viewed them in terms of actual people he knew by name.

Obama, a legislator and law professor, is fluent in describing the nuances of problems. But his intellectuality has contributed to a growing critique that decisions are detached from rock-bottom principles.

Both Maureen Dowd in The New York Times and Joel Achenbach of The Washington Post have likened him to Star Trek’s Mr. Spock.

The Spock imagery has been especially strong during the extended review Obama has undertaken of Afghanistan policy. He’ll announce the results on Tuesday. The speech’s success will be judged not only on the logic of the presentation but on whether Obama communicates in a more visceral way what progress looks like and why it is worth achieving. No soldier wants to take a bullet in the name of nuance.

That’s the Chicago Way

This is a storyline that’s likely taken root more firmly in Washington than around the country. The rap is that his West Wing is dominated by brass-knuckled pols.

It does not help that many West Wing aides seem to relish an image of themselves as shrewd, brass-knuckled political types. In a Washington Post story this month, White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina, referring to most of Obama’s team, said, “We are all campaign hacks.”

The problem is that many voters took Obama seriously in 2008 when he talked about wanting to create a more reasoned, non-partisan style of governance in Washington. When Republicans showed scant interest in cooperating with Obama at the start, the Obama West Wing gladly reverted to campaign hack mode.

The examples of Chicago-style politics include their delight in public battles with Rush Limbaugh and Fox News and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. (There was also a semi-public campaign of leaks aimed at Greg Craig, the White House counsel who fell out of favor.) In private, the Obama team cut an early deal — to the distaste of many congressional Democrats — that gave favorable terms to the pharmaceutical lobby in exchange for their backing his health care plans.

The lesson that many Washington insiders have drawn is that Obama wants to buy off the people he can and bowl over those he can’t. If that perception spreads beyond Washington this will scuff Obama’s brand as a new style of political leader.

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Government Wants Tax To Help Cover Cost for Bribing Taliban

November 20, 2009

Prison Planet.com

By Paul Joseph Watson

Not content with savaging American taxpayers with two huge new financial burdens during an economic recession, in the form of health care reform and cap and trade, close allies of Barack Obama have proposed a new war surtax that will force Americans to foot the bill for the cost of protecting opium fields in Afghanistan, paying off drug lords, and bribing the Taliban.

Warning that the cost of occupying Afghanistan is a threat to the Democrats’ plan to overhaul health care, lawmakers have announced their plan to make Americans pay an additional war tax that will be taken directly from their income, never mind the fact that around 36 per cent of federal taxes already go to paying for national defense.

“Regardless of whether one favors the war or not, if it is to be fought, it ought to be paid for,” the lawmakers, all prominent Democratic allies of Obama, said in a joint statement on the “Share The Sacrifice Act of 2010 ( PDF),” reports AFP.

The move is being led by the appropriately named House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey, Representative John Murtha, who chairs that panel’s defense subcommittee; and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank.

The tax would apply to anyone earning as little as $22,600 per year in 2011.

The proposal is described as “heavily symbolic” with little chance of passing, but it once again illustrates the hypocrisy of an administration that swept to power on the promise of “change” to the Neo-Con imperial agenda and a resolve to reduce U.S. military involvement overseas. In reality, there are more troops in Iraq and Afghanistan now under Obama that at any time during the Bush administration.

At the height of the Bush administration’s 2007 “surge” in Iraq, there were 26,000 US troops in Afghanistan and 160,000 in Iraq, a total of 186,000.

Click here for full report

The House Passes Health Care Bill

November 9, 2009

MyWay

By Erica Werner

The Democratic-controlled House has narrowly passed landmark health care reform legislation, handing President Barack Obama a hard won victory on his signature domestic priority.

Republicans were nearly unanimous in opposing the plan that would expand coverage to tens of millions of Americans who lack it and place tough new restrictions on the insurance industry.

The 220-215 vote late Saturday cleared the way for the Senate to begin a long-delayed debate on the issue that has come to overshadow all others in Congress.

A triumphant Speaker Nancy Pelosi compared the legislation to the passage of Social Security in 1935 and Medicare 30 years later.

Obama, who went to Capitol Hill earlier on Saturday to lobby wavering Democrats, said in a statement after the vote, “I look forward to signing it into law by the end of the year.”

“It provides coverage for 96 percent of Americans. It offers everyone, regardless of health or income, the peace of mind that comes from knowing they will have access to affordable health care when they need it,” said Rep. John Dingell, the 83-year-old Michigan lawmaker who has introduced national health insurance in every Congress since succeeding his father in 1955.

But minority Republicans cataloged their objections across hours of debate on the 1,990-page, $1.2 trillion legislation.

“We are going to have a complete government takeover of our health care system faster than you can say, ‘this is making me sick,’” said Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich.

In the run-up to a final vote, conservatives from the two political parties joined forces to impose tough new restrictions on abortion coverage in insurance policies to be sold to many individuals and small groups.

The legislation would require most Americans to carry insurance and provide federal subsidies to those who otherwise could not afford it. Large companies would have to offer coverage to their employees. Both consumers and companies would be slapped with penalties if they defied the government’s mandates.

Insurance industry practices such as denying coverage because of pre-existing medical conditions would be banned, and insurers would no longer be able to charge higher premiums on the basis of gender or medical history. The industry would also lose its exemption from federal antitrust restrictions on price fixing and market allocation.

At its core, the measure would create a federally regulated marketplace where consumers could shop for coverage. In the bill’s most controversial provision, the government would sell insurance, although the Congressional Budget Office forecasts that premiums for it would be more expensive than for policies sold by private companies.

The bill drew the votes of 219 Democrats and Rep. Joseph Cao, a first-term Republican who holds an overwhelmingly Democratic seat in New Orleans. Opposed were 176 Republicans and 39 Democrats.

From the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada issued a statement saying, “We realize the strong will for reform that exists, and we are energized that we stand closer than ever to reforming our broken health insurance system.”

To pay for the expansion of coverage, the bill cuts Medicare’s projected spending by more than $400 billion over a decade. It also imposes a tax surcharge of 5.4 percent on income over $500,000 in the case of individuals and $1 million for families.

Click here for the full report.

GOP: The New Comeback Kids

November 4, 2009

Associated Press

By Liz Sidoti

Independents who swept Barack Obama to a historic 2008 victory broke big for Republicans on Tuesday as the GOP wrested political control from Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey, a troubling sign for the president and his party heading into an important midterm election year.

Conservative Republican Bob McDonnell’s victory in the Virginia governor’s race over Democrat R. Creigh Deeds and moderate Republican Chris Christie’s ouster of unpopular New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine was a double-barreled triumph for a party looking to rebuild after being booted from power in national elections in 2006 and 2008.

Elsewhere on Tuesday, Maine voters rejected a state law that would allow same-sex couples to wed. If supporters had prevailed, it would have marked the first time that the electorate in any state endorsed gay marriage.

And Democrat Bill Owens captured a GOP-held vacant 23rd Congressional District seat in New York in a race that highlighted fissures in the Republican Party and illustrated hurdles the GOP could face in capitalizing on any voter discontent with Obama and Democrats next fall.

California Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, also a Democrat, won a special election to a vacant congressional seat, Ohio voters approved casinos and a slew of cities selected mayors, including New York, which gave Michael Bloomberg a third term.

The outcomes of Virginia and New Jersey were sure to feed discussion about the state of the electorate, the status of the diverse coalition that sent Obama to the White House and the limits of the president’s influence — on the party’s base of support and on moderate current lawmakers he needs to advance his legislative priorities.

His signature issue of health care reform was dealt a blow hours before polls closed when Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid signaled that Congress may not complete health care legislation this year, missing Obama’s deadline and pushing debate into a congressional election year. Democrats in swing-voting states and moderate-to-conservative districts may be less willing to back Obama on issues like health care after Virginia and New Jersey showed there are limits to how much he can protect his rank and file from fallout back home.

The president had personally campaigned for Deeds and Corzine, seeking to ensure that independents and base voters alike turned out even if he wasn’t on the ballot — and voters still rejected them. Thus, the losses were blots on Obama’s political standing to a certain degree and suggested potential problems ahead as he seeks to achieve his policy goals, protect Democratic majorities in Congress and expand his party’s grip on governors’ seats next fall.

Interviews with voters leaving polling stations in both states were filled with reasons for Democrats to be concerned and for Republicans to be optimistic, particularly about independents — the crown jewel of elections because they often determine outcomes.

Independents were a critical part Obama’s victory in Virginia, New Jersey and across the country. But after more than a year of recession, they fled from Democrats in the two states, where the economy trumped all.

The Associated Press exit polls showed that nearly a third of voters in Virginia described themselves as independents, and nearly as many in New Jersey did. They preferred McDonnell by almost a 2-1 margin over Deeds in Virginia, and Christie over Corzine by a similar margin.

Last year, independents split between Obama and Republican John McCain in both states.

In Virginia, McDonnell won by big margins in rapidly growing, far-flung Washington, D.C., suburbs — places like Loudoun and Prince William counties — that Republicans historically have won but where Obama prevailed last fall by winning over independents and swing voters. Republicans swept all three statewide Virginia offices up for election: governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general.

“Bob McDonnell’s victory gives Republicans tremendous momentum heading into 2010,” declared Haley Barbour, chairman of the Republican Governors Association. “His focus on ideas and pocketbook issues will serve as a model for Republicans running next year.”

Said Tim Kaine, the Democratic National Committee chairman and the term-limited Virginia governor: “We are disappointed.”

In both states, the surveys also suggested the Democrats had difficulty turning out their base, including the large numbers of first-time minority and youth voters whom Obama attracted. The Virginia electorate was whiter in 2009 than it was in 2008, when blacks and Hispanics voted in droves to elect the country’s first black president.

Democratic victories in both Virginia, a new swing state, and New Jersey, a Democratic stronghold, in 2005 preceded big Democratic years nationally in 2006 and 2008.

Tuesday’s impact on Obama’s popularity and on the 2010 elections could easily be overstated. Voters are often focused on local issues and local personalities.

Yet, national issues, like the recession, were clearly a factor, with voter attitudes shaped to some degree by how people feel about the state of their nation — and their place in it.

And, voter attitudes — particularly among independents — could bode ill for Democrats in moderate districts and in swing states like Ohio, Colorado and Nevada, should they remain unchanged when the party seeks to defend its turf next fall. In 2010, most governors, a third of the Senate and all members in the House will be on ballots.

It’s also difficult to separate Obama from the outcomes after he devoted a significant chunk of time working to persuade voters to elect Deeds in Virginia and re-elect Corzine in New Jersey.

More than four in 10 voters in Virginia said their view of Obama factored into their choice on Tuesday, and those voters roughly split between expressing support and opposition for the president. People who said they disapprove of Obama’s job performance voted overwhelmingly Republican, and those who approve of the president favored Deeds, the Democrat.

The Obama factor was similar in New Jersey, though there were slightly more voters who said the president did not factor into their choice.

Click here for the full report.

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