A LESS EXPANSIVE PLAN? There was a fair bit of chatter this morning about John Edwards' proposal to revoke the health insurance of "all political appointees," as Mike Allen reported this morning. A statement by the Edwards campaign later in the day described the plan as applying to "all senior political appointees in both branches of government." Senior appointees are generally understood as those who require Senate confirmation, which includes a fairly deep bench in some of the agencies, but is not so broad a category as "all political appointees." Now, at the SEIU Political Action Conference, Edwards described the plan as applying to "every Cabinet member," which is an even smaller group of people, and only one branch of government (the executive). A health insurance-revocation plan restricted to Cabinet members would not have any impact on Edwards' ability to recruit the best people he can for the essential political appointee jobs that were so poorly filled during the Bush years -- and will impact considerably fewer people than we were hearing about this morning.
UPDATE: Mark Korblau, national spokesman for Edwards, says that no changes should be inferred from the above statements, and that the plan does indeed apply to "all political appointees." So my earlier objections stand; I just don't think it's a good management practice to threaten revoke the health insurance of public servants and their families as a legislative pressure tactic.
--Garance Franke-Ruta