Boggs hearings represent mere hiccup -- Obama judge picks continue confirmation surge

There’s been a lot of frustration among Progressives over Republican senators continuing to block Obama judicial picks in committee thanks to the blue slip method.  The latest manifestation of the frustration comes with the nomination of Michael Boggs, a Republican-backed candidate nominated as part of a deal to fill several slots on federal bench in Georgia (In return for nominating Boggs and two other district appointments, Georgia’s Republican Senators agreed to allow the nomination of Jill Pryor to move forward for the 11th Circuit Court seat and Leigh Martin May for a district judge seat.)

Progressives' frustration is understandable – as a state judge and legislator Boggs has defended voter identification laws, displaying the Confederate flag and opposed gay rights. However, Democrats should also keep their eyes on the forest through the trees: with the elimination of the filibuster for most executive nominations last November, judicial confirmations have drastically increased.

How much?  In 2014, the Senate has confirmed 40 judges thus far – 33 in the district courts and seven in the appellate courts. During the first five years of Obama’s presidency, the previous high number of judges confirmed through the end of May was 24 (in 2011 and 2012).  That translates into an increase of 67 percent in the number of judicial confirmations. Oh – and we’ve still got another week of Senate business to go in May. 

In addition, the vacancy rate is also starting to decline noticeably on the federal bench.  At the beginning of December, just after the Senate eliminated the filibuster, there were 86 vacancies on the district and circuit courts. That number increased on February 1 to 96 openings – likely because GOP obstruction forced Obama to resubmit every nomination, forcing a fresh round of committee hearings. However, by the beginning of March, the number of vacancies was beginning to fall and has continued to decline ever since. By May 20, the number of vacancies had declined to 67, a decrease of 30 percent from its February high (See figure).

Again, this happening doesn’t mean that everything is rosy.  In some states dominated by conservatives, the process is slow (like in Georgia) or seems entirely hopeless, like in Texas (though the Fifth Circuit court will pick up Texan Greg Costa today).  

And would some one give Jennifer Prescod May-Parker of North Carolina a commission already?

However, even in some conservative states there has been progress.  Four nominees from Florida have cleared committee and await final confirmation after months of obstruction from Senator Marco Rubio. More importantly, Arizona has a functioning district court for the first time in several years as six  nominees received confirmation last week – including Rosemary Marquez, who was first nominated in 2011 and blocked by Arizona's senatorial delegation, and Diane Humetewa, the first Native American woman to become a federal judge.

The point is that progressives are right to be frustrated by continuing blocking of some nominations,  however, we should keep it in the back of our minds that nominations are flowing much more quickly now than they were a year ago.

Medicaid expansion: Who's next?

Right now, we're all breathlessly watching the Healthcare.gov to see if glitches are getting fixed and people are signing up,  but let's pause from that briefly today and look down the road a bit.

One of the biggest immediate holes in the Affordable Care Act opened up when the Supreme Court ruled that states didn't have to expand Medicaid in order to keep their current federal support. Getting more vulnerable people under the poverty line access to health insurance needs to be  a major priority over the next several years. So which states might can we most effectively organize in to push Medicaid expansion?

Currently, 25 states have embraced the expansion, while 25 are still debating the issue or have rejected the expansion for now. (Three days ago, Alaska became the most recent state to announce that it wouldn't be taking the money).

But just because they say "no" today doesn't mean they'll say "no" tomorrow. As Kaiser Foundation research points out, offering lots of federal money to states eventually got nearly every state to deploy some sort of Medicaid program in the 1960s and 1970s and some sort of CHIP programs (children's health insurance) in the late 1990s.

Oddly enough, the Medicaid expansion of the ACA is getting adopted at almost the exact same pace that the original Medicaid was adopted. After one year of available matching funds in 1966, 26 states had opted into the program. A month before the expansion under the ACA goes live, 26 states are at least tentatively (and mostly firmly) in the expansion camp.

The similarities may end there, as Republican intransigence across a wide swath of the South and West will likely block expansion for the foreseeable future. However, even in some GOP-dominated states like Arizona and North Dakota, the expansion has been adopted, so this provision is not absolute.

More immediately though, there are several very ripe target states activists should focus on for immediate results. I list these below with how many uninsured people would be covered under Medicaid expansion (numbers again courtesy of Kaiser), in rough order of degree of difficulty of passing an expansion over the next two years.