Why We Are Hosed
By Tim F. January 20th, 2010
Someone called Barney Frank’s office this morning and got the Congressman himself on the line. Frank basically made two arguments.
(1) Liberal Congressmen cannot get behind the limitations of the Senate HCR bill, including abortion and the tax plan.
(2) Frank hopes that Senators can work out some compromise with Olympia Snowe.
God knows that bringing Olympia Snowe on board (whatever fucking magic trick that will take) can only make the bill more palatable for House liberals like Frank.
Posted in 59-41 Senate Minority, Democratic Stupidity
These are the same guys that put all of their HCR hopes on the guy that caucuses with them and campaigned against Obama.
It’s not just that they never learn. They make it a point to not learn.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:27 pm
I really like Barney Frank, and I’ve admired his common sense in the past. So I’m stunned he said this.
I see exactly three options. Forget about health care. Pass the senate bill and improve it. Or destroy the filibuster (perhaps through a constitutional challenge).
January 20th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
I don’t see how they can now not pass a bill. I mean this lot is hapless, but they’ve got to know that spending all year on this and then losing will just fucking kill them for the next two cycles.
They’re going to pass a bill. I don’t know which one – I hope it’s through reconciliation. How can they not win with “Republicans used reconciliation for rich people with Bush’s tax cuts – why can’t we use reconciliation for poor people with health care reform?”
I don’t see how that doesn’t sell.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
Jesus Christ, I thought for a while the Olympia Snowe magick pony was gonna save us, but I gave up on that when they offered her everything she said she wanted and she stuck to her “We need to slow down” schtick like Dustin Hoffman waiting for Wapner. Claire McCaskill and Jim Webb have now joined the Olly Slow Down chorus. They are not going to save us and they are all three of them too stupid—really, just stupid, not sell-outs, not corporatist moles, they’re just dumb—to be trusted.
Someone below suggested Barney is playing forty-six dimensional Machiavellian Wizard Chess. I hope that’s true. I don’t think so.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:30 pm
What the fuck is wrong with these people?
Pass the Senate bill. Revise it later.
How does one get elected to Congress without ever having written a shitty first draft or made a difficult decision or settled for half a loaf rather than none?
January 20th, 2010 at 1:30 pm
Yes, waiting for Snowe is senseless from the perspective of a liberal House Democrat. Barney should take a walk around the block or something. Maybe the Dems could line up a few populist bills and put the spotlight on Snowe, Collins and Brown. A few successes could keep the dissenters in line. Sadly, the people who would have the power to craft these bills are not exactly of the kind that’s needed right now (Dodd and Baucus).
January 20th, 2010 at 1:32 pm
This is too depressing. I’ll write to my Congressman, but hell, it probably won’t make a difference.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:32 pm
The fact that he made Point 2 at all leads me to believe that this is pure bullshit. Or he’s been in a coma since September.
In addition, he (and quite a few other pro-choice Democrats) voted for a bill that had an abortion provision even more onerous than is contained in the Senate version, so I can’t give his claim that the “abortion caucus” opposes the bill any credibility.
As far as his claim that D’s would do better doing nothing than passing this bill…that’s just nuts. I would prefer the chances of passing the bill (and any changes, or even not) over those when the narrative will be that Democrats turned their back on HRC with one vote to go because of special interests.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:33 pm
I don’t see how they can now not pass a bill.
Why? You’ve been seeing them not pass a bill for eight months.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:34 pm
Is Barney Frank high? What does he think Olympia Snowe is going to do? Ask for Pot Legalization and Flower Power clauses be added to the bill? She’s a Republican with a Camera Complex. She’s going to basically want to continue the status quo with a few minor, camera friendly embellishments to prove her “moderate” status.
CHrist, it’s no wonder the Democratic Congress is a clusterfuck. Their leaders are out of their minds.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:34 pm
The “abortion caucus” is Stupak and the pro-lifers, I believe.
ETA: Or, no, he’s actually saying that he can’t vote for the Senate bill because of its abortion provisions, even though he already voted for a house bill that had even more pro-life abortion provisions. Unbelievable. Fuck the whole lot of them.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:35 pm
So…
The Dems have learned exactly NOTHING from yesterday. Not even the “good” guys, like Barney Frank (http://www.creditwritedowns.co.....eform.html). Glad to see that nothing ever, ever changes.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:35 pm
Did Barney Frank vote for the bill with the Stupak amendment? The House abortion provision was much more onerous than the Senate provision.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:36 pm
@August J. Pollak: Well, the Senate actually passed one. First significant HCR bill in decades. I think they have to pass one soon to save 2010.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:37 pm
Jeezus…I can’t believe someone as smart as Barney Frank would say something so unbelievably stupid.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:37 pm
It is starting to feel like an endurance sport at this point: how long can they go without getting anything done? Tune in next month to find out.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:37 pm
@John: That’s not the impression that I got from the TPM article, but you may be right.
Needs clarification….
Edit: Nevermind my reading comprehension skills have reasserted themselves.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Health-care reform was a good idea, well it was a great idea. But in hindsight it turns out that Max Baucus killed all the momentum after 4 commitees had already voted on it, and then he passed it with 3 more votes than needed, including a republican vote whose only intention was to slow down the bill. I actually like Max Baucus – he designed the stimulus bill and he could have become the hero of this legislative session. But with all the drama in the summer, too much time was wasted and people are still suffering from the economy. If the bill had passed in July by a strict party line vote, we would be talking about different things now.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:38 pm
In addition, he (and quite a few other pro-choice Democrats) voted for a bill that had an abortion provision even more onerous than is contained in the Senate version, so I can’t give his claim that the “abortion caucus” opposes the bill any credibility.
Because at the time, all the “leave Obama ALOOOOONNNNE!” bill supporters were attacking the Dirty Fucking Hippies by saying “shut up, the totally and completely insignificant issue of protecting women’s rights will like, totally be fixed in conference, by magic.” Boy, were we all stupid thinking there might be a problem later down the line.
Just loving how after eight months of this shit, the person to blame is Barney Frank.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:39 pm
Even if all 100 senators were Democrats, they’d still find a way to not be able to pass HCR.
Basically our choices in this country are:
A party good at governing with bad intentions and one bad at governing with good intentions.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:48 pm
The only way I could see this working in any shape or form is if there’s some secret deal to make Snowe flip a la Specter that we’re not privy to. Which is something that at one point I could’ve believed, but certainly not now.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:49 pm
Though I’m pretty pessimistic about the courage of Democrats, I’d wait to hear what Obama has to say about this. He usually wades in after people have released their death grip on their pearls and risen from their fainting couches.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Remember the Senate bill doesn’t have a lot of teh supposed “good” parts of reform.
One thing it’s missing the ban on annual or lifetime caps. I hope people understand what they are getting if the “just pass the senate bill and hope for reconcilliation” people are getting when they reconcilliation part doesn’t happen. The beauty of that plan for corporatist congressmen is that they get to serve their masters and get to run against the liberals for dumping shoddy healthcare on them. What a great combination.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:50 pm
@mistermix:
In other words, too late to help anything and with words too ineffective to change anything. That is pretty much the message I’ve been reading from the WH today.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:53 pm
@Nylund:
Fix’d. The Republicans are good at shoveling money into the pockets of their contributors, but they suck at actual governing, which is why we keep getting all of these fabulous Republican recessions and other assorted goodies.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:53 pm
I hope Barney has a plan here. Because to me, his statements look like the surest path to congressional minority status imaginable.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:56 pm
@August J. Pollak: No that would be Nancy Pelosi, for allowing the Stupek amendment to the floor in the first place.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:56 pm
If Barney’s right about that, and he’s certainly in a better position to know than any of us, then Snowe’s the only way to go (the Senate Dems don’t have the balls to cram all they can through reconciliation).
Huh, I don’t know about that one. The main thing I get out of this is that the House isn’t going to pass the Senate bill. It’s time for Plan G or whatever we’re on now.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:58 pm
Putting aside the fact that the House bill is WORSE on abortion than the Senate one is, the Scott Brown election changes nothing in this respect, because if conference knocked out the abortion provisions in the Senate bill then we lose Nelson’s vote anyway, and the bill is dead.
So, Barney, help me out here—how the fuck has anything changed in terms of abortion language due to Brown’s election? We were going to have to swallow hard and accept the Nelson language one way or another.
January 20th, 2010 at 2:01 pm
@August J. Pollak:
Because people are blaming Barney Frank for HCR being on the precipice of collapsing? It would appear that people seem to pissed at Frank for saying something outrageous nonsensical and acting like an uninformed idiot, two things for much so atypical for the outstanding representative from Massachusetts.
January 20th, 2010 at 2:03 pm
@edmund dantes:
that’s wrong. The ban on caps was put back in.
You just couldn’t hear about it over the deafening roar about what a SHIT SANDWICH the whole thing was.
January 20th, 2010 at 2:04 pm
If the House passes the Senate bill as is and gets a firm promise on improving it through reconciliation, through reconciliation they can substantially improve the affordability provisions and can do the “cadillac tax” compromise that the conference had worked out. Dunno about lifetime caps and all that—probably not.
January 20th, 2010 at 2:04 pm
@geg6:
Yeah, it’s been a whole 16 hours since Brown’s defeat. Obama should have reacted at 9 AM before talking to anyone else, like a real leader would. /sarcasm
Obama is no idiot, and he understands the stakes. If there’s something that can be done, he’s going to do it relatively quickly.
January 20th, 2010 at 2:05 pm
@Mark S.:
Frank won’t vote for an OK bill, so he’ll wait for the indistinguishable-from-zero chance that the Senate will give him something mathematicall certain to be far worse. That might be the stupidest fucking argument (or the most transparent excuse for frightened paralysis) that I have ever seen.
January 20th, 2010 at 2:05 pm
@mistermix:
Wow, aren’t you smart! I don’t know what I was thinking. I mistakenly thought the time to have really gone out there and fought for HCR was before we even got to the point where it all came down to Coakley’s shitty campaign and ignominius defeat.
January 20th, 2010 at 2:13 pm
@BombIranForChrist:
He may not be high but I sense he sees the writing on the wall. I think the Dems are f-ed if they don’t pass something that HELPS people but this bill won’t help anybody but the insurance companies.
The best the dems can do going forward is hope Obama wakes the hell up, challenges the right ala Reagan did with the left when he was prez and push for jobs, jobs, jobs.
Newt and Steve Forbes can write every opinion piece in the world condemning government creation of jobs (in a time of recession you idiots) but the reality is the man on the street sees wall street getting fatter, Republicans obstructing, Dems cowering and in the end a job is a job. Newt and company think green industries are pointless and a waste. I disagree and I wish they’d stop handing more industries to China (who is kicking our ASSES already in this industry).
Obama and company need to get going on getting jobs created THEN they can win many people over long term.
January 20th, 2010 at 2:16 pm
Okay, was that from the Senior Black Correspondent on TDS, or did that really come from Frank? Either way it’s pretty funny.
This time last week Reid shared an epiphany regarding Snowe…
And those dumbasses at RedState sent her salt. Of all the R-baggers, she was the most effective at achieving capitulation on HCR via slow strangulation. It was like watching her waterboard the Ds, but the stupid shits didn’t even know they were drowning and kept giving her more water.
Yeah, she’s the road to certain D-success for HCR.
January 20th, 2010 at 2:17 pm
Interestingly, the dems need to remind Brown he had no problem voting for universal health care in MA. If it’s so bad why do people in MA like it so much?
Case in point – UHC hasn’t destroyed private industry in MA so this needs to be used as a wedge whenever possible.
January 20th, 2010 at 2:19 pm
@Tsulagi:
Hey salt is handy in states that get snow. Funny how dumb these people are.
January 20th, 2010 at 2:20 pm
I assume that he believes there may yet be some leverage over Senators like Bayh and Webb to get a few more improvements into the Senate bill if they fear that otherwise nothing will pass? The House has no other leverage now other than to play possum, I suppose.
Either that or Frank is prone to feelings of hopelessness and despair that he is unable to contain himself from sharing with complete strangers. ???
In any event, I find it hard to believe that he could be stupid enough not to realize that this would be political suicide and that the notion of trying to work with President Snowe is truly laughable.
If push comes to shove, I have a feeling Pelosi will force this bill down her caucus’ throats. I don’t see what other choice they really have. Which is why playing possum seems like a doomed strategy.
January 20th, 2010 at 2:25 pm
Frank is both a coward and an idiot. He gives good soundbite, but what else has this guy ever accomplished?
January 20th, 2010 at 2:31 pm
@The Populist:
1. It’s only popular by a slim majority.
2. It’s steadily bankrupting the state.
3. It’s steadily slipping in the number of people it covers.
January 20th, 2010 at 2:35 pm
Frank won’t vote for an OK bill
You truly, truly don’t get it, do you? You’re as stubborn and ignorant on this as Joe Lieberman if you really think that. Look at the poll results. Look at the numbers. Frank doesn’t think it’s an OK bill, and more importantly the people who vote for him don’t either.
Why not try calling them stupid some more? Maybe that’s what cost Coakley the election. There just weren’t enough people called stupid. That’s the ticket.
Jesus. You really think Frank’s the one who’s going to lose his seat over this?
January 20th, 2010 at 2:35 pm
@The Populist: A MA voter on NPR this morning said that MA didn’t want to pay for implementing their plan for the rest of the country. In other words, I’ve got mine, so f*ck off.
January 20th, 2010 at 2:41 pm
Because poor people steal, rich people give, blah blah blah.
January 20th, 2010 at 2:58 pm
I thought the one of the points of reconciliation was to soften up the house’s abortion language. I thought that was one of the promises made when the house bill was passed. If that’s the case, Frank’s prolly right.
January 20th, 2010 at 3:02 pm
@beergoggles:
People want to fix it, not repeal it.
January 20th, 2010 at 3:15 pm
@lol: And yet the only ‘fix’ it’s been getting is having it get weaker, get less funding and cover less people.
I guess that’s sorta a fix.
January 20th, 2010 at 3:23 pm
I have thought for awhile, at least since 2006, that one of the two major political parties was going the way of the Whigs. With the 2006 and 2008 elections, it seemed obvious it would be the Republicans. They were making themselves unelectable, and their rhetoric (“smaller government”) didn’t match their actions (“a war in every country!”)
But I can now see that the Democrats are in serious peril. If they can’t pass a health reform bill when there are nearly 50 million uninsured people, health care costs are skyrocketing, and they have a 60 vote majority, then they will never pass such a bill.
In the end, it seems that the Democrats were more committed to telling us how much they felt our pain, then actually doing something about it. And, well, doing something about it is the purpose of political parties.
got hope? . . . nope.
January 20th, 2010 at 3:39 pm
I don’t understand what this means. I mean, I don’t understand what you are trying to communicate.
The House bill had terrible abortion language. The Senate bill had pretty okay abortion language. The House bill is dead, 100% dead. The Senate bill can still become law.
Changing the Senate bill’s abortion language via “reconciliation”, assuming you are referring to the budget reconciliation procedure, would make no sense and may or may not be possible anyway. If by “reconciliation” you meant not the budget reconciliation procedure but rather the process of merging the House and Senate bills, there were no public reports that the House-Senate negotiations were looking at changing the abortion language at all. Were the bill-merging negotiations to alter the abortion language, the only way in which these negotiations would do this would be to make the abortion language worse than in the Senate bill, because again, the Senate bill was WAY more progressive than the House bill on abortion.
January 20th, 2010 at 3:46 pm
Ted Kennedy – “If the Democrats run for cover, if we become pale carbon copies of the opposition, we will lose—and deserve to lose. The last thing this country needs is two Republican parties.”
Ezra Klein – Pity he’s not around to remind Democrats of that today.
I hate to speak improperly of the deceased but unlike the rest of us he’s lucky he’s not around to see that’s all we have.
A lot of us believed that when we elected democrats that we would get democrats. And we understand compromise and half a loaf is better than none. And HCR is not actually dead as of this moment. But it seems that the democrats have no party leadership, they have no party goals, they only want to be in power. Oh wait…
January 20th, 2010 at 3:59 pm
Snowe didn’t even promise to vote on the bill that she voted out of the Finance committee. Reid could put that version of the bill exactly on the floor (plus Nelson’s abortion garbage) and it wouldn’t get 60 votes. So it has to go back to committee if they want a new bill out of the Senate… which would certainly put passage out past the election with congressmen out campaigning… which is suicide.
January 20th, 2010 at 4:37 pm
@mcc: Sorry, when I last posted, I was on a netbook which doesn’t accomodate my giant banana fingers well.
I’m simply saying there was the promise of better language on abortion during the reconciling of the house and senate bill. I wasn’t referring to the process of budget reconcilation.
January 20th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
@Just Some Fuckhead: Ah, thanks for clarifying.
I don’t think I heard anyone claiming the merged version of the bill would give us better language than the Senate version possesses but I’m sure I could have missed something.
January 20th, 2010 at 10:45 pm