HCR Update
By Tim F. February 19th, 2010
A lot of pieces moving around the board at once. Here is what I can glean:
- House Democrats remain in a holding pattern. The Senate bill will probably never pass on its own. However, votes most likely already exist to pass HCR as long as the Senate can fix the excise tax and those special deals for Nebraska and Louisiana. Nobody seems to know whether Bart Stupak’s secret abortion army can gum up the works or not; you might as well call conservadems to find out where they stand.
- For better or worse, most action is happening in the Senate. Does Harry Reid have enough votes to pass a modest reconciliation fix? Who knows. The public option has clawed its way out of the grave and is presently stumbling around, slowly gathering co-sponsors. Ezra Klein thinks that might be either a good thing or a bad thing.
- Obama will apparently unveil its own plan (strategy?). Nobody else was consulted, so nobody has any idea what’s in it. We can hope that he finally has a bold strategy to overcome Republican roadblocks. History suggests that Obama will yet again pre-compromise his own agenda to earn bipartisan cred by punching hippies. There’s nothing that we can do about that but
drink heavilywait and see.
- Republicans got nothing. Surprise.
Democrats seem to be working up the nerve to set some sort of plan in motion, probably right after the health care summit on the 25th. I suggest calling before they announce their plan rather than after.
Tell Senators to get behind reconciliation to fix Medicare reimbursement, the excise tax and whatever else the House demands. Might as well ask for a public option if it pleases you. Tell your Congressperson to Pass. The. Damn. Bill. whether or not the Senate eventually reciprocates.
Switchboard: (202) 224-3121.
Guide for first-timers here.
Posted in 59-41 Senate Minority
Here’s the thing. I’ve called a few times and gone down in person once. At what point could my HCR advocacy be construed as stalking?
Just curious.
Correction: I’ve gone down in person twice—once for OFA during the summer. Damn! This thing has been going on forever!
February 19th, 2010 at 10:40 am
@slag:
Obviously it was stalking the moment you decided to exert pressure on your elected officials from the left. Were you to exert pressure from the right it would be patriot freedomism.
February 19th, 2010 at 10:48 am
“History suggests that Obama will yet again pre-compromise his own agenda to earn bipartisan cred by punching hippies.”
Y’know, if Tom Hayden & Abbie Hoffmann knew the long term effects of their antics by creating the political sport of hippie-punching, I wonder if they’d have done what they did. The Hippies & Yippies were short-lived, but punching liberals and progressives as UnAmerican (TM: Estates of R.Nixon & R.Reagan) lives on.
Fuck the sixties, and this sterile culture war that gets in the way of good policy. The Villagers do their hippie-punching kabuki theater based on scripts written back before most of us were born, and before Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the moon.
February 19th, 2010 at 10:53 am
Oh bullshit – when has obama “punched a hippie”??
This isn’t GOS, Tim.
February 19th, 2010 at 10:56 am
OT.. NBC news has breaking news. Guy flies into building, no breaking news, guy cheats on wife and they interrupt regular broadcasting. GEE
ABC and CBS are covering also.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:01 am
Oh bullshit – when has obama “punched a hippie”??
Well, of course! This is fucking retarded™.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:02 am
Quite often actually. One of the themes of his campaign was he would go beyond the failed divisive strategies of the old left; it bugged me at the time. And I say that as someone who believes he was the best of all the candidates who were running.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:02 am
@Mike Kay:
He punches a hippie every time he doesn’t give them a pony. Just like Bush. Too. Also.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:04 am
@Rick Taylor:
good, print one occasion when he punched a hippie
February 19th, 2010 at 11:05 am
Speaking of “punching hippies”, I just finished reading a book called “Framing the Sixties” (full disclosure – the author is a friend of mine). The author interviewed hundreds of politicians and pundits from the 60’s through today and shows how the right was able to frame the sixties to their advantage, and why punching hippies continues to be popular activity:
http://www.amazon.com/Framing-.....038;sr=1-1
February 19th, 2010 at 11:05 am
What else was Obama supposed to do but write his own plan??? He said he would have a plan posted on the internet BEFORE the health care summit.
Of course the BABIES in Congress just can’t compromise on a plan until AFTER the summit. Why let these JERK-OFFS embarrass him again????????? Both chambers are absolutely USELESS. If he punches hippies in his plan, (your interpertation), perhaps they friggin deserve to be punched.
He’s been f’n with these people since last May. Screw all of them!
/RANT
February 19th, 2010 at 11:05 am
You know, the sad part is that both of my Senators are for reconciliation and my Congresscreature is a deep red villain in a bright blue state. So my phone calls to all three are the equivalent of dumping salt in the ocean.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:07 am
@Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan:
The pale drunken ghost of Sen. Joseph McCarthy would like to have a word with you…
Also, google the Palmer Raids for grins & giggles sometime.
Hippie punching is so wonderful that it existed before hippies.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:08 am
Tiger is blinking in morse code.
He says, “HELP ME —I need some strange..”
February 19th, 2010 at 11:09 am
@Rick Taylor: screw the old left. they lost. they failed. nostalgia is a poor political strategy.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:10 am
obama punched hippies
and made us all cry
he never gave ponies
noone knows why
if he only would lead
or even just try
all the hippies would cheer
and tinkerbell wouldn’t die
but obama punched hippies
and rahm kicked their shins
the bus ran ‘em over
just for some cheap wins
it’s a terrible shame
and sham and a farce
obama punched hippies
and broke our poor hearts
February 19th, 2010 at 11:17 am
I know I’m going to get in trouble here, but I don’t care. This, from Paul Waldman, is pretty accurate:
That last line is especially pertinent, in my opinion.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:19 am
@Mike Kay: Can you imagine being Tiger Freakin’ Woods and not being able to have random sexual encounters?
The mind. It boggles.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:22 am
“You can argue that they should be feeling better than they do, but their feelings are undeniable.”
I, for one, am sick to death of the tender feelings of “progressive” narcissists.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:22 am
@cat48:
If this becomes the new default at BJ I can not tell you how much sheer wanking glee I am going to have.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:24 am
@Captain Goto:
“Oh bullshit – when has obama “punched a hippie”??”
FTW
February 19th, 2010 at 11:25 am
@rootless_e: Well, then, you must be really sick of looking in the mirror then. Because your hippie-punching poetry is just as counterproductive and narcissistic as any of the progressive HCR bitching I’ve seen.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:25 am
@rootless_e:
My sister-in-law has been heard to say, “Sometimes you just need a good cry.”
February 19th, 2010 at 11:26 am
@slag:
HURR HURR PRESIDENT SNOWE
We’ll have to leave it to historians to decide whether Ole Snowe would have negotiated in better faith than Joe “My sole motivation is to fuck over the Democrat party” Lieberman, but I can’t help but think we’d have gotten a better bill if the two of them were bidding for the right to be the 60th vote on HCR.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:28 am
Good round up Tim.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:30 am
@Omnes Omnibus: @Omnes Omnibus:
Or a good poem.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:31 am
@slag:
Bullshit. What drivel. It’s no better than the hackery coming out of WaPo’s editorial page.
He doesn’t give a single example of the WH bargaining anything away.
Conservadems could care less about punching hippies, they’re all about catering to their massive contributors (that includes loserman).
The WH wanted Snowe’s vote because they knew they couldn’t depend on ALL 60 dems to vote for the bill, not with Nelson and Loserman doing everything they can to sabotage the bill. And guess what, they were right.
DFH have a serious victim complex—they love to wallow in despair. For Waldman’s information, if national healthcare is so easy, why did FDR, Truman, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Carter, Ted Kennedy, and the Clintons fail. Hell, LBJ had 68 freakin Democratic senators in congress, 8 more than obama had, not to mention the death of president kennedy galvanizing the nation, and he still couldn’t get it through.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:32 am
@cat48: Agreed wholeheartedly!
@Mike Kay: LOL!
@rootless_e: Keep the poetry coming. Love it!
February 19th, 2010 at 11:33 am
@Mike Kay:
Let’s give it up for rightwing frames!
February 19th, 2010 at 11:36 am
@rootless_e: “You can argue that they should be feeling better than they do, but their feelings are undeniable.”
Agree w/your sentiment – however the progressives’ fee-fees may be pouting and weeping, the Obama admin is better than the alternative.
Which is a weak argument, to be sure, but it has the happy feature of being true. Butthurt progressives need to keep working, not drop out.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:36 am
If Fox News referring to the anti-IRS suicider as a homicide bomber?
-G
February 19th, 2010 at 11:36 am
@Mike Kay:
So let me understand you correctly, you are calling Paul Waldman a DFH on the health reform issue?
That is funny as hell.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:36 am
@Corner Stone:
I can see ARod laughing hysterically at Tiger’s press conference, as Alex strokes Madonna’s hair.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:37 am
@Da Bomb:
Narcissist.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:37 am
@slag:
Heh.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:37 am
@slag: I don’t know. Poetry is fine. A good cry seems a bit self-indulgent for me and the rest of my rather WASPy, vaguely Calvinist family. My wife actually suggested that my s-i-l “man up” at X-mas. Good times.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:37 am
I agree with the drink heavily part.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:38 am
@Mike Kay:
Also LBJ passed Medicare and Medicaid. Two public insurance options.
Ronald Reagan called them a threat to the Nation.
So LBJ did pass health care reform. Not complete, but there was passage.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:39 am
TimF, “punching hippies” is not the same as “proposing things that we have the votes for”. Stop with the emo-progressive bullshit, please.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:39 am
@slag:
cry me a river. As Cole as said numerous times, they use right wing frames to attack Obama day and night.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:40 am
“standing up for progressive principles on the issue”
Boo-friggin-hoo! Sorry, Obama did not campaign as an anti-corporatist “standing up for progressive principles” which would have made McCain president. Just because they assumed he was a progressive does not make him one.
The progressives will not be happy until banks and health insurance companies and any other corporation that they dislike are nationalized or destroyed. Sorry folks, but this is a capitalist system as poor as it may be. They should be working to make it better, not destroy it. I’ve read so much on line that is so out of touch with reality it is pathetic.
The first black president had to be just center-left or center most of the time. Blackety, black, black, was a huge change to many and a lot of folks will never accept him. Just primary his ass and get yourself some white guy to represent you all.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:41 am
I will make the calls, and I have posted on my own blog urging people to do the same.
May I suggest two things?
1) Call the White House, too. If Obama is preparing his own version, it will be good if they hear from a bunch of people who really want to see workable health care passed. White House switchboard (202) 456-1111
2) If you have your own blog, or do Facebook, or have a Twitter account, please either re-post Tim F.’s post, or write your own version of the information—the point being: Please spread the word! (Phone calls and emails, too!)
Thanks, Tim F.!
February 19th, 2010 at 11:41 am
@Omnes Omnibus:
And I’m sure that suggestion totally solved the problem.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:41 am
@GregB:
in a related matter, don’t you find it interesting that Fixxed News doesnt cover CPAC?
What does that say when even they are afraid to pull back the current on THAT freak show.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:42 am
@slag:
Cause we all know standing up for principle will get a bill passed. I’m sure Nelson would love for Obama to stand on progressive principles so he can tell Nebraskans how he stood up to the president.
Edit: Though I do think it is time for Obama to start ignoring the Republicans, after they don’t show up at the summit.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:46 am
@slag:
Actually, no. Quelle surprise.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:46 am
@Chyron HR:
Olympia Snowe’s vote would have passified Lieberman and Nelson…no way would they vote for a bill that got even one Republican vote. The fact that it was unanimously opposed by the other party gave them carte blanche to play the “partisanship”card.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:46 am
@slag: I guess that’s suppose to hurt my feelings?
Ok.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:47 am
@cat48:
Right. Anyone who believed in the regulation that we had for the prior 70 years or might prefer some sort of European, more efficient health system is obviously a revolutionary communist dedicated to smashing private enterprise in the name of the proletariat. D-bag.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:47 am
@cat48: THIS AGAIN.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:48 am
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Assuming passing a bill is what’s important to these people.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:49 am
@Chyron HR:
Dude, stop making sense. Don’t stomp out the endorphin rush I get from my righteous indignation, it’s better than heroin.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:49 am
@BTD:
Nice to see that you are getting touch with your inner incrementalist.
Elkins Act, Hepburn Act. Pass the word.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:51 am
@rootless_e:
THIS!
February 19th, 2010 at 11:53 am
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Incrementalism in the right way is good.
I’d take some Medicare/Medicaid like incrementalism right now.
Take the Senate Medicaid expansion and add a Medicare Buy In for 55 and older and I would declare victory on the health issue right now.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:54 am
@Xecky Gilchrist:
I couldn’t agree with this statement more. But I also think Iraqis should lay down arms and embrace Jeffersonian Democracy. However, one of the things being a narcissistic, victimology-addicted, whiny progressive has taught me is that people don’t always do what I think they should do. That’s how I know that telling people to “suck on this” just after they felt like they got their asses kicked is not an effective method of persuasion.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:59 am
@cat48:
I’m all for a good wanking every now and then but this is fucking ridiculuous.
February 19th, 2010 at 12:01 pm
@BTD:
I’d be willing to settle for that, but I think we can do better. I still think that if we can just get the House and Senate to split the difference between their respective bills now, it will work out much like railroad regulation did 100 years ago. Once the health insurance co’s are put in the position of a semi-regulated monopoly, price controls will follow as sure as day follows night.
February 19th, 2010 at 12:04 pm
@slag: I’d thank you to call my work by the proper name, “doggerel” and not call it “poetry”.
February 19th, 2010 at 12:04 pm
Top secret preview of the Presidents Plan!
February 19th, 2010 at 12:07 pm
@El Cid:
No, I would love to have Glass-Stegall reinstated and derivatives put on an OPEN exchange. I want my bank separated from the casinos. Clinton repealed both of these things. Phil Gramm wrote the bill.
Maybe you haven’t read some of the stuff I have online, but the reason to me to have a public option would be to save money; not to “bring insurance companies to their knees or hurt them in some way.” Yes I have seen that as a reason for the public option. It’s always progressives (their identification, not mine) that want to “cripple” or “destroy” banks & ins. companies. Maybe it is because I have worked for a bank and an insurance company that I don’t think they or all their employees are evil. The CEOs are a totally different subject. I’m very liberal and an old DFH.
February 19th, 2010 at 12:10 pm
@Mike Kay:
I see that Faux News has also taught you to mistake my laughter for tears. You have learned well.
@rootless_e: Hey-Who am I to judge?
February 19th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
@Corner Stone:
Agreed, over-the-top, even to me. I’m going to stop sharing today. I’ve been upset by other events not related to BJ this morning. Xanax time.
February 19th, 2010 at 12:17 pm
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I can call that a victory too.
Get ‘er done.
February 19th, 2010 at 12:20 pm
@BTD: Jayzus. I’m agreeing with all sorts of persons this morning.
February 19th, 2010 at 12:24 pm
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahh, but I want my public option….waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRTkCHE1sS4
I don’t care about price controls !! Regulations and arguments make my head hurt and tummy growl
!
February 19th, 2010 at 12:26 pm
@DanF: Thanks! I have added it to my wish list (and asked for it to be on Kindle.) It sounds like a great read.
I was in the single digits of age during the sixties, so it wasn’t until later that I realized what a ginormous traumatic event this decade was for so many people. Riots, mayhem, premarital sex, cats and dogs, living together, mass hysteria!
And, ya know, it was. Leave it to Nixon to take that spiky, poisoned ball, and run with it.
February 19th, 2010 at 12:44 pm
Look, the politics of healthcare are as deadly as they come. Threading this needle was always going to be painful, especially when the dominant strategy to get a more liberal bill relied on building up a veto point rather than a coalition-based framework. That doesn’t mean I blame anyone – folks wanted to get the best bill possible and they fought for it and hats off to that.
The Republicans being completely AWOL left the conservative Dems with no point of comparison. It made them the right side of the debate and we know what happened there.
But the interaction of those two dynamics, along with the totally rabid right-wing attacks on the whole idea, did have an effect on how the larger process unfolded. I remain convinced that a strategy focused on raising the public popularity of healthcare reform in general rather than just one or two pieces of the bill, might have created a bigger liberal policy space and more pressure on the conservatives to not drag their feet on reform, but that’s something we will never know the answer to. And obviously keeping core liberal priorities visible and on the table is valuable.
All of this just I think reinforces my point that this is the hardest domestic policy issue we have and there is no clean, pretty, easy way to do this – hence the 19.5 years problem.
However we can get this thing across the finish line, and keep improving it, we must do it.
February 19th, 2010 at 12:54 pm
@BTD:
The DFHs are reminded that Nixon would’ve gotten more than the Medicare system done if their predecessors in Congress hadn’t insisted on single-payer or nothing.
February 19th, 2010 at 12:57 pm
After the Republicans blow off the WH summit meeting, why not just finish the House-Senate reconciliation, with or without the PO, and submit it to the Senate first? Have a real, Strom Thurmond-style filibuster, for a couple of months? The ball will then be entirely in the Republican court, and the Democratic base will be appeased, however it comes out.
February 19th, 2010 at 1:15 pm
Scorecard:
Called Sen. Cardin’s office last Friday, and was pleasantly surprised to find that he’s come out for reconciliation. (I know that some people had him down as pro-reconciliation from the beginning, but I could never get anyone answering his phones to claim that he favored reconciliation before last Friday. And I was a frequent caller.)
Sen. Mikulski has come out for reconciliation for the Public Option.
Rep. Hoyer’s saying all the right things on HCR these days.
February 19th, 2010 at 1:31 pm
BTW, Eskow has added one more piece to his analysis of the excise tax, which looks worse and worse the more analysis is done.
Read the rest.
February 19th, 2010 at 1:34 pm
@rootless_e:
I am SO stealing that!
February 19th, 2010 at 1:51 pm
This is why I read this blog. It takes a million watt spotlight and points it at the truth: naked, cold and shivering for all to see.
...plus a bit of snark is always appreciated :p
February 19th, 2010 at 2:29 pm
So I don’t know what to think about this PCCC public option reconciliation letter that’s been making the rounds (it was PCCC that set this all up, right?).
If it were up to me, what we would do is pass the health care bill, then start working on trying to pass something like a public option via reconciliation. We wouldn’t have to do this this year. To my mind there would be several advantages to doing this after the health care bill itself passes. With the public option decoupled from the health care bill, legislative players (for example, the anti-abortion crowd in the House) would no longer have the option of targeting the public option as a means of killing the larger health care bill. And if we don’t have to make compromises to get this 2000-page health care bill passed, we can push for the public option we really want, the Medicare-linked option that has the ability to drive down premium prices.
The public option letter in circulation right now, given its timing, doesn’t seem to be pushing for a reconciliation-based public option in general. It seems to be pushing for reconciliation to go into the “sidecar” which it is expected will be used to pass health care reform, which will probably look a lot like the set of patches in the House/Senate compromise bill that was set to pass before Scott Brown got elected, and which will probably be detailed in “the Obama plan” rolled out next week. This would be… interesting, but it sounds really risky and because it’s risky doesn’t sound like something the Democratic leadership would sign on with. There’s no guarantee a sidecar with a public option in it could get to 50 votes in the Senate, and actually no guarantee it could get to 50%+1 votes in the House (because again remember the House Democrats have an anti-abortion faction). The Democrats can’t really afford any more failures on this, and so far every time they’ve tried to force the public option into the bill without really being sure the votes were there it’s set things back for both the bill itself and the public option.
I’d like to see the idea of public option via reconciliation reintroduced into the national debate, or a show of support for it in the Senate. But if it isn’t going to actually go in the bill, and it’s being trumpeted by the blogosphere like it will, then basically all we’ve got here is that this will get to 35 signatures, it won’t go into the bill when the Democrats take it up again, and then the blogosphere will treat the puncturing of their artificially inflated hopes as another “betrayal” and use it as an excuse to fight against or fail to support or just plain ignore the actual health care bill at a time when it will really, really need all the support it can get.
February 19th, 2010 at 2:34 pm
@Mike Kay: in a related matter, don’t you find it interesting that Fixxed News doesnt cover CPAC?
And yet my beloved CSPAN does.
Is Brian Lamb a closet liberal trying to point out what idiots these folks are? Or is he a deeply conservative guy from Indiana who loves them to distraction? I truly do not know.
February 19th, 2010 at 3:54 pm
I just called Virginia Fox’s office again. The young man that answered said that she had already voted against the bill and would not change her vote. I just stated that our heath care system badly needed reform and that she consider changing her mind and vote for some type of reform. He said that he would give her my message.
February 19th, 2010 at 4:27 pm