Busy on Sunday?
Assemblymember Brennan and Congress Members Yvette Clarke and Anthony Weiner Host Community Forum on the state of National Health Care Legislation
When: Sunday, January 24th from 2:00 to 4:00 pm
Where: MS 51, 350 5th Avenue at 4th Street, Park Slope, Brooklyn.
via email.
Lisa K.
Hmmm. I hate both teams…
Ailuridae
I really like Clarke and Weiner but nothing says “man of the people” like having a town hall forum at that location in Park Slope.
RSR
Or Jets & Giants fans? Rangers & Islanders? Can anyone find Knicks or Nets fans?
chopper
dang. i’m a be in long island tomorrow.
beanini
great timing during the jets/colts game
David in NY
Damn. I’ve been badgering Clarke (my rep) to support something (preferably Senate and get it over with), and I can’t go to this. I’m glad she’s doing something, anyway. So sorry I’ve got to be in the Village cause I’ve got a group coming to see a friend’s indie movie (Misconceptions) which is playing briefly at the Quad (all you New Yorkers feel free to come to the movie at anoher time, it’s fun).
But I would really like to attend and hear and talk to Wiener and Clarke. Damn.
parksideq
Yvette Clarke’s my rep. If I’m not hungover tomorrow, I might swing by and see what people are saying. Shitty timing tho; by 3, everyones going to leave to watch the Jets game.
ikl
Wow, thanks for posting. I’m there.
Already called Rep. Clarke and explained to the poor staffer why I was furious at House Dems for screwing up so much this week.
J.
What kind of idiot schedules a forum during the AFC Championship game when the home team (at least one of them) is playing?! Idiots.
Also, Go Jets! Super Bowl III-peat anyone? :-) (Of course now I just jinxed it.)
David in NY
Does the game actually start at 3 or just the advertisements?
bs
Fwiw, I heard this was canceled. Oughta check w/ their offices before heading out, but would be great for someone to talk some sense into Weiner.
Sarah
so many Brooklynites here! is there a way to confirm if this is happening? i have a commitment, but might be able to get out of it, and don’t give a shit about the football game.
Fitzwili
@ Sarah
Hi! I got the email only this afternoon so I am pretty sure that it is on.
MJ
Let me know if any of you Brooklyn folks plan to check it out. I live in Rep. Edolphus Townes’ district, but I may stop by to try to get them to pass the damn bill.
MaximusNYC
I’m a Brooklynite (Kensington). I called Weiner’s office a few days ago and got a noncommital response about his position on the Senate bill. I’m definitely going to check this out if I can.
(Should I ask him about the death panels? j/k…)
MaximusNYC
Adding: I was going to make a joke about taking some teabags…
But it occurs to me that we progressive and pro-HCR folks don’t have any sort of symbol/icon/power-totem that could contrast with the wingnuts’ teabags… something that we could hold up at a rally or town hall meeting that would instantly identify us as being part of the reality-based community.
Ideas?
Yutsano
@MaximusNYC: A stethoscope perhaps?
Fitzwili
I like Steve Benens take:
PASS.
THE.
DAMN.
BILL.
Maybe put that on flyers and T-shirts – better still get Tunch’s picture glowering down and put that motto on a poster!
MaximusNYC
LOL. Maybe Tunch needs to go up to the Hill and crack some heads.
I may very well make a modest PASS THE BILL! sign to take with me. I think I’ll leave the expletive out… at least this time.
But if they still haven’t reached the finish line by the next town hall meeting, that’s another story.
Bruuuuce
Damn. I’ve got to be in Riverdale at that time, helping my MiL clean her disaster of an apartment.
Sarah
if anyone does go, please report here.
Greg in Brooklyn
Definitely bad timing with the Jets game. I called Clarke’s office instead. Hope that someone here goes and can see what signals Clarke, and more importantly Weiner, send.
David in NY
Clarke was waiting on the leadership, but then I think she got lots of calls.
MJ
Update: My schedule changed at the last minute. So it looks like I won’t be able to make it to the meeting after all.
I hope some other BJ folks are able to get there and report back.
Brooklyn Johnny
Just got back from the Weiner/Clarke meeting — many thanks to Balloon Juice for letting me know about it!
Weiner opened by recounting the mistakes that led us to this situation, critiquing Obama for not leading on the public option when he had the chance. Weiner has big problems with the Senate bill. The biggest thing I hadn’t heard had to do with New York taking a big budget hit related to increased Medicare spending — I didn’t follow all of this very well, but apparently because New York State and City had done more than other states for the underinsured, somehow we’ll take a bigger hit than, say, Mississippi by whatever the Senate bill does with Medicare. Potentially costing New York as much as 2 billion dollars, if I’m remembering correctly. Again, I missed some of the specifics here — I clearly need to research this — sorry for the vagueness!
A man who exhorted the reps to pass the Senate bill got big, sustained applause, which Weiner said surprised him. (I was surprised he was surprised.) At Weiner’s request, the Assemblyman who was hosting the event polled the audience — by my eye, just under half of those who raised their hands wanted the House to pass the Senate bill now.
Eventually the subject of reconciliation came up in a constituent question. Why not pass budget-related amendments through the House to fix certain elements of the Senate bill? The Senate could then pass those through reconciliation. And then the House could pass the Senate bill. Weiner said that’s actually the closest thing there is to a strategy right now. But he said it’s tricky because there are still Senators (presumably Democrats) who are very much against reconciliation.
In her opening remarks, Clarke said she agreed with pretty much everything Weiner said. But she added that the Democratic base has not been doing its job. She said that the Teabaggers (although I think she used the term Tea Partiers) are out there in force, camping out every day in front of the offices of congresspeople. The progressives are not doing the same thing. She clarified that it’s not that progressive reps like her need the support. But progressive contingents pressuring the Blue Dogs in person would make a big difference.
When asked what we can do, Clarke said progressives should be emailing all of the Blue Dogs. I wanted to ask if email was the best strategy — I’ve definitely heard people say that emails are readily discounted — particularly from non-constituents. But I didn’t get the chance. She also said we should email the White House. Let Obama know before the State of the Union that we want him to push for improving the Senate bill through reconciliation, if that’s what we want.
As noted before, Weiner was very upfront about Obama’s failure to lead on health care — particularly about his failure to push the public option. At one point, Weiner said he got into a heated discussion with the President about it — and was told that would be his last visit to Air Force One. Clarke put the finger on Rahm Emmanuel in particular as a bad advisor and the creator of the Blue Dogs.
Clarke said she could not see herself voting for the Senate bill without changes. Weiner was never asked the exact same question directly, but he’s made the same statement on his HCR-related website, Countdowntohealthcare.com.
Weiner had to cut out early, but after he left, another man exhorted the reps to pass the Senate bill. He said it’s well and good to talk about what should have been done differently in the past and must be done differently in the future for climate change legislation, etcetera. But right now for health care reform, the Senate bill is the whole ball game. Right here and right now. And we won’t get another chance for twenty five years. Big applause. This gentlemen pointed out that Weiner had pooh-poohed the notion that the Senate bill would cover more people — but Krugman says it’ll cover 30 million. Really wish Weiner had been there to answer that. Clarke said she appreciated the questioner’s passion, but she disagreed. She said that she represents New York and can’t vote for legislation that will hurt her constituents (echoing Weiner’s earlier statement about Medicare increases hurting New York somehow).
Other tidbits — Weiner was born and raised in Park Slope — and went to middle school in the building where the meeting was held.
One older gentleman who described himself as a “left handed conservative” had been almost literally jumping up and down trying to ask a question. When called on, he read a line from an article saying that health care was like Obama’s Haiti and said he rested his case. That was the closest thing to a teabagger in the crowd. Everyone else at the meeting seemed to be a progressive or even an activist — the big split was between those who passionately wanted the Democrats to get it together and pass the bill no matter what and those who agreed with Weiner and Clarke that the bill had to be improved or no deal.
MaximusNYC
OK, I’m back from the town hall with Weiner and Clarke.
I arrived a few minutes late, to hear Weiner making his opening remarks. Basically, he talked about what coulda/woulda/shoulda been: single payer, Medicare for all, and barring that, a public option. Clearly, a lot of people in the room were still in mourning for all of this; he was getting enthusiastic applause as he went thru the litany of what progressives have given up. He criticized the Senate Dems for watering things down and stretching the process out, and Obama for not providing stronger leadership. And he spent a lot of time talking about how terrible the Senate bill is.
Yvette Clarke then talked about how Dems on the Hill need to hear a lot more from the base, and how the teabaggers have been eating our lunch in that department. I agree, and of course I agree with Weiner too… but there was a tone of “Someone else (the base/the Senate/the White House) is to blame!” to both of their spiels.
Then they opened the floor for questions. The 1st was an off-topic comment about reauthorizing school lunch funding; the 2nd was an personal story from a woman whose uninsured sister died from cancer last year. I went 3rd.
I said that I was amazed to watch the largest Congressional majority in 30 years getting so little done. I quoted Atrios: “I guess we elected Democrats to do nothing, and do it slowly.” I acknowledged that the Senate bill was bad, and used a line I thought up on the way over today (“it’s like a Hollywood screenplay that’s had 60 different writers”). I expressed my regret for the loss of the public option.
“But,” I said, “this is where we are. We could have health care on President Obama’s desk tomorrow, if you guys would just vote for the Senate bill!” At that line, I got a huge and enthusiastic round of applause. The state assemblyman who was hosting the meeting tried to cut me off at that point, but I was able to say “Just pass the damn bill!”, and I got more applause.
Yvette Clarke responded with some comments about the Blue Dogs… but I don’t think she understood that she was actually supporting my position, which is that there isn’t going to be an increase in political will to pass a stronger, better health care bill. The Senate bill is the high-water mark.
For the rest of the 90 minutes or so, there was a mix of questions and comments from the audience, including several more speakers like myself who urged the representative to pass the Senate bill. Interestingly, I would say that most of us of this viewpoint were Gen Xers. It was mostly boomer-age folks in the room who were too angry about the Senate bill to support it. One 60-something gentleman sitting in front of me kept turning around to remonstrate with me about how the Senate bill has to be killed; I tried to tell him that what he was supporting was killing the entire HCR effort for years to come, but he either didn’t get it or didn’t care.
There were also a few hardcore lefties, of various ages, wearing t-shirts that said VICTIM OF THE HEALTH INSURANCE INDUSTRY, and holding signs that said MEDICARE FOR ALL. I give them credit for message coordination and visibility… even if I think they are not really dwelling on planet Earth. But someone’s gotta try to move the Overton window. The question is, will the people in a position to actually make policy do what is really the best, and only, thing to do at this moment?
The subject of passing a package of fixes via reconciliation did come up, and Weiner basically said that, to the degree that there is any kind of strategy going forward, that’s it. But the sense was, “We’ll talk about that in the coming weeks, and see what we can do.” At one point, Clarke actually said she didn’t see any progress being made until after the start of February.
Unfortunately, I left feeling that Weiner and Clarke are still “high on their own supply” about how evil the Senate bill is — Weiner kept going back to his talking points about it. One audience member challenged this with some facts from a recent Krugman column, about all the genuinely good things that the Senate bill will do. But Weiner had ducked out by that point, so only Clarke heard this.
The one spark of hope that I got was that I could see that Weiner and Clarke were genuinely surprised by how many people want them to just pass the Senate bill. At one point, Weiner asked for a show of hands, for and against. I would say it was split nearly evenly — maybe 51% against passing the Senate bill, 49% for it. But the anti crowd is basically just repeating the same ultra-idealistic mantra they’ve been chanting for months, whereas the pro-Senate bill folks have a much greater sense of urgency, and an awareness of the political moment. You might even call it “the fierce urgency of now”, to coin a phrase.
Obviously, the progressive House Dems have bruised egos, after the clown show in the Senate over the last several months — and I understand that. But I don’t think they realize how little time they have left to get this done. We did at least plant some seeds in their minds today; hopefully those will blossom over the coming days and weeks. I don’t want to say months — because I don’t think we have months left.
So: Keep the pressure on! Call your reps — both their local and DC offices — and go to town halls whenever you can. We are trying to turn a very big ship here, but it still may be achievable. This is a moment when pressure correctly applied may make a major difference.
I was pleased to spend some time chatting with a few like-minded people afterward, at least 2 of whom said they sometimes read Balloon Juice. We got some coffee, discussed the pathologies of the D.C. Dems, and agreed to keep in touch about future town hall events and other stuff.
UPDATE: Brooklyn Johnny posted his comment above while I was writing mine. I was the guy he refers to who got the big round of applause. Glad we Balloon Juicers were well represented.
Ablogymous
Went at 3:15, Weiner had already left and Clarke was wrapping up. It was still well attended.
Clarke said progressives needed to pressure their representatives the way teabaggers did, but she was unmoved by the majority of attendants who said if the House didn’t pass the Senate bill, they would pass nothing.
Brooklyn Johnny
Great to see that other folks made it, and had the same basic impression of the event that I did!
I’ve been thinking about this some more, and one big thing I’m getting out of this is how much Weiner and Clarke implied that everything really depends upon Obama getting into the fight. They seemed to be hoping that he’ll come out swinging during the State of the Union. Reading between the lines, I’m thinking they’re thinking that’s the only way the amendments-through-reconciliation route can work.
The take-away? Call and email the White House tomorrow to tell them that how much you want the President to come out swinging during the State of the Union for fixing the Senate bill through reconciliation and getting this thing done.
ikl
I was there too. Brooklyn Johnny and MaximusNYC both wrote great summaries, so I don’t have much to add.
Here are the highlights of what I came away with from the meeting today:
1. House Dems (or at least Clarke and Weiner) don’t seem to understand that not doing anything is not an option.
2. Clarke, and to a lesser extent, Weiner, spent most of their time passing blaming almost anyone else she could think of for the current mess (the Senate for passing a bad bill, the base for not showing up and letting the tea party crowd steal the show, the media for not reporting well, the Republicans for being mean, etc. etc.) There betrayed no sense whatsoever that they are now responsible if health care reform dies. Almost every word was about how other people have messed things up.
3. Weiner and Clarke both said that they couldn’t vote for the Senate bill because the Medicaid provisions would destroy the New York state budget and that the bill was “bad for New York”.
4. Nobody said anything about the excise tax as far as I can remember.
5. Weiner talked eloquently about single payer, Medicare buy-in and the evils of the insurance companies. He has no plan to get any of this passed the Senate. He also reinforced lots of Republican talking points about the Senate bill. He seems to be operating under the belief that somehow if the Senate bill is not enacted, we will get a do over on health care.
6. These people (perhaps because they are from safe districts) seem have no idea what an electoral disaster it will be if the Dems don’t pass any serious health care reform.
7. Weiner was surprised that someone mentioned budget reconciliation. He suggested that he might be OK with using this to fix the Senate bill but sounded a bit skeptical.
8. Neither Clarke nor Weiner in the course of more than an hour suggested a single realistic plan for health care reform. Any practical ideas (“just pass the Senate bill” or “use budget reconciliation to fix the Senate bill” came from the audience).
8. It is really, really important that all of the Democrats in the House hear from their constituents that they are to blame if nothing happens. Because right now, I don’t think that these people get it.
Brooklyn Johnny
Hey, MaximusNYC — I forgot to add, thanks for getting picked and saying what you did! That was great — and clearly something these reps really needed to hear. I’m still pretty shocked that Weiner was so surprised by the response.