Via Steve Benen, this:
Struggling to salvage health reform, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have begun considering a list of changes to the Senate bill in hopes of making it acceptable to liberal House members, according to sources familiar with the situation.
The changes could be included in separate legislation that, if passed, would pave the way for House approval of the Senate bill — a move that would preserve President Barack Obama’s vision of a sweeping health reform plan. […]
The changes are being worked on this weekend with plans for Pelosi to present them to her caucus next week, according to sources familiar with the situation. But, sources stressed, neither Reid nor Pelosi know if this strategy can win the support of their members, but they are attempting it because it is the quickest path to passage.
While we are all pressuring the House to make sure they support the Senate bill, if we do want a miracle happen and have both houses get their act together and do a reconciliation bill as well (something I have constantly derided because I simply do not think the votes are there), we also need to be calling our Senators to pressure them to assure the House they will get it done.
After all, the House is rightly suspicious of the Senate, as the Senate has been the damned problem all along. Nancy Pelosi and the House got together, put a bill together in an acceptable amount of time, passed it, and sent it to the Senate to languish. And remember, one of the reasons progressives and liberals are so rightly pissed is that the house bill was no real piece of hard left legislation. It was at best itself a very moderate piece of work, paid for, with no single payer, no government takeover of healthcare ala the NHS, built on the existing insurance infrastructure, and was so moderate that the House bill could have been something Republicans would have passed thirty years ago.
And then it went to the Senate, with the arcane procedural hoops, the ridiculous rules and vote requirements, complete with 60 preening and insufferable egos, all wealthy in their own right and heavily insured, and they took forever passing a bill that basically is so conservative that were the Republicans not all teabagging insane would pass today. Hell, if the Republicans were in power and thought it would get them some votes, we would probably be cheering them for passing the Senate bill, it is so responsible compared to their prescription drug giveaway during the Bush era.
So while I have been testy and angry with progressives, it is because I simply do not see the way forward and have never seen the votes there for reconciliation and the logic of just scrapping everything and starting over and somehow magically getting to a liberal bill, not because I think they are wrong on the policy.
Long story short, if this is going to work, there needs to be pressure not only on the House to pass the Senate bill, but even more pressure on the Senate to not screw the house, the Democratic base, the American people, and this administration. The Senate has been the problem from the beginning, so we should remember who is to blame if this really dies.
AhabTRuler
Well, I have already called Cardin and Mikulski here in MD, however it was after-hours so I left a message. I will follow up on Monday, though. And I have to call Van Hollen back, too.
Task Force Ripper
Anyone know what to make of this?
“Under the agreement, President Obama would issue an executive order to create an 18-member panel that would be granted broad authority to propose changes in the tax code and in the massive federal entitlement programs — including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — that threaten to drive the nation’s debt to levels not seen since World War II. “
K. Grant
Gah, so much of this depends on Democrats growing a spine and common sense at the same time. I am simply not sure that that is even possible. I certainly hope so, but I am not confident.
Of course, I live in Texas, so my senators are out of play. I have left a few messages at Rep. Hinojosa’s office imploring him to get this done, hope it helps.
Cassidy
too late
Lisa K.
I really do not care who is to blame.
If this goes down in flames, everyone looks bad.
sparky
as an infrequent (at least these days) commenter here, i feel it’s important to say this isn’t correct. the administration screwed itself:
it wasn’t Congress that made a secret deal with pharma;
it wasn’t Congress that sat on its hands last summer;
it wasn’t Congress that said “you don’t have to change a thing” about one’s current insurance.
it wasn’t Congress that said “the hell with the public option”
there’s more, but you get the idea. encourage bad policy if you must, but let’s not have any rewriting of history while doing so.
Comrade Kevin
Oh yay, a Carly Fiorina ad on the sidebar!
Comrade Kevin
@sparky:
Does the name Max Baucus mean anything to you?
sparky
@Task Force Ripper: SOP for DC. propose a commission, offload the issues till after November, and then shelve the results after everyone has forgotten about it. Congress has the spending authority (well, excepting, of course, the black ops budget, whatever that may be & debt service); the rest is window dressing.
Jim
Yes, it was.
Yes, it was.
The Grand Panjandrum
I know some folks don’t want to waste time with the Republicans and I do concede that it won’t sway them to participate. However, ranting at the people in their office is quite satisfying. I went full on Grayson with my lone GOPer. The experience was quite satisfactory.
But, yes, I will call them again on Monday morning. All three. I’ll report any feedback in the appropriate thread if TimF is still keeping track.
I would also recommend that folks go visit any local lefty blogs to spread the word and see if they can encourage others to call. I’ve gone to mine.
Existenz
At this point, since we have to do reconciliation in addition to passing the Senate bill, they should go for broke and throw the House version of the public option in there too. Or the Medicare buy-in.
No more caring about Lieberman or Landrieu or Nelson or Lincoln. Fuck them. We need 50 Senate votes now, not 60.
50 Senate votes plus 218 House votes equals health care reform plus public option. If that doesn’t get you motivated, I don’t know what will.
If anything, passing health care should be easier now than it was back when we needed 60 Senate votes.
Task Force Ripper
@sparky:
Nothing can be Obama’s fault. Surely you’ve comprehended that by now?
sparky
@Comrade Kevin: of course that’s true too. but you are missing the point, which is that if Obama thought this was so important, where was he then?
Throwin Stones
I called Austria, not that it will do any good. I’ve called and written Brown and Voinovich receiving the expected replies. I once thought Voinovich might be persuaded as he’s not a teabagger, retiring this year, and was pretty pissed at the confederate Repubs earlier this year wrt the auto bailouts.
Throwing in the towel now would be pretty bad for the Dems in the short term, and who knows how long it will take for this to become an issue again.
Love the title – fare you well my only true one… listen to the river sing sweet songs
Jim
.
The O-Bot Corporate Sell-Outs at OpenLeft polled the Dem Senate Caucus last summer. There were at most 45 votes for the PO. The Medicare buy-in I think stands a better chance.
Mnemosyne
Okay, fair enough.
After a whole summer of complaining that Max Baucus was holding things up by going deliberately slowly with his committee, now we’re going to re-write history and claim Obama forced him to do it?
And that’s false in what way?
I was unaware that Obama personally removed it from the Senate bill and forced the Senate’s Blue Dogs to go along with his will. I’m sure Max Baucus cried when he was forced to remove it from his bill. Amazing powers of control, that Obama.
You are, at best, 2 for 4 here, and more like 1 for 4.
J Bean
I’ve called my representative. I’m also writing letters and sending copies to the local office, the D.C. office, and as many other congressional offices as I can generate. They don’t check the source to make sure you live in their district, they don’t compare responses between the two offices to make sure that no one “votes” twice. They just count the number of responses they get. Spam them! Inundate them! Mail merge them! Make sure they get lots of responses!
Since I’ve got an M.D. after my name, I’ve been writing the letters on letterhead stationary. Use whatever you’ve got.
Now I have to go back to generating letters.
Jason Bylinowski
For whatever it is worth, John Cole, I am faxing over my position on this stuff to my own Rep and Senators, though they are all Republicans. But I don’t have any illusions of imminent persuasion. Jim DeMint is a terrible human being, he probably doesn’t even deign to respond to people like me at all. I can only barely persuade myself that it’s worth the trouble to pursue this.
There is no good option to abandon the bill and start over at some appointed time. I don’t know why that is, but apparently it’s just the way things are done. All we can do is try to salvage what we have, and sit back and wait for the next inevitable attack from the right.
I’m embarrassed to admit that I’m almost looking forward to the inevitable violence that comes out of this mess. In 2008 I was complaining about partisan bickering and a lack of bipartisanship. Ever since the “you lie!” incident we have, I believe, passed that by and gone into straight up open hostility. So, do we take a step forward or a step back from that? The scary thing is that Glen Beck gets to be at least partly in charge of that decision.
Is there an Intrade listing on the chance of a major political assassination yet? I fear there’s money to be made there.
Mark S.
Thank you.
And now we return to our regular scheduled programming: Ten straight hippie punching posts!
AhabTRuler
Hey, let’s limit ourselves to MDs, JDs, PhDs, and post-graduate degrees in general. No Mphils, MBAs, MPPs, MPAs, MPHs, or, god forbid anything that ends with -candidate.
mcc
The insurance for 30 million people is hanging in the balance, and the first thing that comes to your mind as important is some incredibly-arcane detail about things left out of the bill to prevent drug companies from opposing it?
You know what happens if you get your way and the bill dies? There will be no pharma reform then either.
Anyone who responds to this nonsense (including me) is making a mistake.
Citizen Alan
@Mnemosyne:
I think the excise tax, if passed, will likely impose fairly significant changes on the insurance plans of the people who fall under it. That doesn’t necessarily mean that its a bad idea, but it’s disingenuous to say “you don’t have to change a thing about your insurance plan” and then pass a tax that will reduce coverage on a significant percentage of insureds.
John Cole
@Task Force Ripper: Do you ever have anything to offer, Cornerstone?
Seriously, just go to Hillaryis44 or something.
It is amazing that you read an entire about what went down between both houses in the legislature, what we can do to rectify the situation, and your only contribution to the thread is to bitch that Obama was not crapped on sufficiently for your taste?
Seriously, just fuck off. So tired of your endless wanking. Obama was not the point of interest here, Congress is. Go join the crew at OpenLeft if you think the point of every post is to attack Obama. Get twitter and follow Lee Stranahan or Dave Sirota.
But stop wanking here.
sparky
@Task Force Ripper: was you saying something? i forget….
@Jim:
public option.um, no.
Keith G
@Mnemosyne: Thanks.
You type to sparkles so I don’t have to. I do not think adhering to facts is a big issue with he/she/it.
Mnemosyne
@Citizen Alan:
Please show me where a significant percentage of people will be immediately subject to the tax. Not, “Oh, if medical inflation continues at the current rate, lots of people will end up being subject to it after 10 years.” I would like the number of people who will be affected as soon as the tax goes into effect.
I’m guessing it’s about 5 percent, but I suppose it could be as high as 10 percent.
Mnemosyne
By the way, for all the people claiming that people hate the bill because of what’s in it, it turns out that if you actually inform people what’s in the bill, a majority go from opposing it to supporting it.
Which is, of course, why people continue to lie about what’s in the bill — if people actually know what the provisions are, they support it. Better to keep people ignorant if you want them to oppose it. (Yes, I’m looking at you, Sparky and Task Force Ripper.)
Woodbuster
The House needs to pass the goddam Senate bill – period. Fix some of the details through reconciliation, if you can find 51 Democratic Senators who are not curled up in a corner and pissing their jammies over Massachusetts (and, holy shit, Chris Dodd is “retiring,” and still being an idiot who wants a time-out).
But the notion that anything else is going to make it through both the House and Senate is a fucking wetdream of epic proportions.
Pass. The. Damn. Bill.
Pass. The. Damn. Bill.
Pass. The. Damn. Bill.
AhabTRuler
@John Cole: To be fair, there has been so much wanking of late that its hard to pick any single individual as being exceptional.
Citizen Alan
@sparky:
I hope you’re right, I really do. Because my understanding of Bayh’s proposal is that
CarterObama appoints a panel with an equal number of Republicans and Democrats and whatever they decide goes to Congress for an up-or-down vote with no possibility of filibuster. As I see it, the best case scenario is for the panel to be hopelessly deadlocked over the “increase taxes vs. cut benefits” argument. The worst case scenario, since no one is going to want to increase taxes, is a massive reduction in Social Security benefits passed 51-49 with Democrats getting 100% of the blame.It took Bill Clinton to get us NAFTA and “ending Welfare as we know it.” I will not be the least bit surprised to see
CarterObama to cheerfully sign into law the greatest attack on Social Security since its founding. After all, we’re to the point of hoping desperately that he gets to sign an HCR bill that will impair abortion rights more than any bill signed by a Republican President in a generation.mcc
So it is good to see the Democrats are looking at a path out, but they can’t just keep this a vague thing under wraps that you have to read a politico story or one of 2 blogs in order to even know it’s happening. Maybe now is too early but at some point they have to actually go to the public and explain what their plans are. The representatives and Senators they’ll have to win over to this plan aren’t operating in a vacuum, they are susceptible to public pressure. It will be a lot easier to say “no” to something in that closed door room, if they don’t think there’s anyone standing outside the door who cares about the results. I understand that they really wouldn’t want to commit to a plan until they’re sure of what they can and can’t pull off, but the longer we go without a known plan, even a tentative plan, that the public sees they are working on, the easier it will be for that to coalesce into “no plan” or “the plan is do nothing” being what the plan actually is.
When do they go to the public? Surely they have to have decided how they’re pulling this out, or at least what tack they’re going to try first, by the time of the SOTU speech next week?
On an unrelated note, I haven’t been closely following the Senate-calling threads– is it worth adding a Page 2 to the spreadsheet tracking Senators’ views on something like “will you support amendments to the Senate bill through reconciliation, so that the House can support passing the Senate bill”? Did any of the callers get any feedback on that yet?
MikeBoyScout
Not trying to be a wanking naysayer here, but given the FUBAR state HCR is in and how it got here, there needs to be serious consideration of pressure methods beyond those utilized so far.
Reforming our healthcare in this country has never been hard from a policy point of view. Then why has it been so hard from a political point of view?
Pressure? Phone calls? Letters? Protests?
If any of the above were close to sufficient, wouldn’t we be there already?
Jim
@Mnemosyne:
Thanks for that. I confess I’m not sure how the excise tax works. Karen Tumulty at the Time blog, and I think she’s one of the best of the MSM reporters on this, keeps insisting that the Unions’ ‘Cadillac’ exemption was one of the prime movers of Brown voters. It’s impossible to say whether those people were Republicans/Repub-lites looking for a reason to vote for Brown, but I’m suspected that these are the kind of people who think Obama’s going to raise their income taxes because their house is worth 250K.
mcc
@Citizen Alan: My understanding of the commission is that holding it was something Kent Conrad asked for as a condition of his support on the health care bill. It was mentioned frequently in stories about the Senate negotiations in December, and the first public signs that this commission was a go came at about that time. I do not know whether the commission is something Obama wanted anyway. I have no idea what its actual effect will be. However Senate horse trading seems to have been the immediate motivating factor in its creation.
I have opinions about the panel itself which I will hold back because I don’t consider them very ontopic to this thread.
The Raven
I’ve already contacted my Senators, though only to leave messages, today.
My guess is we’ll get something through reconciliation, though perhaps only symbolic gestures, more useful for the future than of immediate value. That is, unless the Administration scuttles it (SOTU address Wednesday, be there or be trapezoidal) or the Senate Democratic leadership has another attack of fail (depressingly likely.) I do also think that the House has to be very careful to make sure the Senate actually considers its proposals; it seems likely that the Senate will just bail (cowards!) if given half a chance.
mcc
@MikeBoyScout: It passed in both houses, didn’t it? The only thing that prevented it from becoming law yesterday was an election in Massachusetts with many health-care-unrelated factors at play. And other than OFA’s persistent phonebanking (which at this exact moment seems to have gone dead silent), as far as I can tell very little of the pressure of that sort has been in support of the bill. On the left (even after the Brown comet) almost all the applied pressure has been on the public option exclusively, not on any other component of the bill or the bill itself whatsoever. It seems hard to ask “why hasn’t X worked yet?” when X both (1) wasn’t especially tried and (2) seems to have sort of worked.
I think there are limits on these things, especially given that anyone calling in is contending for attention with two or three other maybe-louder factions, but I think that we are at a moment, right now, where constituent pressure can move things. We saw one crystal example of this last week. Barney Frank went from willing to give up on the whole thing to willing to stand his ground and seemingly based on little more than constituent response.
mcd410x
and tonight on flame wars, part cdlxxvii:
Seriously, the snark tank is empty. I’ll beg the dems if it’ll do any good.
Citizen Alan
@Mnemosyne:
The quote from
CarterObama was that if you like your insurance, no one is going to force you to change it. The implication of that statement was that no one was going to see their insurance policies change as a result of HCR. Since you are apparently innumerate and thus unable to see that “somewhere between 5 and 10 percent of all insureds” is a number significantly greater than “none,” it is beyond my power to explain to you whyCarterObama’s statement was qualitatively false (again, assuming the excise tax passes). The fact that reasonable people disagree on how bad of an effect the excise tax will or will not impose does not change the fact that it will impose some effect. There is no shame in admitting that —CarterObama is hardly the first President to say something on the campaign trail that got tossed out the window when it became inconvenient.JMG
The commission has little to do with HCR. It is part of the effort to get 60 votes to raise the debt ceiling. The Obama commission may never exist. The Republicans have said none of them will participate.
AhabTRuler
No, dammit. As a ruler, I possess four right angles.
Wait, what? Whaddya mean, ‘not that kind of ruler’?
Mnemosyne
@Jim:
That’s part of the problem talking about it: there are a whole bunch of strawmen that have sprung up around it. I was debating about it yesterday in another thread and even I forgot that it’s not a personal tax — it’s a tax on the insurance company (or insurance administrator) that’s supposed to incentivize them to offer lower-cost plans. No individual will see the tax on their tax bill; the speculation is that insurance companies will pass along the cost of the tax.
The reason the unions are against it is because the union itself may be subject to the tax because of the way many of them have set up their health insurance. Basically, in many cases they are their own insurance company so it would be the health insurance arm of the union that would be subject to the tax. That’s why they’re so pissed off about it.
Fitzwili
Are there any New York/Brooklyn Baloonites who can go to this- Weiner is someone who has been favoring ideology over achievement- it would be vital for him to hear from those adamant about getting HCR done NOW- by any means possible.
The event:
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.
freelancer
@Task Force Ripper:
Hey, I think I found a thread for you…
Shorter:
I don’t mind a lot of the frontpagers at C&L, but god, I fucking hate Susie Madrak. She is everything that sucks about liberalism.
Citizen Alan
@JMG:
Really?!? I’m completely gobsmacked then. I felt certain the Republicans saw in the panel an incredible window to damage Social Security in a way that puts the blame entirely on Democrats. Still, we’ll see how this plays out over time, I guess.
Tim H
Well, you can do what Cole says, and try to figure out how to assure the House they’re not cutting their own throats by passing the Senate bill so that Ben Nelson’s retirement is safe, or you can keep ordering them to pass the bill or else. Because the way the Senate and Obama are nonchalanting this right now, nobody believes they’ll do anything.
What does anyone think of deep-sixing the PHRMA deal, anyway? Unless they can show the receipts for all of this pro-Obamacare advertising they were supposed to have done, anyway.
Davis X. Machina
Sir Charles, over at the Cogitamus blog, does the fancy lawyerin’ for some self-insured labor unions, and will tell you everything you need to know on the subject, and is a good read generally.
metricpenny
All my Congressional Representatives are Republican. I called Price, Chambliss and Isakson’s offices during summer, fall and winter 2009 and was told they were not going to support HCR. The reasons were their usual – leads to higher taxes, increases the deficit, yada, yada, BS other reasons that never mattered to them as Republicans when Pres. W. Bush was breaking the country.
I received an email today from a MoveOn member in Smyrna, GA. She has organized a demonstration for Tuesday, 1/26/10 outside Congressman David Scott’s office. I live nearby so I have volunteered to help and I will be attending.
Check with MoveOn to see if there are events scheduled in your communities. Don’t stop calling. But we have got to make a PUBLIC showing of support for the HCR bill.
FlipYrWhig
@Jim:
I have seen, various places online, statements to the effect that people with these generous health benefit plans think that they will be subject to a “40% tax”–implying to me yet another massive Marginal Rate Understanding Fail.
Citizen Alan
@freelancer:
I like her at times, mainly when she writes about “Communism for the Rich” in a way that reminds me of Molly Ivins. I nearly dropped her over the PUMA debate, particularly when Lambert kept popping up over at her site spreading bat-shit craziness. Also, I am slightly embarrassed for someone to be as hostile to organized religion as she sometimes is and still believe strongly in astrology, but that’s my own biases talking as much anything.
Bill E Pilgrim
@AhabTRuler: The King of Lineland?
Randy P
Nothing much to say today. I fell off the blogs the last few days. I’ve been feeling as low as after election day 2004. I tell myself not to. I tell myself we still have the White House and a significant majority in both Houses. I tell myself the “health care is dead” stuff is just a little hysterical, that Obama is the smartest politician we’ve had leading the party in a long time, and that there’s still hope.
I tell myself that, but I can’t quite make myself believe it. A part of me is expecting to see the Democrats throw everything away and really give the Republicans back that claimed 2010 majority that we all thought was hilarious a month ago. And then see Palin elected president in 2012.
Somebody talk me down.
For a little bit of perspective, I worked in the defense industry during the cold war and the Soviets used to make me feel this way too, like the other guys were just better at the game than we were. And it turned out once we got a look behind the curtain that a lot of stuff that had been painted as 10 feet tall turned out to be more like 10 inches tall.
Edited to add: And in that case, the “painting 10 feet tall” actually came from our side, analyses out of CIA and DIA.
Mnemosyne
@Citizen Alan:
Silly me, but I don’t think we should hold back health insurance reform for the benefit of 5 to 10 percent of the currently insured population. I guess it’s my innumeracy talking when I say that 90 to 95 percent of the insured population shouldn’t continue to get screwed so we can avoid any inconvenience to 5 to 10 percent of the insured population.
Oh, and this:
No, the implication was that the government was not planning to step in and force everyone into a one-size-fits-all plan. I suppose that if you slept through 1992-1993 and missed the entire “Hillarycare” debate, you might think that Obama was promising you that health insurance reform would never inconvenience you in the slightest, but clearly what he was saying was in response to the objections to that plan and trying to reassure people that, no, the government was not going to take their healthcare away and make them all stand in long, Soviet-style lines to get their healthcare like Harry and Louise told them.
geg6
I called both my senators yesterday to tell them to support changes in reconciliation. But both of my guys are pretty good on this issue. Specter was for HCR even before he flipped. And Casey is okay except his anti-abortion shit. I think he’d support changes but would not want to change the abortion language, unless, of course, the change made it even more strict.
Bill E Pilgrim
BTW, I think the return of this guy is going to help.
FlipYrWhig
@Tim H:
I don’t know about you, but I have seen many pro-reform commercials that bore a PhRMA logo at the end, including, I believe, the ones with the “Harry and Louise” couple.
I still don’t understand all the furor about the “secret deal with pharma.” Last time pharma killed the whole plan. This time, they didn’t. Their power to act malevolently was co-opted. The “secret deals” meant many fewer big-time advertisers against the plan, which was a huge obstacle with the Clinton effort. Sure, it’s vaguely unsavory in the abstract, but I can live with it if the result is better than it would have been otherwise.
LosGatosCA
The thing about the Democrats is their uncanny ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Even if this passes now it still has the mark of ‘Fail’ all over it.
I hope they pass it, but they should start writing their concession speeches, they could start with something like this:
‘The people have spoken and I want to congratulate my opponent on his victory. Despite my loss and the loss of the House overall, I remain convinced that America needs spineless, unprincipled, gutless, uncommitted, misguided, uninformed, and cowardly, non-leadership.”
Later, they can reveal the background of the race and why they think they lost. “It was the blogoshpere that messed us up. We only had 53 reliable Senators and 230 reliables in the House. But they wanted us to do everything. Keep our campaign promises, stand up to bullying Republicans, you know, support Democratic Party values. It was brutal, relentless. No politician can operate under that kind of pressure. I mean, Republicans can, but their not normal people. They’re really committed.
We never stood a chance.
Koz
One thing the supporters of the various iterations of health care reform haven’t come to grips with is the reality that it’s not at all clear right now that there are 218 votes in the House to pass any kind of bill.
Health care reform is much less popular now than when the House bill was passed. And this the special election in Massachusetts (and other things), this reality has blown through the layers of river-in-Egypt denial and bluster from the health care partisans. And given that the orginal bill passed with such a thin margin, I don’t think there’s any plausible scenario of getting health care reform along the current strategy of bulldozing the American people and presenting them with a fait accompli.
dr. bloor
@FlipYrWhig:
Not to mention that there wasn’t anything exactly “secret” about it.
mcc
@metricpenny:
I think this is something MoveOn is doing en masse, I received an email about a rally Tuesday outside Mike Honda’s office in CA. Unfortunately (1) MoveOn has my old address and doesn’t know I don’t live in that district anymore (2) infuriatingly I think Tuesday is the one day next week I can’t miss any work. Is there any way to get a directory of events like this around the country? They seem to be promoting this exclusively through the email list and have nothing about it on their website at all.
MikeBoyScout
@mcc:
The Senate Bill, while better than nothing and while I’ll take it, has not passed both houses. The House Bill is considerably better, but carries the The Stupak Amendment.
Look, the simple and most cost effective solution to ever increasing cost, ever decreasing coverage, and marginal health outcomes is to extend Medicare to all. One can marginalize this with a public option.
What we’ll get, if we’re lucky, is a far cry from what we (a) need and (b) know is best. All of this with the largest (D) majority in Congress in decades.
Task Force Ripper
@John Cole:
I think it’s fair to say that opinions differ on how HCR has evolved. You seem to believe that Obama was playing a role behind the scenes, pushing for what he wanted and waging a back and forth to get the result he needed. An “art of the possible” style.
Others would contend that Obama never really wanted a specific result, just a result, and therefore played a dramatic hands-off game and expected Congress to bring him something he could sign. No one had any real Plan A, much less a Plan B. He put his eggs in the Congress’ basket and now some weasels have stolen them with very little effort.
There’s room to argue a third option of some mix of those two that we the public could not see. But since we only caught glimmers that may or may not be true it’s hard to tell. It’s much more direct to look at where we are now and suggest what cause and effect led us here.
And I was responding to a commenter here, not the top line post.
And you keep calling me Cornerstone but I am not. I am his lifepartner and stay with him when on leave.
ETA – and I think my comment @2 was a fair question since I don’t know if there’s a context to this I am unaware of. So, I disagree with your characterization of my posts in this thread.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne:
Yup. Which is also the biggest obstacle to any turn towards a single-payer system. Which in turn was a large part of the reason why the resulting plan had to be an inelegant Rube Goldberg contraption.
dr. bloor
@Koz:
If you’re referring to Rasmussen’s numbers, the general idea of the plan has never (or maybe seldom) broken 50% in their tracking polls. 70%+ still favor a national health insurance exchange and eliminating exclusion due to preexisting conditions. So, they may not think they like a “plan” but they sure like what they’d get with it.
Mnemosyne
@Koz:
Interestingly, the Senate bill is much more popular when people are told what’s actually in it. If you tell people a pack of lies about it, it’s less popular.
Funny how that works. But, hey, continue to be very proud of yourself because you managed to get people to vote based on the lies that you told them. Go you!
burnspbesq
@Citizen Alan:
Then why are you harping on it? Is scoring debating points front-of-mind for you, at the expense of doing something constructive? If yes, that’s fairly pathetic.
matoko_chan
lol….I think we could seamlessly timeport this whole convo back to the civil rights disputes. Anything that passes NOW is a platform to build on LATER.
Unfortunately the scientific consensus is that we cannot travel backwards in time because Einsteinian spacetime doesn’t support closed timelike curves.
:(
JenJen
@Bill E Pilgrim: Thank you for that!
Bobzim
What pisses me off about the Firebaggers is that they can’t seem to understand that there are 256 Democrats in the House and only 83 in the Progressive Caucus.
They need to learn to compromise like everyone else.
Max
@Bill E Pilgrim: I agree. Plouffe is no-bullshit and after reading the op-ed, I trust he gets it. And we know he has the president’s ear.
I am going out for a hike with my dog and then to run errands and I’m proudly wearing my Obama tshirt from the election season. Fuck off haters.
flavortext
How come nobody’s talking about the killing the filibuster? That only takes a majority vote in the Senate, right? If the nuclear option is good enough for a couple of conservative justices, surely it’s good enough for an attempt at some form of universal healthcare, yeah?
Sadly I’m guessing the Dems either don’t have the votes or the balls.
MikeBoyScout
Apropos from ql over at Eschaton
matoko_chan
@flavortext:
They are.
Task Force Ripper
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t recall saying anything about the bill itself except that I wanted it to pass.
I’m sceptical on other issues but there’s no where on BJ you can find where I have said I did not want it to pass.
I’m disheartened by where we are and how we arrived here but that is a separate issue I believe.
Edit – One of my comments from Jan 18th thread:
https://balloon-juice.com/?p=32767&cpage=2#comment-1537398
mcc
It takes 67 votes to change the rules of the Senate.
Mark S.
@Randy P:
I’ll try. First, although 2010 isn’t going to be good for Dems, they have a big enough cushion that it will be very hard for the goopers to retake either house. Nate Silver says the likelihood of the GOP retaking the Senate is about the likelihood of the Dems keeping their 60; neither is very likely.
Things could be dicier in the House, but again, the Dems have 40 seat cushion. I think a swing that big has only happened once in the last 50 years.
As for 2012, a lot can happen before then. My guess is the economy will get a little better, the teabaggers will scare the hell out of everyone (like Gingrich did in 96), and Obama will win another term.
bumblebums
@mcc: actually, the Senate can change Rule XXII with a simple majority.
kay
@Bobzim:
There was plenty of actual compromising and negotiation. The “firebaggers” weren’t in the room, but it went on without them.
As an example.
They held a 12 hour negotiating session at the White House with labor leaders and others the Wednesday prior to Tuesday’s election.
They had reached tentative agreement. Just to be clear, this was held at the White House, Biden was the WH negotiator, despite the constant claims that White House took a “hand’s off” approach.
The firebaggers weren’t there, so it didn’t happen, apparently.
Koz
I’m referring to a bunch of things. Senator Reid’s prospects for reelection, Obama’s approval rating, the generic Congressional ballot, the special election in Massachusetts, etc, itd. The fundamental political topography over say, the last 10 months, is that the liberals, riding the crest of their power in Washington and mainstream culture in general, are doing their damnedest to force a big s**t sandwich on the country that doesn’t want it.
Jim
@MikeBoyScout: In no particular order: The filibuster, Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Olympia Snowe, the voters of Maine, the voters of Massachusetts, the voters of Connecticut, Bart Stupak, the Catholic Bishops Conference, Democratic timidity, Obama’s excessive caution, certain liberals’ refusal to recognize the cold, hard realities of our political system, the sheer bedrock stupidity of ConservaDem ‘deficit hawks’ who will always believe Conventional Wisdom over their own lying eyes…..
batgirl
Just got off the phone with the DNC. Told them they wouldn’t get a dime from me until they passed HCR. The guy told me that there were elections coming up and I said then you better hurry up and pass the bill before hand. Then he got nasty and started to accuse me of helping Republicans. Fuck him, I hung up.
Task Force Ripper
@AhabTRuler:
Some individuals get emotional and lack perspective about their own statements and actions.
Happens to the best of us I guess.
NR
@Randy P:
It won’t be Palin. It’ll be someone who’s just as much of a right-wing nutjob as she is, but without her obvious baggage and negatives.
Jim
@batgirl: Seriously? They must be hugely stressed. I had that call three or four days ago, and the guy picked up from my tone pretty quick that he wasn’t getting a dime out of me. He sounded frustrated, but resigned.
@NR: I still say Pawlenty. Maybe Pawlenty/Jindal
Task Force Ripper
@kay:
So you’re saying this meeting was January 13th, 2010?
I did not know that.
Mark S.
@batgirl:
Wow, I hope everybody manning the phones over there isn’t as stupid as the guy you talked to.
Bill E Pilgrim
@JenJen: You’re welcome. And I don’t know if you heard this which is the news I was referring to.
Can’t hurt, that’s for sure.
MikeBoyScout
@Jim:
I get that, but that is all noise.
My point in this thread is that the standard normal pressure of letter writing, telephone calls, protests, etc… is apparently not enough to solve simple policy questions even when we are in possession of large majorities.
Therefore, we need to think and re-think what pressure is, and how to best and consistently utilize it.
flavortext
@matoko_chan:
Well hey, that’s a pleasant surprise! I guess I was wrong.
kay
@Task Force Ripper:
By Lori Montgomery and Michael D. Shear
“The White House has reached a tentative agreement with labor leaders to tax high-cost health insurance policies, sources said Thursday. The agreement clears one of the last major obstacles on the path to final passage of comprehensive health care legislation.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said health care negotiators are “very, very close” to an overall deal and hope to have resolved most of the differences between health bills approved by the House and the Senate by day’s end. But White House officials privately cautioned that their optimism does not mean that a final health care deal will be formally announced Thursday, and senior lawmakers said they are unlikely to present a compromise package to their members before early next week.”
Stroszek
@Koz: Rhetorical jousting aside, it is a pretty interesting distinction. Americans don’t want the plan but they do want what’s in it. They don’t want this shit sandwich foisted upon them, but some feces on rye sure sounds pretty tasty right about now.
matoko_chan
Awww…..Prince Charming is losing his gloss for the teabaggers.
/sadface…..not!
kay
@Task Force Ripper:
“The White House and Democratic senators negotiating a final healthcare bill gave ground Thursday to labor leaders to secure their support for a tax on high-cost health plans.
Labor representatives, including Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, negotiated all day Wednesday to reach a “conceptual agreement” with White House and congressional negotiators.”
Biden and Messina were the WH negotiators.
The Grand Panjandrum
@mcc: You can add Paul Hodes (D-NH02) as the intern answering the phone but didn’t know his position on passing the Senate bill intact and working out the kinks in a separate bill. I will contact Hodes, Gregg and Shaheen on Monday morning and let you know what the score is.
NR
@Bobzim:
Fuck you. Progressives made compromise after compromise after compromise on this bill, and it was still never enough for the likes of you.
We compromised away single-payer at the outset. Then we compromised away a strong public option. We compromised away a Medicare expansion. We compromised away drug reimportation. We compromised away negotiation for lower drug prices. We compromised away the repeal of the insurance companies’ anti-trust exemption. There were tons of gifts to corporate and special interests along the way, and we accepted them all. And every time we made a compromise, the bar was then lowered even further, taking us further away from real reform.
And now you’re telling us we need to accept an excise tax and restrictions on women’s reproductive rights.
The fact of the matter is that progressives have done nothing but compromise on this bill, even though throughout the process, “compromise” has been a code word for “progressives give up something they want and get nothing in return.”
And now you accuse us of needing to learn to compromise?
Again: Fuck you.
dr. bloor
@Koz:
None of which, you know, has jackshit to do with how the public feels about the health care plans passed by the Senate and House.
As Mnemosyne noted in the post right after mine, when the public is actually informed about what’s in the plan, they likey. Troublesome data for your point of view, but there it is.
Davis X. Machina
A hit, a palpable hit.
Koz
Could be. If I were strategizing for your team (and plainly I’m not) I would have had you focus on the “outside game” for a while. And whatever the plan is, make sure that it’s comprehensible to all parties involved. In fact I would have told you that starting in July or August.
Given the malleability of public opinion, it’s possible that the D’s could have gotten enough popular support to get something through. Instead the D’s have worked strenuously with the assumption that they didn’t need it. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of guys.
kay
@dr. bloor:
This is amusing, so watch for it. Obama’s approval rating is right around where Reagan’s was. I knew this would drive conservatives batshit insane, and it has been. When it’s mentioned, they start to sputter.
Today, in the pages of the Washington Post, they have dealt with that problem. They simply changed a word.
They now say that Obama’s disapproval rating is higher than any President at a comparable period, first term.
Because Reagan’s low numbers were tripping them up.
I smiled when I saw it. They’re really, really good at disinformation.
Bobzim
@NR: No, fuck you.
That statement is like me saying, “I compromised on winning the lottery, so why should I compromise on nailing Padma Lakshmi?”
Neither of those things were ever going to happen, and everyone not thinking that the 2008 election was a mandate to revive the SDS knew it then and knows it now.
Grow the fuck up and learn that the Progressive Caucus does not constitute a majority in the Democratic Party and you can’t have everything you want.
Napoleon
@mcc:
At best, and ignoring the possibility of the chair declaring the rule unenforceable or illegal that may be true, but it certainly does not apply when the rules for the session are initially adopted. There is no reason in December of this year when the new Senate is seated that 50 plus Biden could not adopt another rule.
MikeBoyScout
Carrying on @69 Bobzim & @95 NR . . .
If Progressives are those that want extensive reform of the measurable extensively broken health care system in this country, just whom are we negotiating with?
And just what is it that those we must negotiate with want?
And how would one or one million more letters, phone calls improve the situation or anyone’s negotiating position?
Koz
Ok, so what? What is about the progressives that means that they should get part or all of what they want? We’ve killed millions of trees and pixels over last year about health care, and there’s no concrete answer. There’s just vague rationalizations about how many seats the D’s have. Well great, that’s just a mistake by the American people that’s in the process of being unravelled as we speak. Anything else?
Stroszek
@Koz: I don’t think it’s so much that they operate under the assumption that they didn’t need it as they operated under the persistent Democratic inability to meaningfully communicate with other human beings in any way whatsoever.
That said, a November ass-whipping is a foregone conclusion and the horrors of Obamacare are going to hang around their necks one way or the other. The question is how to minimize the damage: avoid pissing off already skeptical independents or avoid pissing off the increasingly skeptical base. If this were 2012, I’d cater to the independents. In a mid-term, the base is more important.
But obviously, I want the bill to pass so I’m biased.
Rommie
I’m just commonfolk, but it just seems to me there are two major options for the Donkey:
1) Sit on its butt and not go anywhere. Come Fall 2010, it gets painted as the Do-Nothing Ass by candidates and suddenly-free corporate entities. Meanwhile, the elephant says It Has A Plan. The DNC might be better off saving cash for 2012 in that case – even if the The Plan is as nebulous as the Cylon Plan. It’s not going to be hard to convince enough “independents” that they do, indeed, Have A Plan. Trust Us.
2) Get the HCR passed, and attempt/pass some other stuff between now and September. Promote whatever “win” the Donkey ends up with, and paint the Elephant as the Do-Nothing Bronto. MOCK the corporate psuedo-people when they spend on their agenda of the hour. Fight with some positive results in hand, and the D might just break even in 2010, and have a push for 2012.
It can’t be *worse* than sitting on their hooves, which is one of the excuses I’ve been hearing to not pass the HCR bill in the House. You want to see the word FAIL for 3 months straight until November, then go ahead and walk away.
What I don’t know is what kind of money is keeping things the way they are, but some serious green has to be there to overwhelm the urge for Re-Election so highly.
Jim
@MikeBoyScout:
Health care reform is anything but a simple question, especially when the economy sucks. And “we” do not really possess large majorities, when you consider that the Democratic Party is really a coalition, and that the Senate has converted itself, extra-constitutionally, into a super-majority chamber (yes, I know everyone knows that, but it just pisses me off to no end), with the apparently unconscious acquiescence of the Fourth Estate (again, not news, but always infuriating). The Senate has always required a super-majority, and Oceania has always been at war with EastAsia.
FlipYrWhig
Can we have maybe one thread’s worth of discussion of health care that doesn’t involve someone who doesn’t like the bill calling it a “shit sandwich”? Was it Atrios who popularized that? It’s fucking annoying. It’s swiftly approaching the annoyingness level of “nookyaler” and “Democrat party.” Not that it’s, ZOMG, dirty words, but that it’s meaningless.
(Yes, I know it’s from Spinal Tap.)
jcricket
@Napoleon: The filibuster will only end when somehow Republicans decide to do it. The Senate will continue to be a do-nothing body, with a rotating cast of characters, and probably mild Democratic control for the next decade or so. The rotating will come from the low approval rating (since they do nothing).
Despite that, they will fail to fix the filibuster, the one-senator hold rule, or any other procedural nonsense that makes the Senate look about as relevant as a horse and buggy on a highway.
FFS they still call themselves the “worlds greatest deliberative body” with a straight face.
This country’s institutions are now incapable of attacking real problems, and when you combine the soon-to-be-massive increase in corporate ownership of politics, I basically think we’re doomed. At best we get a few crumbs on the edges and hope the violence affects towns other than the ones we live in.
Good times.
JenJen
@Bill E Pilgrim: OH thank gawd! That’s even better. I feel very, very good about Plouffe stepping up and making it official.
Jim
@FlipYrWhig:
Yes, it was one of the things that pushed me out the door of his place. The vitriol directed at anyone who disagrees with that simplistic petulance is astounding.
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
I view it as a handy identifier of the people whose comments I can skim past because I know they have nothing to contribute.
ETA: Koz is arguing in the thread below that fascism really is a phenomenon of the left because noted scholar and historian Jonah Goldberg told him so, so once again “shit sandwich” has helped me correctly identify a babbling idiot.
Tax Analyst
Throwin Stones:
Didn’t know if anyone else would detect the Grateful Dead song title. Also didn’t know if John was referring to a fairly recent movie (within the last couple of years) instead of the song.
Good song.
kay
@NR:
Progressives did not give up “everything they want” unless “progressive” has a brand new meaning.
Progressives oppose the expansion of Medicaid? Progressives oppose the retention and expansion of S-CHIP?
Progressives oppose defunding Medicare Advantage, a program that privatized 20% of Medicare?
Progressives oppose increased regulation of health insurance policies and providers?
Because the Senate bill meets all those worthy progressive aims.
The fact is, you focused exclusively on what you didn’t get, and forget to mention all the progressive parts of the bill, which, incidentally, you’re now opposing. You’re opposing all those good things, because they’re in the bill.
You got them. Whether you choose to acknowledge that or not is your call, but they’re in there.
FlipYrWhig
And I still don’t understand why it would be much better to formulate a quintessentially liberal bill, the stuff of our dreams, and see it get somewhere in the neighborhood of 45 votes, maybe even north of 50, but nowhere near 60. What is that worth? It would make the activists happy, but to what policy end? Saying you want the progressive Democrats to hang tough means you want to lose, then, presumably, to campaign on how hard you tried. I don’t know if that cuts it. I don’t know if it plays as anything other than failure. That’s why you need to water it down, get to 60 votes, and pass the fucker already. Because believe it or not, these are the _most_ auspicious, _most_ liberal political circumstances we’re likely to see for a long, long time.
Bobzim
@MikeBoyScout: The bottom line is this:
The Democratic Party can only achieve the majority with the help of moderate and conservative Democrats. That’s an indisputable fact.
So we can either let the “ConservaDems” (or what ever fucking epithet you want to use) do what they need to do to get reelected, or we can let that seat go to the GOP, and too many of those meas no HCR whatsoever.
Now we can fight like hell to convince them that the progressive way is the best way, but at a certain point we have accept the political realities and get on with it. That time has come. It’s almost come and gone.
It’s time for the Firebaggers to stand down and let the House pass the damn bill.
MikeBoyScout
@Jim: @106,
Look, I could talk all sorts of inside baseball politico tweetybird BS with you. It is fun and sometimes funny. But I’m not going to.
There are no death panels in HCR. Illegal immigrants aren’t going to flock here for socialized medicine. And the economy is not so bad that we need to, in effect, execute people with a sentence of No Health Care For You!.
The solution is SIMPLE, despite what you hear, read or think. There is no need to re-invent a wheel here. Of all the industrialized countries on the planet, we’re the last to attempt tried and true solutions.
And as for the Senate’s procedural rules, I really don’t care. Our Senators are welcome to play anyway they want when they are doing their job. They
are notshould not be allowed to play games that kill people.This has become Kabuki theater.
JenJen
@matoko_chan: LMFAO. That is just priceless.
So the teabaggers are mad because Brown didn’t thank them in his victory speech? This is a fantastic development.
When you really start to think it’s all hopeless and the Dems are FUBAR, remember one thing: The GOP excels at Fucking Up. They wrote the book.
Ailuridae
@FlipYrWhig:
Can we have maybe one thread’s worth of discussion of health care that doesn’t involve someone who doesn’t like the bill calling it a “shit sandwich”? Was it Atrios who popularized that? It’s fucking annoying. It’s swiftly approaching the annoyingness level of “nookyaler” and “Democrat party.” Not that it’s, ZOMG, dirty words, but that it’s meaningless.
Not to rail on any of the front pagers here doing yeoman’s work but they aren’t doing themselves any favors by describing it as a barely passable piece of legislation (I think Tim F even called it a shit and bananas sandwich which makes me wonder if he was hazed at a large state school fraternity) when its actually an incredibly progressive bill that will help 31 million people with some unfortunate flaws that by no means damn it. And the fixes to those flaws regarding the subsidies will be easily remediable after the bill passes but before they affect anyone even if they were subjected to the 60 vote requirement.
I like that the leftist/progressive mind is analytical and capable of admitting fault in things it advocates but it doesn’t do much to build enthusiasm for advocacy when the focus of that advocacy is on the imperfections.
kay
@NR:
You even ignored huge wins, and chose to demonize the person who got you the win.
Bernie Sanders got a boatload of money for his treasured community health centers ( a TRUE progressive idea, and one that works, now, all over the country, in actually delivering affordable health care ) during the last weeks of negotiations and he was slammed for veering from the liberal line.
You demonized your own best ideas. You demonized the “progressive” who actually GOT a substantive win, in favor of some loudmouths who got nothing at all.
I don’t want you as my advocate. I could die waiting.
NR
@kay:
Don’t put something in quotes when I didn’t say it. I never said that progressives gave up “everything they want.” What I said was progressives routinely compromised throughout the process, and we did. Accusing us now of not compromising is bullshit. We gave up a ton of stuff.
And for the record, I don’t advocate killing the Senate bill. I advocate fixing it through reconciliation. But the fix has to happen BEFORE the bill is passed, because I don’t trust the Senate or the White House one whit right now.
NR
And for all the people bitching about the “kill-billers,” guess what? You’re the kill-billers now.
eemom
@FlipYrWhig:
In honor of your post I shall reiterate my list of terms that need to be banned from political discourse because I am so fucking sick of them:
1. Shit sandwich
2. Straw man (Hamsher’s personal favorite, btw)
3. Kabuki (they like that one at Lake Batshit too)
Ailuridae
@kay:
But but but but I didn’t get everything I wanted! AND WHERE IS THE FUCKING PONY I WAS PROMISED!
NR
And for all the people complaining about the “kill-billers,” guess what? You’re the kill-billers now.
Mnemosyne
@Bobzim:
We do have an additional option: we can try to primary more conservative members of Congress from the left. Of course, that’s apparently too much hard work since I haven’t seen a peep about trying to primary either Evan Bayh or Blanche Lincoln, both of whom are up for re-election this year. So much easier to just bitch and moan about not getting what you want handed to you on a silver platter than to actually work for what you want.
Don’t make me post that article about teabaggers becoming local Republican precinct leaders again.
FlipYrWhig
@kay:
I totally agree. It’s like you’re renting a small apartment and the landlord jacked up the price, so you go house-hunting. You find a house that is in your price range, has the space you need, but a smallish backyard and laminate countertops in the kitchen; and then moaning and groaning about how the countertops mean it’s a Shit House and you’re not buying it and no one can ever make you. The backyard might not be fixable, but if you save money you can replace the damn countertops. But you’ve compromised enough, so you walk, and then you go back to paying the outlandish rent.
And when a few months later you want to take another look, the price has gone up, and it’s out of your range.
(Yes, I watch too much HGTV.)
MikeBoyScout
@eemom: @121,
sorry to have offended your sensibilities.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: DailyKos has occasionally pushed Bill Halter, Arkansas Lt. Gov., as a primary opponent for Blanche Lincoln.
eemom
@Ailuridae:
this is a very good point.
eemom
@MikeBoyScout:
please, don’t take it personally. I’m not offended, I’m just tired of those phrases. We need some new ones.
Bobzim
@Mnemosyne:
It’s not that’s it too much hard work, it’s that They Are Conservative Incumbents For A Reason. “Primarying” from the left a conservative Democrat is guaranteed to put a Republican ass in that seat (See NY-23).
Conservative districts elect conservatives, and sometimes, if we’re lucky, they are Democrats who add to our numbers and give us the majority which allows us to control legislation.
Jim
@MikeBoyScout:
I’m sorry. I thought we were talking about the actual political process, not the one we think “should” be in place.
kay
@NR:
I want you to do something for me. Look at the Senate bill. List the progressive aims that bill promotes.
Screw it. I’ll do it, and you can object.
1. Medicare Advantage defunding. That does a lot to put Medicare on sounder financing footing, because the private program bills more and costs more.
2. Expansion of Medicaid
3. Retention and full funding of S-CHIP (it’s better than the House bill here, because Pelosi pulled a fast one with S-CHIP. I forgive her, but, still, she did)
4. Extension of health insurance benefits to 25 year olds (parents insurance)
5. Insurance regulations, combined with a mandate and a subsidy that act as a cap on premiums.
If the premium exceeds the subsidized rate, the mandate is not operational. Do you see the downward leverage there, on premiums?
6. Community health centers
That’s an incomplete list. We’ve been debating this for months on this site and I’ve learned a lot, but there’s more in the bill to like. You can support this. Like the stimulus, it’s 60-65% good ideas.
Or, like the stimulus, you can ignore the good and trash the whole thing. But be aware, you’re trashing your own ideas.
Napoleon
@Mnemosyne:
Someone has to enter those primaries that has a plausible chance to win, not only the primary but the general. Personally I am all for primaring those people and some others, and IMO that is the only real way forward to getting a better Congress (because it sure is not by voting for an R), but you can’t create candidates out of thin air by clicking your heals. Having said that anyone in those seats is never going to be a liberal, but at least maybe it would be someone that stabs the party in the back on the big issues, and lay off the business give aways that don’t buy them creed with the votes (like gutting bankruptcy cramdown).
BTW Lincoln may still draw a challenge and if that guy gets in I am sending him $100.
Jim
@Mnemosyne:
I’m not one to defend Jane Hamsher (who I think is more annoying than effective, which is why I generally don’t join in the bashing, either), but she and some others are trying to draft the Lite Guv to run against Lincoln. He’s every bit the Blue Dog she is, maybe more, but when he started making noises about running, she got a little more reasonable on HCR. If Lincoln needed national money, maybe Bubba and Hillary making a swing through Little Rock on her behalf, it might help. But I think the problem with Lincoln (and Spending Freeze Bayh) really has as much to do with their intellectual limits as their or their districts’ conservatism.
The Raven
We compromise and compromise and compromise, and all the while our opponents don’t budge. Then we’re told we didn’t compromise enough. Then we’re told to keep fighting, so that the people who pressed us to compromise don’t have to. And then we’re told told sacrifice ourselves for the greater good. We aren’t asking for the moon and stars–we’re asking for what people in every other developed country have, at much less cost than the half-loaf we have now.
Anyone else ever been in an abusive relationship?
MikeBoyScout
Look, I get why we lived in upside down logicville when Republicans controlled 1 of 3 or 2 of 3 branches of government and gave us
shit sandwichbad legislation; Patriot Act, Iraq War, Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act of 1999, etc..Why is this crap still going on?
As I recall, single payer was not even attempted because it was not as feasible as this path. Really?
OK, now why can’t we pass the damn bill and move on to fixing it? How about we get this done on Tuesday and get busy doing better on Wednesday?
Mnemosyne
@Bobzim:
Not necessarily. Right now, the right wing has managed to capture most of the tropes of libertarian populism, but I think there’s plenty of room for a more left-wing libertarian populism that emphasizes having the government help where needed since, after all, we pay for it and want to get our money’s worth. Don’t forget that Obama won Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, all three of which went to Bush in 2004.
You definitely need the right kind of challenger from the left — a gun control advocate is never going to win in a Western state — but that doesn’t mean that some economic populism isn’t going to do well in places like Indiana and Nebraska.
Ailuridae
@Mnemosyne:
There are other things that could be done too and that involves selling an idea like Medicare plus in a formal way complete with a well-run website that responds to myths and the like. I’ve tried to talk to Congressman Wiener about this to no avail.
Something like this except explicitly related to a Medicare Plus type program complete with combating disinformation and arguing the fiscal case for a Medicare expansion.
http://www.governmentisgood.com/
Medicare plus is an idea that will appeal to many, many Americans but it absolutely needs to be argued for and sold to the American people.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
What did you think was possible in April?
MikeBoyScout
@Jim: @130,
You:
Tweety:
The resemblance is kind of scary.
kay
@FlipYrWhig:
I loved your house-selling example the other day (I hope it was you) on the “they started negotiations to low!” canard that we’ve heard over and over.
Your initial asking price was 500 million so that meant you’d end up with 250 million, rather than 125 thousand. Win!
Like that.
Mnemosyne
@MikeBoyScout:
I came across a really interesting study while Googling about this stuff a few days ago. South Korea is held up as an examplar of a country that re-jiggered its system from private insurance to single payer at lightning speed because they did it within a mere 12 years. We’re complaining because we didn’t completely switch to a single-payer system within 12 months.
I think that single payer is a worthy goal, but there are a whole hell of a lot of moving parts that need to be fixed before we can get there. Like, for just one example, the cost of medical school. Recent graduates who are $200K in debt are not going to take kindly to an announcement that all of their reimbursements will be at a pre-determined government rate effective immediately.
Jim, 42
@MikeBoyScout:
What the hell are you babbling about? I don’t have a vote in the House. If I did, I’d be voting to pass the bill and work on reconciliation. So, I believe I read here yesterday, would Grayson. So Grayson and I are just like Tweety?
I’m just curious, really: What point do you think you’re making?
J. Michael Neal
@Napoleon:
No. This has been discussed many times. You can not change the Senate rules by a simple majority at the start of each Congressional session. The Senate declared long ago that, because only 1/3 of its members are replaced at each election, there is always a quorum for the body. Therefore, it never needs to start a new session. There is never a time when it only takes 51 votes to change the rules, unlike the House, which does have to formally adopt new rules every two years.
Mnemosyne
@The Raven:
Wow. Now you’ve moved from whining to actively belittling crime victims. Because not getting single payer right out of the gate is exactly like being beaten to death by your husband.
Good job there.
Tsulagi
@Mnemosyne:
Maybe they didn’t factor in your guess, but CBO puts the figure at 19% of plans. To start.
Even though the CBO Senate bill scoring is full of rosy predictions and assumptions, I liked this little part in their letter to Reid…
Now that indicates a recipe for success. Kinda gives you an idea where they think premium rates/health care costs are going for the next couple of decades. That’s with Senate bill HCR, and even with CBO factoring in an expectation of a substantial number of employers downgrading their plans to avoid the excise tax. Fiscal responsibility, not just for Republicans!
Anyway, old arguments that have been whipped to death. Doubt if there are too many undecideds on what is on the table. Pick your poison.
Though his NYT op-ed, They Still Don’t Get It, wasn’t solely on HCR, this part pretty much sums it up…
Pretty much.
Task Force Ripper
It’s a good thing I’m the only one on this blog who masturbates.
MikeBoyScout
@Mnemosyne: @141, I get it. But we didn’t try.
And not trying anything in 12 months is really the problem.
What either house has passed is good enough at the moment, if/when it becomes law. I don’t like it, but I support it. It is progress.
My question is ‘How in the world is this anywhere near the best we can do?’ And ‘How will one or a million letters, phonecalls change that?’
Oh, had to laugh at the S. Korea benchmark comparison. :-D
Napoleon
@J. Michael Neal:
Yes it was brought up and whoever took your position, maybe you, was destroyed on that issue. 50 plus one changes the rules.
NR
@kay:
Are you seriously arguing that just because the mandate has a cap, it exerts a downward pressure on premiums?
Good god. That’s so ridiculous, I hardly even know where to begin.
The “downward leverage” you’re talking about exists right now! People will make the decision as to whether they can afford insurance based on their individual financial situation. The only difference is that, if the Senate bill passes, that decision gets taken out of the hands of individuals and gets made by the government instead.
One of the things that is currently exerting a downward pressure on premiums is the fact that the insurance companies are currently competing with nothing at all. That is, right now, people have the choice to go without insurance if that’s what they want to do. So if the insurance companies raise premiums too much, more and more healthy people will drop out, and they’ll be left with fewer low-cost people paying premiums.
But under the Senate bill, we will all be required by law to buy private insurance. The choice to opt out will be taken away. And so the insurance companies will have no reason not to raise premiums, as high as they possibly can, right up to the cap. You won’t be able to tell them no anymore.
Without a public plan as competition, a mandate guarantees higher premiums. Whether or not there’s a cap on how high they can eventually go is irrelevant, because even with the cap, it’s a worse situation than we have now.
Ailuridae
@The Raven:
What exactly makes you think that conservative Democrats are thrilled to have a Medicaid expansion of 40B a year? And, to be honest, given that its likes going to go up 150% FPL it’ll actually be closer to 60B? Do you think Evan Bayh woke up on January 20th 2009 excited to vote for a 60B dollar a year expasion of one of the least popular programs in America? More than half of this bill is going to end up being a needed expansion of an incredibly unpopular government program and Bayh and Lincoln both voted for it and its enough to sink either of them by itself in a general election if the mood of the country doesn’t shift.
Myopic is the word I am looking for. What does ‘sacrifice’ mean if voting for a bill half of which’s contents you would never in a 100 years vote for expanding doesn’t qualify as sacfirice?
Mnemosyne
@Tsulagi:
I scanned through the entire document using two search terms (“excise tax” and “19”) and can’t find the reference you’re claiming. Can you at least point to the page number or table number to give me a head start here?
General Winfield Stuck
@J. Michael Neal: You are correct, and as it has been stated ad nauseum by many, Rule 22 is a STANDING RULE OF THE SENATE – standing, like stands from one congress to next where a quorum is always present and all the little Senators are above average, the women strong, and the men, well old and ornery, for the most part.
When will this nonsense end, tell us great FSM/
sparky
@Davis X. Machina: good linky–thanks!
@Mnemosyne: you might, some time, want to try reading the things you cite in support. just saying. but on the other hand if you want to continue to make up stuff and then accuse other people of making up stuff, well, that’s ok too. this is, after all, the comments section of a blog.
as for me, i did not start out opposed to this variant of reform, though i was never happy with it. i am opposed to what has emerged, which, at this point, i conclude is a gift to the medical-insurance complex and a fuck you to the rest of us. also, i think all of you who think the general public will like this are wrong. but i also freely admit that i could be wrong on this point as well. this last, especially, is my conclusion, so for those of you who think otherwise, well, that’s fine, and i respect your desire to have an optimistic outlook. but that doesn’t mean that i have to agree with it. but you should be alert to the possibility of skepticism being offered in good faith.
also, i am rather curious about the source of the “thirty million will get insurance”. i am not being snarky but i am curious as i see it repeated endlessly, without citation. thanks.
Koz
“@Koz: I don’t think it’s so much that they operate under the assumption that they didn’t need it as they operated under the persistent Democratic inability to meaningfully communicate with other human beings in any way whatsoever.”
In this case at least, that’s just two names for the same thing.
It needs to emphasized, before it escapes into some memory hole, that the seeds of unpopularity of the bill were apparent during the first committee markups all the way back to May, and maybe even before that. This unpopularity has crystallized and grown more or less continuously since then. And at every step, the liberal base (together with President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid) has pushed forward through the opposition, and insisted on the Congressional rank and file doing the same, calling into question their good standing as members of the party.
It’s fundamentally ignorant to complain, like Ezra Klein does, that the progressives have gotten nothing. They’ve been the ones calling the shots for the better part of a year.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
Which, oddly enough, is exactly what’s been happening under the current system. The insurance companies are desperately trying to hang on to as many healthy customers as they can so they can bring in more revenue, but they also end up having to raise premiums on those customers to cover for the ones who either drop coverage or become too expensive.
I’m not quite sure why you think that process will accelerate under this bill with the various provisions designed to prevent it.
Jim
@MikeBoyScout:
My initial response is stuck in moderation, but….
What point do you think you’re making? I’m genuinely curious.
General Winfield Stuck
@sparky:
Why sparky, I don’t know what makes you think that. Just wait till people get a clue they can’t be denied insurance for pre-existing conditions, and can take their insurance with them from job to job, and it will harder to have claims denied, or dropped from their plans for little or no reason.
I am sure there will be a voters revolt when they learn of these dastardly provisions and many pitchfork parties will roam the country side looking fer payback.
Now, that said, the senate bill will likely piss some people off if they get caught in the excise tax, and some young folks get a dent put in their beer money over mandates and such. And a few other bad provisions could cause problems.
But one thing I can guarangoddamntee, than no one other than ideologues on the left and a few tea baggers will give one shit that the insurance companies do ok. So long as the above reforms are enforced and decent regs come from the Public Law and it’s preamble.
MikeBoyScout
@Koz:
Progressive is what Progressive does?
Begging the question: What progress has been made with Health care in 2009? Meetings? Speeches? Votes?
Steve Benen seems to get it.
Mnemosyne
@sparky:
Really? The article seemed pretty clear to me — people liked most of the provisions that are in the Senate bill when they were explained, with the exception of the universal mandate and the cost. That says to me that claiming that people are against the Senate bill because they hate the specifics of the bill is pretty far off-base.
Task Force Ripper
@Ailuridae:
According to a Harris Poll it seems Medicaid has the support of 71% of the public.
Also according to the poll, people have a negative opinion of the service side of Medicaid.
So, according to this poll – people support the Medicaid program but think the service side is horrible?
“When asked in a new Harris Poll how strongly they support 14 different government services, five services receive strong, or a fair amount of support, from about three-fourths of all adults or more”…
“Other services which are supported by 65 percent or more of all adults are Defense (71%), Medicaid (71%), Federal aid to public schools (69%) and Federal government emergency services (65%).”
J. Michael Neal
@Napoleon: Fifty +1 changes the rules WHEN THERE IS A NEW SESSION. The Senate has not technically had a new session in over a century. I’m not disputing your reading of the rules. What I am saying is that they don’t apply, because the Senate has defined things such that it never happens.
2. The rules of the Senate shall continue from one Congress to the next Congress unless they are changed as provided in these rules.
In other words, they need to be amended within the framework of the rules, which requires 67 votes. Now, someone could challenge the constitutionality of this, but that leads to all of the normal problems of a constitutional challenge.
Mnemosyne
@sparky:
It’s in the CBO memo to Reid that Tsulagi linked to in comment #144.
J. Michael Neal
@NR:
Yes, that’s what we are doing, because we’ve taken the time to understand the various moving parts.
1) There is a mandate to buy insurance. This means that insurance companies have a pool of new customers.
2) This mandate only works through the exchanges. If the insurance companies want to have access to this pool of customers, then they must participate in the exchanges. No participation, no customers.
3) The mandate only applies if there are plans that are under 8% of the individual’s income. If an insurance company does not offer such a plan, it does not have access to mandated customers.
4) There are additional rules on the exchange regarding what a plan must cover, and how much it can increase prices. If an insurance company does not offer what is required, or raises prices too quickly, it does not have access to the mandated customers.
5) Plans on the exchanges are required to accept all comers, and can only price discriminate based upon age, smoking, and family size. Therefore, if an insurance company wants access to mandated customers, it has to take everyone who is eligible to participate on the exchange.
Yes, these things will work to keep prices down.
MikeBoyScout
@Jim:
The point is, what does “even more pressure” mean in context of where we are and how we got here.
John’s point about the brokedown Senate palace is valid, but what sort of pressure moves the ball? Tim seems to think more of the same will help. I don’t see that.
So… it is time for thinking people to re-think what pressure is.
For example, what is “even more pressure”?
a) letters/phone calls
b) primaries
c) protests
d) general strike
e) other
Ranger 3
@John Cole: Way off topic… I had an idea for the Cafe Press stuff. Maybe somebody already beat me to this, but how about a picture of Lily with the Fatal Attraction line “I will not be ignored, John”. You could replace Lily with Tunch, of course. It works either way.
I liked the one with pet overlords, but would have said canine overlords or feline overlords. That seems more ominous.
Just a thought.
Mnemosyne
@J. Michael Neal:
IIRC, there’s also a provision that says that any insurance company that jacks up its prices between the law being passed and the exchanges opening to the public will be banned from participating in the exchanges, which again would give the companies a disincentive to raise their rates since they will miss out on all of that new revenue.
And with that, I must go buy cat food.
Ranger 3
Way off topic… I had an idea for the Cafe Press stuff. Maybe somebody already beat me to this, but how about a picture of Lily with the Fatal Attraction line “I will not be ignored, John”. You could replace Lily with Tunch, of course. It works either way.
I liked the one with pet overlords, but would have said canine overlords or feline overlords. That seems more ominous.
Just a thought.
Ailuridae
@Task Force Ripper:
Oh you totally got me!
Oh wait two paragraphs down:
Measuring Their Performance
Support for a service does not necessarily mean that it gets high ratings for its performance. In an earlier survey conducted online among 1,833 adults by Harris Interactive between October 11 and 17, 2005, far fewer people gave most services high ratings. For example:
Medicaid which enjoys the support of 71 percent of all adults is rated 73 percent negative, 27 percent positive.
Federal aid to public schools which is supported by 69 percent of adults is rated 74 percent negative, 26 percent positive.
Social Security, which enjoys very strong support (76%) is rated 73 percent negative, 27 percent negative.
Medicare, also a very popular service (76% support) is rated 73 percent negative, 27 percent positive.
All of the nine services rated in October (the list did not include five of the services included in the November survey), received more negative than positive ratings. Those which had the most positive ratings by the public are: defense (45% positive), foreign aid (44%), and food stamps (33%).
Some of these ratings are somewhat surprising. For example, the relatively high ratings for foreign aid, the service which has the lowest level of support; and emergency services which is rated more favorably than four other popular services in spite of the widely reported failures of the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina.
The perception long fueled by the right as part of the Southern Strategy is that the entirety of the Great Society except Medicare (which is an ‘us’ not ‘them’ program) is that the welfare state leads to welfare queens in Cadillacs.
So if you ask a bible thumper if people in poverty should have health care he’ll likely say yes. If you ask him whether the program Medicaid which already constitutes ~5% of the entire federal budget should be expanded he thinks the program must be run badly by lazy bureaucrats who are fucking over hard working Muricans like him. He can’t conceive there are enough people in poverty that 5% of the federal budget is required to provide them with health care.
But seriously why am I explaining this. Either you’ve followed the last four decades of American politics or you haven’t. ‘Them’ programs, and Medicaid is definitely among them are the hammer that the Republicans have used to beat Democrats’ skulls at every oppurtunity.
Jim
In the Senate: Money. Primary challenges. Blanche Lincoln briefly got reasonable when the threat of a primary challenger came up, even though that challenger is arguably to her right. She may need a lot of money from national Democrats, and she may find that hard to come by. Also look at Specter
Tim posted a message last night from a Dem staffer who says they’re getting more calls against pass it and fix it than for it, and that more calls in favor of it might help. Might.
Now, if you could clarify how I’m just like Tweety for pointing out that filibusters, Blue Dogs and liberal purists all exist and are having an effect on this legislative process? TIA.
Tax Analyst
@ #145 Task Force Ripper:
Wait, are you talking about overall or just while you’re posting? Maybe you need to take a pole on that.
Task Force Ripper
@Ailuridae:
I actually mention the split between the program being popular yet having a negative attitude toward the service side.
If you’d bother to read the post.
I’m not drawing any specific conclusions from the one poll I found. You mentioned a few times how “unpopular” Medicaid was but didn’t link to anything to substantiate it. I did a quick search and the first Harris Poll I found said that in fact people supported it at a 71% rate but felt let down by aspects of the service of it.
There may be other polls that show broad desire to kill the program. I did not find them in a quick search and you did not cite them as backup.
And I’m sorry but “bible thumpers” are a subset of the US population, not the population as a whole. So, maybe you should have said, “Bayh does not want to broaden something deeply unpopular with winger extremists.”
Your comment seems to say that Medicaid is deeply unpopular across the US as a whole, and the first poll result I found said the opposite. Unless you think 71% rating is deeply unpopular?
In any event, wank on bro!
Task Force Ripper
@Tax Analyst:
I should have been more clear, sorry. It looks like I am the most egregious wanker here at BJ.
I’m trying to determine other posters’ levels of wanking but so far there can be no doubt that I am in the lead when it comes to masturbating while posting here.
edit – I do have to admit I enjoyed your use of the homophone “pole” in your post.
MikeBoyScout
@Jim:
Well, I suppose we shall see if Tim and the unnamed staffer’s hypothesis holds or not.
But you mentioned the actual process (and then went on to throw out some loosely related terms) and Tweety pushed back on Grayson with real world.
I’m sorry if you don’t get that the actual/real world process talk means little generally and means nothing when it has been the number one topic for 6 months.
When one talks endlessly about process, the process is
anthe obstruction. How shall the obstruction be removed?Koz
“Begging the question: What progress has been made with Health care in 2009? Meetings? Speeches? Votes?”
None. The point is, that being the parliamentary majority means you get to play, not necessarily that you get to win.
As far as Steve Benen goes, I’m all for bring the Senate bill to a vote in the House but for a much different reason. It’s not going to pass. Let it get 80 or 97 or 133 or some number of votes in the House, then finally the progressives will have to internalize the fact they’ve been beat.
Then we can all move on to other things. The liberals can quit stirring s**t over health care and start playing foosball and listening to Miles Davis. The rest of us can start the country moving forward again.
Nick
@sparky:
No that would be us
Actually in this case, it WAS Congress that said “the hell with the public option”
mai naem
The insurance cos. have already jacked up their prices in anticipation of the law passing and they have jacked them up big time. From what I understand the exchange is only open to somebody who has no other option. If your job offers something you can’t be part of the exchange. Earlier on during the finance committee negotiations they also said you couldn’t join the exchange if you already had something else even if it was crappy. Also during the finance committee hearing you had to wait six mos. between losing your old insurance and joining the exchange – don’t know if that’s true right now. Another one is that the 80 -85 percent(can’t remember the amount or the term) of premiums have to go to care rule is changeable if the powers that be decide that its not workable in a particular area – therefore when the Palin/Brown administration takes over in 2012, their HHS secretary Tom Coburn will probably decide that the NY area can handle a 75 percent premium going back to pt. care.
MikeBoyScout
@Koz:
Right….
Cuz there is nothing more important in this discussion than whether or not a Progressive or Bluedog or Democrat or Teabagger or Republican or Libertarian or Conserv-a-Dem or Liberal….. gets beaten.
Thanks for letting us know your priorities.
Nick
@sparky:
Town halls in states with problem Senators demanding a bill before the August recess
Nick
@mcc: Move did this in Astoria, Queens a few weeks ago in front of Carolyn Maloney’s office. Five people showed up.
matoko_chan
@Koz: dont think so.
Why don’t you go back to the League of Extraordinarily Stupid Gentlemen and leave us sentients alone?
My Kepler-Trigo crystal ball says the Dems are going for the reconciliation option.
And there isnt a damn thing “conservatives” can do about it except try to freak out the Blue Dogs.
Ailuridae
@Task Force Ripper:
Bible thumpers don’t represent the whole of the US population but they do represent a disproportionate amount of the electorate in AR and IN (53 and 41 percent split 3:1 and 2:1 McCain in Pres 08). The exact type of electorate that is easily swayed when an ominous voice intones “Evan Bayh voted to expand federal entitlements (cue disheveled black person image) by 600 billion as Hoosiers are cutting back in the worst economic times since the Great Depression. Evan Bayh (cue image of he and Obama together). He. Just. Doesn’t. Get. It.”
But again the demographics aren’t my point. Evan Bayh and Blanche Lincoln have a long standing gripe with federal entitlement spending. They compromised that position which, again, is nearly half of the current bill and likely to get much bigger, to get a bill done. Now, I don’t agree with their position but that doesn’t change the fact that almost by definition they met the progressives half way – they found half of the bill objectionable.
FlipYrWhig
@kay:
Thanks. Again, probably the fruit of too much HGTV viewing.
General Winfield Stuck
@mai naem: As bad as the senate bill is, it does offer some safer harbor with the exchange, as understand it. It is how health bills do get changed or fixed over time contrary to folks saying otherwise.
Medicare is a good example. Health care is important to people who vote, and as they learn after this bill is implemented, they will demand restrictions to safer harbors be opened to more and more folks. I would much preferred that this phenomena would be directed at a government run program like a PO, but this is what we have. Unless a semi miracle happens with a recon. PO.
Without passing it, no foothold would exist, and neither would a bill exist to change. And changing an existing bill, is a whole lot easier to do than passing one from scratch, and more so when people catch on of it’s existence and the possibilities for them to do better with something to reach for and demand their reps respond accordingly.
I am far far more worried about the SCOTUS decision on campaign finance being a loser in the near term electorally for dems, than a troubled HCR bill.
Zach
I am pretty sure that making the Senate pinky swear isn’t necessary. From your article: “The changes could be included in separate legislation that, if passed, would pave the way for House approval of the Senate bill—a move that would preserve President Barack Obama’s vision of a sweeping health reform plan.”
The Senate can pass the changes as a separate bill and the House can pass both the Senate bill and the Senate modification bill (that was passed through reconciliation) at the same time.
Edit: That said, it is faster for the House to just pass the Senate bill since the reconciliation thing will still have a lot of process to deal with; a little undeserved trust would help since the excise tax doesn’t go into effect until 2013. But I don’t see the House doing that if it’s within the rules for the Senate to act first.
Roger Federer
TDAM, but here is what I’d do if Obama. Accept I’m a one term President and do what’s right.
Insist on a bill including single payer, medicine re-importation and anything else he wants and Americans want and need.
Then pound home exactly how this helps Americans and why they need this legislation.
Finally, promise to name everyone in Congress who does not support the American people. Name everyone who wants Americans to die because they have no health care. And promise to name them often and loudly.
Do the same on Wall Street and banking reform. And legislation to restore the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Do the right and moral things and quit pretending there’s a chance in hell for re-election in 2012.
Ailuridae
@mai naem:
From what I understand the exchange is only open to somebody who has no other option. If your job offers something you can’t be part of the exchange.
If your job offers something you likely wouldn’t want to be part of the exchange. That money that pays for your employer based health care is untaxed while the money you would use to buy insurance on the exchange would be after tax income. I’m self-employed and the self-employed get a fair shake (tax-wise but not on quality of insurance because 1 is a really bad size for a risk pool) but those that are employed but not provided insurance get fucked by our tax code. Reforming the individual market has to happen first though and show it will be effective before it makes sense to allow people to have the option of taking employer based care or shopping (tax-free presumably) for care on the exchange. Its not the best or most equitable thing to those with jobs that don’t provide insurance and lower-middle class incomes but its better than the status quo.
Task Force Ripper
@Ailuridae:
According to Kaiser, 1/4th of AR is on Medicaid and 1/6th of IN is on Medicaid.
It seems much more risky for a politician in these states to be against this program.
I’m sure you have a point somewhere in all this but I’m just wanking.
jcricket
We don’t have to primary Nelson, Lincoln or Landreiu – they’re going to lose. Lieberman will probably go full GOP, and then either quit or lose the next election.
The Blue Dog is a dying breed, and will be replaced with hardcore Republicans, b/c their states have become more reactionary (at least at a voting level).
A better bet is to find a way to solidify Democratic control in the blue states – make sure we control the House Seats, the Senate seats and all the statewide stuff (Governorship, the State Legislature, the AGs office, Sec. of State, etc.). Having a deep bench in these states is how we keep control at the national level, and prevent (at the state level) any Republican control from fucking people over too badly.
There are far more blue and trending blue states than there are red states (I’d say 30-35 to 10-15).
The only way we get to 60+ “real” Democrats is having 2 Senators from each of the 30+ blue states.
In the short run the loss of the Blue Dogs will hurt us, but I view it like the dying out of the Dixiecrats. Long-term demographics are in our favor (US is not getting whiter/straighter/more religious at a macro level, and Republicans are not getting less racist/xeno/homo-phobic).
Koz
Heh.
Koz
If the GOP try to repeal it, Obama has a veto.
Repeal what? If the House has the votes to pass the Senate bill, there’s no need negotiate anything else. In fact they can’t negotiate anything else because nothing else is going to get through the Senate under regular order.
It’s not like they are two or five votes short in the House. At this point, nobody is going to vote for this bill.
Tax Analyst
@ #172 Task Force Ripper:
I couldn’t help it. I think I may have my diphthong on a little too tight today.
Taobhan
Sure hope you’re right on the Senate bill, John. Certainly, anything is better than the health care system we have now. But I’m not optimistic about the chances of passing a crappy Senate bill and then improving it through the reconciliation process.
Maybe I’m just too pessimistic and cynical about the political situation now. But I see the following difficulties in getting improvements once the Senate bill is signed into law:
1) Republicans are going to demonize any HCR legislation that makes it into law. And the Republicans are masters now at shaping narratives for the public to buy into. The Democrats really suck at narrative-pushing now.
2) If the benefits of HCR don’t kick in right now so the public can quickly see them, the GOP narrative will gain even more traction.
3) The Democrats aren’t going to want to go near HCR improvements after the bruising battle over the past few months. They’re skittish as hell right now and if they sense the public hates what they’ve done, they going to be less eager to do anything for a long, long time. Heck, they may even begin to reverse it if they think it’ll save their skins.
4) If the Republican narrative gains traction in the public, the GOP improves its chances of re-taking Congress on a “reverse-the-reforms” movement and dismantling all the reforms before the public gets deeply into them. It’s so much easier to take something away before people understands its benefits and have a major stake in holding on to it.
So, sorry to be so pessimistic but I think whatever we get out of the Senate bill in terms of HCR is going to be with us for a long time if it even survives the first few years. Down the road, in a normal political environment, it would be improved upon by Congress but we’re not in normal times and maybe not be for a long time to come. So, it may be wise to fall very deeply in love with that Senate bill. If we can’t be with the one we love, we’re gonna have to love the one we’re with for as long as she’s with us. But I sincerely hope I’m wrong.
FlipYrWhig
@jcricket:
Interesting. Who are the outliers? 2 in ME, certainly, and now 1 in MA (blarf), but it doesn’t look to me like there are many bright-blue states with Republican Senators. From states Obama won there’s 1 in NH, 1 in IA, 1 in IN, 1 in NV, 1 in NC, 1 in OH, 0 in FL. But those aren’t ironclad blue states. And there are some fairly bright red states with Democratic Senators, like the Dakotas, MT, WV, AR, and LA. Hmmm.
General Winfield Stuck
@Taobhan:
they tried the same thing with Medicare, and look at them now, defending it against the eviiile Obamacare.
This will be some problem, but some of the reforms like pre-existing conditions will go into effect immediate.. But the wingers will have a hard time keeping the media focused on it after it passes and we move on to something else. And also once it’s passed, there it will be, in black and white, and that will make it harder to demonize with lies and distortions.
What we as dems have to worry about is the buckets of corp. money that will now get dumped into GOP campaign coffers. Much much bigger problem that dems are going to have to take up the populist reform sword soon to fight it and at least push for a constitutional amendment to stop it.
Taobhan
@General Winfield Stuck
Yep, but Medicare was passed a long time ago and the political landscape was a lot different then. Among other things, Republicans weren’t “scorched earthers” then like they are now. I know because I was one then.
Hope you’re right on that but I’m not optimistic. I never thought we’d be in the situation we’re in today but yet here we are.
Definitely but time is very short to start corrective action.
The more time that passes, the harder job it becomes.
Liberty60
I was on a conference call with Barbara Boxer and her supporters this afternoon, and Barbara said unequivocally that she supports making whatever fixes are necessary in reconciliation to pass the damn thing.
We all asked her questions about different issues, and it was refreshingly pleasant to hear her speak in clear unambiguous tones about issues like Consumer Finance Protection, without hesitation or disclaimer.
carolatl
@metricpenny: You and I must live fairly close to each other because Tom Price is my rep. too. I haven’t called his office, nor Chambliss’s or Isakson’s, because, really, what good would it do? There’s no way on god’s green earth any of these idiots would vote for HCR. Plus, I’m a DFH, so they don’t care what I think.
So my question is (and anyone with an opinion on this, feel free to advise me), does it do any good to call, say, Barney Frank’s office if you’re not one of his constituents? I feel really helpless, wanting to do something but not knowing what that something should be.
matoko_chan
@Koz: Koz, dude…..this is
Republican congressmanTeabagger Ryan– what part of this don’t you understand?:)
Svensker
@Task Force Ripper:
–
God, is EVERYTHING gay?
Koz
They can do this if they want to. For this they have to start the committee process all over again (ie, turn the clock back to March or April of last year) in face of public opinion which is crystallized against it, right in time for election season where the voters get to throw the bums out. Sounds good to me, I hope they try it.
Getting around a filibuster is a problem for the D’s but not the only one by any means. The assumptions and the political environment are different now than when the House passed its bill. As things stand right now, I don’t think there’s any health care bill capable of getting 218 votes in the House.
Here’s a useful link:
http://keithhennessey.com/2010/01/19/two-bill-strategy/
General Winfield Stuck
@Koz: No they don’t. Neither chamber is required to go through a committee process, they do it as regular order. But the leaders in the House only need to fast track it through their rules committee and bring it to the floor for a vote, in just a few days. There is little to nothing House repubs can do about, other than slow it down a little with a meaningless procedural vote.
In the senate, the majority leader can bring a bill to the floor at any time he wants, and can even use maneuvers to limit or exclude amendments called “filling the tree”. They only use regular order for comity reasons. Though all bills are normally subject to filibuster, or a cloture vote to proceed, the reconciliation process can be triggered by any dem senator. And while it needs to be construed properly by the House Budget committee, as long is there is no tax code changes, the senate can do it first. But since there likely will be, the House must initiate the bill. The one the House sent over earlier was primed for reconciliation by Charlie Rangell./ I don’t know why they are going to do it again, or feel they need to, unless for some procedural reason in the senate.
edit- to answer my own question, I forgot that this will be a streamlined bill, so it will have to be done over.
mclaren
This was the problem:
Negotiation 101, folks: when you want something, you have to start out asking for the moon. Then you gradually let the other guy talk you out of your most extreme demands, and eventually get somewhere close to what you originally wanted.
The initial bill should’ve been beyond Marxist, it should’ve been Troskyite. 99% tax on doctors’ income, nationalization of all hospitals, compulsory massive income caps on all medical personnel, confiscation of all personal property of health care CEOs and reduction to minimum wage income with a bread-and-water diet, nationalization of the big pharma companies, compulsory death penalty prosecution for insurance company execs suspected of fraud…and so on.
Then when the wingers go berserk and the doctors and health care CEOs become hysterical, you back off a little. “Okay, we’ll compromise…maybe we could put a full single-payer option on the table instead of compulsory nationalization and forced induction of all health care personnel into a national service corps at minimum wage.”
Then when the doctors and nurses and healthcare CEOs foam at the mouth and scream and rant, you back off a little more. “Okay, okay, if you’re willing to make some serious compromises and agree to mandatory insurance company profit caps and hard limits on doctors’ and nurses’ salaries, we might be willing to retract that single-payer option and go with a massive public option…”
That’s how you do it. You start out hard, with an extreme position, and let ’em bargain you down. You don’t start from a position of weakness, giving up everything you ever wanted, as Obama and Pelosi did.
Task Force Ripper
@Svensker:
As a nod to the waste of time that was the two part generational warfare I will say that yes, everything is definitely happy and fun. We’re all having a gay old time with HCR.
Koz
Ok, they can waive or modify the House rules if they want to. They’ve done that in the past, eg, the original TARP. But that was done in response to a clear national emergency. There’s an emergency ongoing now, but it’s strictly a political one, and only for one party.
I don’t think many have you have come to grips with the fact that your problem is at least as much substantive as procedural. If there were a specific plan and specific language to enact it that a majority of both bodies supported, you might be able to get over your procedural problems. But there simply isn’t, not now and not forthcoming.
The most likely way to enact something from here is for the House to pass the Senate bill and let that become law, but that has been shot down by many Democrats in the House.
In other words, it’s not the House Republicans you have to worry about.
Koz
“The initial bill should’ve been beyond Marxist, it should’ve been Troskyite. 99% tax on doctors’ income, nationalization of all hospitals, compulsory massive income caps on all medical personnel, confiscation of all personal property of health care CEOs and reduction to minimum wage income with a bread-and-water diet, nationalization of the big pharma companies, compulsory death penalty prosecution for insurance company execs suspected of fraud…and so on.”
Oh Gawd please try this.
Let’s try again at the beginning. For the most part, the point of negotiation and compromise is to create a win-win situation. There are two parties where each has something the other wants. They go back and forth, and try and come up with something that makes both happy, at least relative to walking away.
That’s where the health care deal is breaking down, and it doesn’t have as much to do with the GOP as the voters at large. There’s nothing the D’s have on offer to the voters that the voters care enough about to give up something they want to keep. It doesn’t matter what the D’s negotiating position is, the voters answer is simple, “No.”
Before the Massachusetts special election, the D’s convinced themselves they didn’t need the voters. But there were two great things about that election. First, it illustrated public opinion in a way that can’t be ignored. Second, it gave the GOP the 41st vote in the Senate. Combine those two, it’s now been demonstrated that it’s at least as likely that the voters can throw the bums out instead.
J. Michael Neal
@mclaren:
No. This is only true if the other side of the negotiations don’t have a specific set of things that they want.
In the case of the stimulus, I think this is true, though only to a point. In that case, the Senate moderates really weren’t committed, in principle, to any particular dollar figure. For reasons of appearance, they wanted to chop about 25% off of whatever figure was originally proposed. Obama made a tactical mistake by not asking for more money to begin with. There is a point at which it would become counter-productive. I don’t think that the negotiations could ever have ended up with a figure much greater than $1 trillion, and a starting point too high negatively affects the media framing. Still, the opening bid should have been $1.3-$1,5 trillion.
That’s not true with health care. The main arguments here weren’t over a dollar figure. They were over specific policy proposals. I don’t care what sort of bill Obama proposed to begin with, the Senate moderates weren’t going to go for a public option. That’s a specific policy that they were opposed to on principle. The opening bid could have been a Bolshevik takeover of the entire government apparatus, and the objection still would have been that the moderates don’t want government competition with private enterprise.
I get tired of simplistic invocations of negotiating strategy. Yes, these tactics work. In certain types of negotiations, and against certain types of opposition. More often than not, though, they just make you look silly. The whole idea presumes that you’re negotiating against morons, which isn’t true that often.
General Winfield Stuck
@Koz: You could be right and either no bill gets passed or maybe the senate one gets passed by the house. I don’t think the house libs will pass the senate bill only. I am not particularly confident that the plan to add a PO thru recon. if the House goes ahead and passes the current senate bill. But your assertion that somehow everything would have to start from scratch if 50 dem senators decided to do a PO by recon, is false. It is very doable and the precedent was set by the GOP who used reconc. to pass a non budget bill of Welfare Reform in 96.
If 50 dem senators took that road, it could all be finished in a couple of weeks, on fast track from both chambers.
FlipYrWhig
@mclaren: Your real estate agent must be very, very patient. “What should our opening bid be? The comps suggest $300K.” “A nickel!”
matoko_chan
@Koz: Koz, please try to not be a simpleton.
Angry White Men gave Mass to Brown. If Coakley had been a white guy (like Teddy was) she would have won. It wasn’t the big realignment the teabaggers are makin’ it out to be.
Reconciliation isnt some rare magick… it happens all the time….are you even aware that the Bush tax cuts in 2003 were passed with reconciliation?
The compromise work that dems have been doin’ behind closed doors since xmas (by all leakage they were nearly done) is going to be ported to two bills, one from the House, one from the Senate, and the two bills will be reconciled. Ryan said the repubs can’t stop it, their ratio on the house budget commitee is “terrible”.
It isn’t “starting from scratch” it is merely repackagin the work done since xmas. If I know one thing about our lazy congresscritters it is they are highly likely to reuse work accomplished and not “start from scratch”.
And Obama is simply going to misdirect until after the SotU.
He is a machiavellian pragmatist, membah?
xian
@matoko_chan: how do you afix reconciliation instructions to a new bill, without said new bill having to be passed initially against a filibuster?
matoko_chan
@xian: read my lips.
There will be no “new” bills.
The compromise changes worked out over the last 3 weeks in the closed door meetings will be passed as amendments to the existing bill House bill.
In reconciliation.
matoko_chan
and……the main reason that the Dems will pass HCR is that they have to….probably through reconciliation which has often been used in this situ. …..but in the end……by any means available.
Koz
First of all, for me at least I’m not talking about public option vs. no public option. I’m talking about the propensity of any comphensive health care bill of any kind becoming law in the next year or so.
If we can rule out the idea of the House passing the Senate bill and letting that become law, ie, no second recon bill (and I think we can), then they have to start over again. Maybe they can take some procedural shortcuts, but even that isn’t a given.
Ie, without the current Senate text becoming law, there is no substantive agreement among enough Democrats to create working majorities, even if we assume away any procedural problems or supermajority hurdles. Part of reason behind the legislative process (debate, committees, hearings, etc) is to create substantive agreement.
If they had enough substantive agreement, they could work on the procedural problems. But they don’t have it yet, and they’ve been trying for nine months or so. So when are they supposed to get it?
Koz
Whoever it was, it represents a 30% shift in the electorate from Election Day 2008, which was only 15 months ago.
You’re also confusing the idea of “reconciling” a House bill and a Senate bill, and defeating a filibuster through “reconciliation” which aren’t the same thing even though they’re using the same word.
Up through the Mass special election, the strategy was to reconcile the differences between the House bill and the Senate bill into something both bodies could agree to, and then passing it the agreement under regular order in both chambers. That doesn’t work now that the GOP has 41 votes to hold a filibuster.
“Repackaging the work since Christmas” doesn’t work because that assumed working majorities in both chambers. Not supermajorities, mind you, but plain old ordinary majorities. In other words, there aren’t 218 votes for any health care bill in House. Solve that one through reconciliation.
Corner Stone
@matoko_chan:
Oh goody! I’ve been wondering when we’d all get our next installment of PoliSci 3356 – Machiavelli and You – How to confuse rational action with stultifying misdirection.
Please Prof – continue instructing us all on how the current evolution of HCR is a result of a secret Machiavellen strategy.
matoko_chan
@Koz: Mark Todd just said on MTP that Pelosi’s claim to not have the votes was political theater to force the dems “to look into the abyss of nothing”. We’ll see, but I think that condensing the past three weeks’ work into amendments to the House bill that are passed thru reconciliation is the best gamespace play the dems have. Again, GW’s 2003 tax cuts were passed by reconciliation. The process is not quite the apocalyptic end run/hail mary pass you teabaggers would have us believe.
I guess we shall see.
:)
@Corner Stone: yup, cornerstone.
I am a big fan of Machiavelli and a stone otaku of Thomas Jefferson.
HCR is totally part of Obama’s machiavellian pragmatism. He has already said he will probably be a one-termer.
He knows this–
and this–
matoko_chan
and….cornerstone……i don’t know what I’ve done to make you so pissy. Was it that I said I loved Avatar and can’t wait for Avatar II, Ringworld, and BattleAngel?
Because Cameron has the film rights for those too.
Are you really just yelling at me to get off your lawn?
Because …..that is what it sounds like to me.
:)
matoko_chan
oops, CHUCK Todd.
lol
they all look the same to me.
:)
Corner Stone
@matoko_chan:
I just find you ridiculuous. You say the same stupid shit based on the same nonsensical reasoning. I’ve never seen you be right about any one thing. Ever.
Yet you continually post about Game Theory, Machiavelli, 11-d Chess and how irrelevant demographics mean something that never, ever comes to fruition.
I think you’re a misguided fool. And I have a few tips for you.
1. Life is hard but it isn’t really complicated. 99 times out of a 100 people do things for reasons that are easily discernible if you observe their motivations. Most people are not tricky or more than they advertise. The ones that are usually get avoided by society as a whole.
2. Machiavelli was a pimp doing his damndest to curry favor with the Medici family, and they essentially ignored him. His advice in The Prince is not groundbreaking nor revolutionary. It is common sense to anyone who has risen to a position to rule.
3. As you purport to be a big 11-d chess believer let me say that Game Theory largely rejects chess because as all information is known then logically each game should end in a draw.
4. I applaud your love for the movies and culture you enjoy. I have never once said anything about the quality of the movie Avatar. Only that to state it will somehow realign young minds in some political way is silly.
So, to sum up – Avatar will change nothing, Machiavelli is a fun read but not relevant, using 11-d chess to explain failures/setbacks makes you look stupid, and people are by and large exactly what they represent themselves to be.
matoko_chan
Shorter cornerstone–
You damn kids get off my lawn!
lawl
Corner Stone
@matoko_chan:
No one here is surprised in the least to find out you are unable to come to a logical conclusion.
In fact, I look forward to more posts proving how completely inane you are. Won’t take much but I guess it’s something.
matoko_chan
@Corner Stone: aww
you’re just cranky cuz u had to look up the single-shot platonia dilemma when i cited it.
<3
Corner Stone
@matoko_chan: The only recursive dilemma I enjoy in my life is which Tool CD to start. I shall now solve this issue by cooperating with myself and turning on Shuffle mode while I wait for the next football game to start.
matoko_chan
@Corner Stone: but….the SSPD is single-shot…non-iterated == non-recursive.
lawl
mclaren
@koz:
Put down the crack pipe, Koz. The senate republicans said it loud and said it clear: “Health care will be Obama’s waterloo. This will be where we break him.”
The republicans didn’t want any kind of win-win. They wanted scorched earth. They wanted to destroy Obama. They wanted to crush reform.
That’s not “win-win,” that’s a duel to the death in the sewer, and you’d better strap on your broadsword.