Yesterday, the House and Senate passed their respective budget bills without the benefit of a single Republican vote in either chamber. Even Rep. Joseph Cao (R-New Orleans) voted against it. This was a strategic blunder for the GOP of potentially lasting import.
As a party, the Republicans are obviously in a bad way, but they haven’t suffered any really structural obstacles to a return to power…yet. That will change if the Democrats succeed in passing a health care plan that includes a public option. Such a plan would be the equivalent of FDR’s Social Security program, which cemented the Democrats in power on Capitol Hill for half a century. The Republicans rightly fear that a public plan will lead over time to something resembling single-payer health care of the…gasp…socialist variety. They also know that the public will love it and will never allow anyone to take it away. The Republicans would be reduced to latter-day Tories, having conceded the endurance and legitimacy of the Welfare State they will be left to bicker about the details.
So, nothing could be more important than preventing a public option within Obama’s health care plan. To do that, the Republicans needed to convince centrist Democrats that they would not filibuster a stand alone health care bill. They needed to give centrist Democrats some kind of argument that they could take to the caucus as a whole. Instead, they voted unanimously against the budget and make vociferous and intemperate attacks upon it. That left the centrists with no plausible case to make. Health Care will be included in the budget reconciliation process because no one can say with a straight face that the Republicans will act in good faith and not filibuster any health care plan regardless of its merits.
But it didn’t have to be this way. If the Republicans had been smart, they would have made all kinds of noises about how they recognized the need to pass health care this year and they would have had ‘moderate’ Republicans saying that they would support an up or down vote and not support obstructionism, etc. Any and all signals that they could send of good faith would have empowered centrist Democrats to stand firm against using the budget reconciliation process for health care, and this could have preserved the option to filibuster health care in the fall.
If they had prevailed on this issue of budget reconciliation, they could have adopted a strategy of helping to pass a health care bill this year, but wielding the threat of a filibuster to kill off a public option. They could take some credit for expanding health care coverage and still protect the HMO’s and other private insurers.
But they didn’t try to lure the Democrats into a trap. They telegraphed their intentions to be rawly partisan and to act in bad faith, and that sealed their fate. The Democrats will simply enact health care through the budget reconciliation process in the fall where they will only need 50 rather than 60 votes to pass it. The Republicans no longer need to be consulted on any aspect of the legislation because there is no need for any of their votes and little incentive to give them any avenue for taking credit. They shut themselves out of the process of creating the most significant legislation in three generations. They didn’t even try to outsmart the Democrats.
We complain about lame-brained leadership from the Democrats all the time, but their boners cannot compare to this airball by the Republicans.
I really, really hope you’re right and the Democrats see this and realize that reconciliation is the only real option. I hope that they will ram this through and get something worthwhile to show the American people that they are good for more than oligarchy-welfare. Obviously, I have my doubts.
I marvel at your optimism and certainly hope that you are right.
But maybe there’s a reason “They didn’t even try to outsmart the Democrats”. Because they know that there might be a high likelihood that Democrats will kill this thing all by themselves. Yep, the GOP is one big dysfunctional circus right now. But they are probably banking on the Dems doing their usual Keystone Kops routine and tripping themselves up without any GOP intervention. Sad thing is, if history is any indication, that’s probably not a long-shot bet on their part.
This is going to require some very heavy lifting on Obama’s part to keep this thing together. The “herding cats” analogy so often applied to Dems is very apt in this case.
As recently as Friday, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus was saying that we may not need a public option to pass health care. That was a clear signal to the Republicans that he would be willing to screw all of us if they could just help him convince the Democratic caucus that he had partners for a health care plan (even if did not have a public option).
The Republicans response?
Unanimous opposition to the budget, demonstrating both their will and capability to obstruct.
Baucus can’t go into the House/Senate conference with nothing but his dick in his hands. He can’t tell the White House he has another path to passage of a health care bill. He needed to at least be able to argue that the no public option option was doable. And to sell the Dems and the White House on no public option he needed to get past this vote and then argue later that he couldn’t pass anything else. It always required a degree of subterfuge and complicity by the centrist Dems, but the GOP denied them the chance.
But the bottom line is that this must be brought to and presented on the floor under budget reconciliation rules by the Democratic leadership. The idea that they are prepared to defend this move against the massive din of shrieking and wailing that will come from the other side of the aisle, along with the requisite 24 hour hawking of the GOP talking points that will inevitably come, still seems doubtful to me.
I understand and agree with what you say, but do you have a significant confidence that the Democrats in the Senate are willing to fight for this at the level that will be required and with the ferocity that is necessary in order to make this happen?
It will take tremendous unity in the face of probably the most vociferous and confrontational political situation most of them are ever likely to face.
I think we are, once and for all, about to find out whether today’s Democratic Party has the balls and fortitude to govern. This is their seminal moment.
Keep your eyes on Evan Bayh and his merry-band of do-nothing Democrats. But keep in mind that this will be part of a budget that has to pass.
Evan Bayh’s crew is exactly who I’m worried about. I forsee them holding up the final bill at 49 votes and taking the country hostage in order to kill cap-and-trade, health care, and everything else.
The GOP clearly anticipates this, and then saying “Well now Mr. President, you told us our votes didn’t matter. Your own party killed your budget. Now, it’s our turn.”
For instance, if Evan Bayh can get the same 9 other Dems to go along with all 41 Republicans that went along with the budget amendment to give a $250 billion estate tax cut over ten years, then he’ll have the 51 votes he needs to hold Obama’s budget hostage.
If you’re curious, the other 9 Dems were Max Baucus (D-MT), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Patty Murray (D-WA), Bill Nelson (D-FL), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Mark Pryor (D-AR), and Jon Tester (D-MT).
I’d omit Maria, Mary, and Patty from the list above. I think they will all support the President’s health care agenda. I say that as a former resident of WA state. Maria and Patty are loyal Democrats. I think if Landrieu wants to stay representing LA she’ll have to support this. I think the rest may well be siding with Bayh. But we’ll see.
True. Cantwell and Murray might go along.
But just as easily, Robert Byrd, Carl Levin and Bob Casey could flip to Bayh’s side because of cap-and-trade.
If Bayh can twist arms better than Obama can, he has plenty of options to try to kill the budget.
CAP and TRADE is out of the budget reconciliation process.
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Ahh. Well then. Once again I stand corrected.
The Casey election was the point where I realized that the Democrats were deliberately slow-walking what progress they could make. There just wasn’t any other reason to push so damn hard for him other than their own desire to have more a more conservative Democrat.
Everything from that point on, and everything in hindsight, got a lot clearer after that.
You know why Casey was picked, right? Family name. Easy time raising money. Heck, maybe Boo can correct me but I have a hard time remembering how much campaigning Casey really did. It had to be one of the easiest takedowns of a Senate incumbent ever(especially an incumbent of the President’s(at the time) party).
I have been promised health care for years.
I will believe it when i see it. And as the commenter above pointed out, there are plenty of democrats happy to kill it themselves.
If Harry Reid actually puts the health care package with a public option on the floor under reconciliation rules, I will take back about 60% of all of the mean things I’ve said about him. Because I don’t expect him to do this. I think he’s too conservative to actually want a viable public option, and he wants the cover the filibuster provides so that a handful of Blue Dogs can essentially strip it out.
If he ends up doing this, I’ll need to do a serious re-evaluation of my perception of him. Because to date I’ve attributed his “blunders” to him being a savvy conservative/corporatist Democrat who knows how to get what he wants done and get things he doesn’t want killed. Putting a viable public option through in a way that minimizes the ability of the Blue Dogs and the Republicans to stop it could mean that he’s not nearly as conservative as I think he is.
I suppose it could also just be that his personal corporate allegiances are finally figuring out that they’ll benefit mightily from government subsidized health care the way that corporations in Europe and Canada already get to. I’d love to believe that that was the case – that some of our oligarchs are finally waking up to the realization that their backward-looking ideas about health care are driving their own competitiveness into the toilet to the benefit of large insurance companies and pharmaceutical producers. But that kind of sea change would be harder for me to swallow than Reid turning out to be less conservative than I normally take him for, I guess.
Harry Reid represents his caucus, not his personal ideology. Reid is anti-choice but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t respect 100% the party platform or the will of his caucus on that issue. If he does something you can be damn sure that his caucus wants him to do it. Almost all majority leaders behave this way, with LBJ being a notable exception. Now that Obama is in the White House, Reid is even less ideological than we was before because his job is to usher through Obama’s strategy in a way that protects his caucus.
As for the health care bill, it will be included in the budget reconciliation process. I am 99.999% sure of that now. I’m about 90% sure it will include a public option now because Baucus has no rationale for bucking the White House or his party or his leadership on the issue. Consider this:
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And this is more important because it shows what happened when the GOP said ‘no’.
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So are you saying Robert Byrd is playing games … and that he’ll let health care go through under budget rules? … because he was making noises yesterday saying that he wouldn’t .. I can only hope he is playing a shell game .. but I have my doubts … I won’t take back anything I have said about Reid until health care passes … if he can’t see the present presented to him(and the party) .. then the Democratic party is indeed hopeless
Byrd can’t prevent it. Ben Nelson can’t prevent it. This is a Byrd Rule that can make it difficult to tack health care onto the budget, but it is ultimately up to the parliamentarian whether or not the rule applies. The Dems might have to have full offsets for the cost of the health care bill to pull this off.
how much beer will you buy me if it doesn’t pass?
cus if we get health care with a public option, I will definitely buy a round or two.
so put your money where your mouth is.
My bet is it’s not gonna happen. bet.
Harry Reid represents his caucus, not his personal ideology.
This is actually what I need to re-evaluate if Reid actually lets this go through under budget reconciliation rules rather than letting Blue Dogs tamper with it. Because the only way his tenure as majority leader makes much sense so far is if his personal ideology is leading him to pick and choose his battles.
Reid is anti-choice but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t respect 100% the party platform or the will of his caucus on that issue.
Right. Because part of my view on Reid is that he’s not an idiot. If he tried to push some kind of anti-choice piece of crap bill it would blow up in his face so fast he probably wouldn’t be Majority Leader by the end of the hour, let alone the end of the day. And he’d probably be out his Senate seat the next time Nevada had an election.
If he does something you can be damn sure that his caucus wants him to do it.
Here’s my key point:
The Democratic caucus has very few things that, as a caucus, they want done. Various factions within the Dem caucus want things done (or not done) but there are only a handful of things that the entire caucus agrees on. This is how they are operationally a vastly different machine than the Republican caucus (who are much more uniform in ideology across the caucus).
My view on Reid is – when it’s a choice of fights among factions, he sides subtly or not so subtly with the conservative Dems. He does it in the order he brings things to the floor, in the way he decides which holds to ignore and which to abide by, how he sets the agenda and other little organizational things that he does as Majority Leader. He isn’t (usually) blatant about it, and he tries not to piss people off, but he’s far more concerned about not pissing off Evan Bayh and his fellow travelers than he is Ted Kennedy or Bernie Sanders.
So if he really does bring this under reconciliation process with a public option, one of two things has happened. Either my take on Reid is wrong, and I need to re-evaluate all of the actions that he’s taken that other people have called “boneheaded” and I just took as “subtly siding with the conservative Dem faction”, OR the conservative Dem faction isn’t as hardline against the public option as they seem to be in public. I’d be surprised if the second option turned out to be true, so revising my impression of Reid would be what I’d turn to first.
The first thing to consider is the role of chairmen and chairwomen. A majority leader does not want to upset them. So, when you think of FISA and retroactive immunity, for example, it was a very important consideration that the then-chairman of Intelligence Jay Rockefeller strongly advocated for immunity. That Chris Dodd and half the caucus opposed it was less significant. If we’re talking about a banking bill (where Dodd is chair) then Reid is going to defer to him rather than Rockefeller.
That’s the beginning point.
When it comes to health care and the budget, it isn’t helpful that Baucus and Conrad rule the roosts and Reid does not want to step on their toes. But, in this case, he has the White House on the side of a public option and a strong preference for that in the overall caucus. That is why the Senate will pass a bill without reconciliation and then cave during the conference report.
Reid has been open about allowing for reconciliation but he didn’t push it because he didn’t need to. No reason to piss off Conrad needlessly. So, Reid is fairly predictable. He doesn’t demonstrate much ideological bias at all. In fact, it’s his lack of leadership that constitutes his greatest fault. It’s almost impossible to know what he believes because he is so adept at doing the caucus’ bidding and avoiding intramural fights.
Frontline had a really good program on health care in America, “Sick around the World”:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/
This is off topic but it’s in response to something you wrote a while ago: “I Don’t Understand Evan Bayh”
It turns out that Evan along with other senate Democratic “moderates” voted to pass an amendment to lower the estate tax. Yup, these oh so responsible moderates that care so much about fiscally responsibility and our wringing their hands about Obama’s irresponsible spending but our doing their part to reign in such impulses, just voted to give hundreds of billions of dollars to some of the richest people in the country with no strings attached.
These people represent the interests of the rich and nothing else. Period. I see no other way to understand their actions.
I’m not convinced on your health care prognostications, but the fact that the bill got NO votes from Republicans seems …… foolish on their part.
And that is an understatement.
The average person will not forgive constant opposition with the obvious problems we have right now. When you add a POTUS that is rather well liked, with a wife that is also ‘kinda’ popular, I just do not see all this ending well for Republicans.
Over the next weeks many Americans will look at these results and go ‘Are there NO individuals in the GOP?’
It’s crazy. There is no introspection from them at all. It’s ALL ‘Limbaughland’, all the time. Republicans are completely boxed in, they have to hope/pray for failure and widespread poverty. They have to hope (and plan for) riots in the streets, preferably food riots, but right wing ‘black helicopter’ riots will do. They HAVE to destroy Obama.
But first they will go after his wife. Her speech before the kids in England, with its emotions, will drive them mad with rage. The man is bad enough for them, but they will not tolerate a black woman having any kind of respect or influence. Even over kids.
Its all in for Republicans. That explains these votes, it explains Limbaugh and Beck.
So even if you are wrong about health care, it will not matter. If things recover even a little, Republicans will be overwhelmed in the elections of ’10 and ’12.
nalbar
And speaking of Republicans and health care .. Cao .. and Boo’s own Congresscritter(Gerlach) don’t seem to want to stick around DC after Dec. of 2010 … because both aren’t voting their district at all .. both are on a suicide mission … and Gerlach thinks he’s gonna run(to replace Rendell) and win ?
Countries don’t come back from bread-riots. Once we’re at that point, the entire system is as good as destroyed. That’s the last thing Republicans want.
The GOP could not support this budget because of the many other sacred cows it disrespects.