Hopefully, by the time that the Senate votes on a new health care bill, Al Franken will be seated and the Democratic caucus will have 60 members. It takes 60 members to cut off debate and force an up-or-down vote, so a united Democratic caucus would be able to pass the health care bill without resorting to the messy reconciliation process. Yet, it’s not really likely that every Democrat will support a public option within the bill even though that is Obama’s clear preference. So, it’s important that at least one or two Republicans are willing to vote for the public option.
The Republicans on the Finance Committee (which has the most influence over the crafting of the bill) sent a letter to Obama indicating that they are united in opposing a public option. This was supposed to strike fear into the administration, but there’s a problem. The letter was signed by every Republican member of the Finance Committee except Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME). The real message that was sent, therefore, is that the public option can probably survive at least one Democratic defection.
Rather than strike fear, the letter offers new found hope.
Rest assured, the message is intentional – they get to pose and profile before their base but their base isn’t really into the details so the absence of Senator Snowe will be completely overlooked, that, or it’ll be justified by the base themselves: “She probably wasn’t there when they signed it – they said they was unified, that means her too!”
The GOP is intentionally telling him that he has a margin of error of one vote. They get to denounce Snowe before the base (none of whom live in Maine) as being disloyal to the party when she votes for the public option, she gets to run as one who is able to work with President Obama in 2012 (rather important in in a state that Obama won by 18 points), and Democrats get the public option. Everybody wins.
Everyone except the GOP’s ignorant base, that is…
Unfortunately, their ignorant base will win, too. Of course, a certain number of them might rethink their support of the GOP once they gain access to all of that affordable healthcare.
Not too many of them, of course. Free federal fellatio couldn’t sway most of them, though I’m pretty sure most of them would take all they could get privately while denouncing it publicly. Kind of like abortion services.
I was just reading a summary of the competing “public options”, from worst to best:
-SNOWE – TRIGGER – a scam to protect the industry
-BAUCUS – WEAK PUBLIC OPTION – a scam to protect the industry
-KENNEDY – STRONG PUBLIC OPTION – still not great
-STARK – the real deal
In my opinion, anything that gets 51 votes is a bad bill. We should get the best bill that will carry with 50+Biden, and even that will be a compromise.
i thought they were going to use the reconciliation process for health care reform. you only need 51, not 60, votes for that.
Reconciliation only kicks in if nothing has been passed by October 15th.