Back in March, I pointed out that seven of the eighteen Democrats who voted ‘aye’ on the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 are currently sitting on the Senate Finance Committee. I explained that this was the main reason why we can’t get a good health bill and I encouraged more progressive members of the Senate to apply in the future to win seats on the committee. Here’s how the committee looks today:
Back on August 3rd, I wrote this, explaining that Snowe might be enticed to vote for the Baucus bill in committee, but would bolt once it was melded with the Dodd/Kennedy Health Committee bill:
But, on the Finance Committee, only Olympia Snowe of Maine shows any trace of receptiveness to voting for the health care bill. And, I don’t think she’s likely to vote for a public option. Given these facts, it’s very likely that even if Baucus can convince Snowe to vote for the Finance version of the bill, she will probably vote against the bill on the Senate floor and on the conference report vote of the bill once it has been reconciled with the House version.
Chasing after Snowe’s vote is a fool’s game. I don’t think we will have 60 votes for a public option, so the Senate will have to pass the bill in the budget reconciliation process after October 15th. In that process, the bill will only require 50 votes to pass.
It appears, however, that Baucus has failed even in his limited charge of winning over Snowe for the committee vote:
Snowe’s problem with that plan is that it could impose a heavy tax burden on Maine, which has one of the highest average health insurance premiums in the country. A July study by Harvard economist David Cutler found that Maine, on average, has the fourth-most costly insurance premiums in the country, trailing only Connecticut, Delaware and New Hampshire.
Snowe said she is concerned about Baucus’s plans to tax high-cost plans.
“I am, no question, because we are a high-cost state,” said Snowe.
Snowe is also criticizing the Baucus bill from the left, noting that it doesn’t do enough to make mandated health insurance affordable.
Snowe said she is also concerned with whether Baucus’s bill will do enough to make health insurance more affordable. Snowe and Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) have repeatedly pushed fellow negotiators on the Finance panel to increase subsidies for low-income and uninsured Americans.
Snowe has objected to Baucus’s bill for requiring as many as 4 million uninsured Americans to buy health plans without providing them with significant federal subsidies.
Snowe said that lawmakers cannot expect people to comply with a federal mandate to buy health insurance if affordable plans are not available.
“The affordability question is crucial,” said Snowe. “It’s a central component, because at the end of the day people have high expectations they will have access to affordable health insurance.”
It should be obvious that a nation of people who are struggling to stave off foreclosure on their homes is in no position to take on the additional expense of paying for mandated health insurance unless it is heavily subsidized. But Baucus appears oblivious to these economic realities and their obvious political implications. Not so for Sen. Jay Rockefeller:
One of the Democrats, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, said he could not vote for the bill in its current form, in part because it did not include a new government insurance plan to compete with private insurers.
“The way it is now, there’s no way I can vote for the Senate package,” Mr. Rockefeller said.
You can do the math. In order for Baucus to pass a bill through his committee without any Republican votes, he cannot afford more than one Democratic defection. He already knows that Rockefeller hates the bill, so he’s going to have to hold the rest of the Democrats together. Getting senators like Jeff Bingaman, John Kerry, Ron Wyden, and Bob Menendez to go along with a plan that Rockefeller rejects outright is going to be next to impossible. However, if he gives up on his centrist approach, he probably loses Sens. Conrad, Lincoln, and Carper.
From my vantage point, the prospects of passing any bill through the Finance Committee look bleak. Baucus is caught in a vice. Back on September 6th, I wrote this:
What have I been saying for months? I have been saying that the Democrats don’t have 60 votes for a health care bill (and wouldn’t want a bill that could get 60 votes) and that we are headed for the budget reconciliation process that starts on October 15th. I said that I wasn’t sure exactly how it would all go down and that there would be a lot of ugliness and posturing as the effort to reach 60 votes struggled and failed.
What else have I been saying? I said that the Democrats had to make it look like they’d made every effort to be reasonable and reach a compromise that could garner bipartisan support. That’s a job that fell on the Finance Committee chair, Sen. Max Baucus of Montana. Yes, he got strung along and it didn’t make sense to negotiate with people like Mike Enzi and Chuck Grassley, but the objective is to visibly exhaust all efforts at striking a deal. Now we are down to negotiating with Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. There’s no reason to show her the back of the hand, and it still provides good optics to be seen as working for her support.
Did the crazy townhall meetings during August change the basic dynamics? I’m not really sure that they did. Even before August, I was predicting that we’d be headed for budget reconciliation. The only thing that might have changed is that I’m a little more certain of that fact. We’re watching a bit of kabuki theater, is all.
And how is my prediction panning out?
If necessary, the majority leader [Harry Reid] said he would use the controversial legislative tactic known as reconciliation, which could allow some elements of health reform to be passed with 51 votes. Republicans have complained loudly about the possibility, and at least some GOP support would be necessary to reach 60 votes.
But Reid said he may have no choice.
“We’ve always had a place at the table for Republicans. There’s one there today. We hope it bears fruit,” he said. “If we can’t get the 60 votes we need, then we’ll have no alternative but to use reconciliation. I strongly favor a bipartisan approach.”
So, am I right? Are we just witnessing a kabuki theater? You tell me.
But though time is of the essence, and some on the left are anxious for Democrats to move forward without Republican support, there could be an undiscussed political upside to doing things this way.
“There’s a strategic and a message value to letting this play out on the floor for the American people to see,” said another Democratic aide. “Especially if this plays out on the floor and Republicans try to kill the bill. [That] would make it easier if we had to come back to a reconciliation.”
“We’re not losing time by having the debate on the floor and letting the American people see: this is what they’re for, this is what they’re against, and then if we have to come back we have to come back,” the aide added.
Some have noted that Democrats regard using the filibuster-proof reconciliation process as a tool of last resort because they want to have political cover for themselves. But interestingly, they also see holding off as an opportunity to put Republicans on the spot. A little disinfecting sunshine ahead of the 2010 elections, maybe?
I said it would be messy and annoying. But I also said there was a strategy and to be patient. So far, I’ve had little reason to revise my analysis.
