With over 500 amendments to wade through and each amendment taking about an hour to debate, the Senate Finance Committee is never going to complete their mark-up of the health care bill unless chairman Max Baucus brings the shithammer down on Republican obstruction. Ordinarily, I’d be skeptical about Baucus’s willingness to do so, but the sheer magnitude of the GOP’s dilatory tactics is going to force his hand.
Tomorrow, the Finance Committee will hold votes on the Public Option. Most people assume that Tom Carper of Delaware, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, and Chairman Baucus of Montana are going to vote against the amendments. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas may vote against them, as well. No more than one Democrat on the committee can vote against the Public Option or those amendments will fail.
Of course, if the Public Option somehow passed through the Finance Committee, it would stun Washington DC and the punditocracy. Perhaps for that reason it would be a shrewd move. After all this time talking about how the Public Option is dead and debating the foolish idea of co-ops, to see the Democrats go all-in on the Public Option would sandbag the GOP and shift all the momentum in the president’s direction. Don’t hold your breath, though. I think the whip count on this is fairly accurate.
It looks like the House is going to pass a very good bill (under the circumstances) and that the Senate is going to pass a piece of crap. There is still a chance that the House Bill will emerge as the foundational piece of the health care legislation. For that to happen, the White House has to do two things. They have to support the House version in the Conference Committee, and they have to threaten to severely punish any Democrat who refuses to vote for cloture in the Senate. That means that Rahm Emanuel has to threaten to take away Kent Conrad’s chairmanship of the Budget Committee and Joe Lieberman’s chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee and Mary Landrieu’s chairmanship of the Small Business Committee, etc.
There is no doubt that this can be done. And, no, it isn’t up to Rahm. He has a boss. His boss will tell him what to do.
We could still get a public option at the 60-vote threshold. In fact, the chances look better right now than they have all year. Let’s just hope that Obama has been keeping his powder dry for this moment.
to see them go “all-in on the Public Option” considering Obama’s less than full-throated support of it.
We have no leadership.
well, I agree to a certain extent. Now would be a good time to sandbag them.
Michael Hilzik agrees with me.
I’m afraid those “kid gloves” are Obama’s actual hands; he can’t take them off. “Getting tough” or “being mean” don’t appear to be in his style book.
Obama has, prior to his current job, been a legislator his entire political career. All of his political training, especially in the US Senate, was all about collegiality, finding common ground, compromise, the art of the Village-defined possible. And that is exactly what we have seen in the first nine months of his administration. He has up to this point deferred to Congress on even his own pet initiatives – the bailout bills and the complete lack of financial regulatory reform being two obvious examples.
Granted, there’s a learning curve to any presidency. But that curve usually takes years, and I don’t remember any modern president completely reversing his historic MO. I think for health care we’re most likely to get exactly what we’ve seen so far from Obama. That probably means something closer to the Senate version. And if it’s the Baucus POC, a lot of people will be angry, the Democrats are going to get hammered in 2010, for the next two years the R’s will have learned that fanaticism and obstructionism work, and in 2013 Obama will be the youngest ex-President in our history.
That’s a lose-lose-lose-lose scenario. And given the huge Democratic governing majorities at present, that’s about as telling an indictment as I can imagine of both the Democrats and our political process. Now I’m all depressed.
Be fair, Geov.
The financial reform is working its way through the House Financial Services (Barney Frank) committee and the Senate Banking (Dodd) committee. It isn’t something you do overnight.
If anything, and especially given Obama’s strong links to Wall Street and his appalling choices for his economic team, I think I’m being too fair. It’s been over a year since the need for reregulation was apparent to anyone with eyes and a pulse. Some of it requires legislation, some of it could have been done by executive fiat. (Like, I dunno, the SEC having the resources and will to enforce existing law – instead, for example, a federal judge just took the almost unprecedented step of throwing out an SEC consent settlement with B of A as a meaningless joke.)
While what’s now in committee is better than the Bush administration post-Enron response, it’s still pretty anemic, especially on Dodd’s watch. Meanwhile, we have fiscal policy that seems all about reinflating a bubble and getting us back to 2005, when that was exactly the policy problem in the first place.
I was limiting my complaint to the observation that Obama has not taken a forceful stand for reregulation – we’re talking action and political capital, not words. I also have the impression, though, that he’s just fine with what Congress and the Fed have (and haven’t) done as a result. The stimulus bill was, legislatively speaking, a remarkable accomplishment early on, and pulled the banking industry back from the abyss. We were told at the time that yes, it was flawed and only the wealthy would be helped, but that subsequent relief for The Rest Of Us would be forthcoming. Still waiting on that. Meanwhile, for a full year, banks have still been pulling the exact same sort of short-term, predatory practices that got us into trouble in the first place, only now with bucketsful of taxpayer money, and very little of it will be stopped if even the pending legislation is both passed and enforced.
I can’t say I’m disappointed by Obama’s financial priorities, because I never had any illusions that he was a populist in that regard. Health care’s a different issue. After all the inside baseball is accounted for, I’m still having a hard time shaking the memory that a lot of progressives spent four years under Carter, and eight years under Clinton, waiting for a progressive train that never came and convincing themselves that it was all part of a grand jujitsuish strategy that never materialized. I hope I’m wrong and that Obama’s path will be different. But so far I’m lacking any proof. At some point we have to start looking not just at what’s possible, but what’s actually already been done, and not done. That part, so far, isn’t encouraging.
The SEC can get adequate funding by executive fiat?
The White House can reprogram funds. It’s done all the time for DOD.
yeah, it’d be nice. It’d also be nice to win the lottery, but i don’t foresee that happening any time soon.
frankly, i’ve kind of lost interest in the whole thing. I’m resigned to a piece of shit, so I’m not disappointed when that’s what i get.
Oh well. Baucus delays public option votes until Tuesday. That actually gives us time to rally support.
Rahm Emanuel can’t take away chairmanships, only Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid can do that, and as far as I know they might require caucus or Senate approval.
If you’re counting on Harry Reid to get tough, well you’re counting on a slender reed.