If Tom Harkin is right that there are 52 votes in the Senate for a robust public option, then we should be able to get at least a version of it that has an opt-out provision for the states. The strategy I would pursue is as follows.
First I would float the idea that Reid is going to include the full robust public option that is contained in the House versions and in the Senate HELP version of the bill. Along with that, I’d leak the idea that there are 52 solid votes in favor and that any Democrat who isn’t willing to vote for cloture is at risk of having their committee chairs taken away in the next Congress.
Having made this threat, I’d then offer three things to the ‘centrists.’ First, I’d offer to include an opt-out provision for the states. Second, I’d offer to add some extra money for Medicare reimbursement rates in rural areas. Third, I’d assure them that they could introduce amendments to strip the public option out of the bill. Their choice would be to take that deal and vote for cloture, or we’d be going to the budget reconciliation route that only requires 51 votes. In other words, the ‘centrists’ will not be dictating the final terms of the bill, but they can get some political cover for their votes and a little assistance to address their concerns about reimbursements rates.
Assuming that we got agreement for cloture, we’d pass a version in the Senate that included a robust public option tied to Medicare rates, but with adjustments to those rates in rural areas, and an opt-out provision for the states.
Once the bill goes to the Conference Committee, I’d remove the opt-out provision and dare the ‘centrists’ to vote against it.
I’m pretty sure the momentum is there, and the votes, to get this done.
Another issue that will probably turn out to be just as important is the financing. I prefer the ‘soak the rich’ approach of the House to the ‘tax the cadillac plans’ approach of the Senate. But that is totally negotiable to me if it helps get a robust public option and a successful cloture vote.
This isn’t rocket science. I hope Reid can figure it out.
It sounds like a viable strategy to me, Booman.
…extra money for Medicare reimbursement rates in rural areas… seems to be a valid excuse for Rep Pomeroy’s and Sen Conrad’s positions.
Assuming that flaw gets fixed, then were back to “there’s not the votes in the Senate” opinion of Sen. Conrad.
Pomeroy is quoted regarding the latest Pelosi plan, as still staying he’ll vote “no” even with the added reimbursements.
Tonight, via private email, I asked what else is keeping him from a “yes” on Pelosi’s latest plan. At this point I have no clue what that would be, other than his general tendency to be half D and half R.
So why is Dorgan so quiet about this?
This isn’t rocket science. I hope Reid can figure it out.
Senators tend to be corrupt and ex-boxers tend to be punch drunk. Harry tends to be both.
How about a quick coup d’tat to replace Reid as leader before this bill is marked?
I’m sure Reid figured it out some time ago. The real question is, does he want to be a critical link in the chain that enabled healthcare reform?
anatomy of a (bad) con-job:
And, after you run such a scam (assuming, that is, the fantasy that they’d actually fall for such a “deal”), what’s left of your credibility with these centrists for the remainder of Obama’s term?
This is progress from the Bush/Cheney chicanery?
Booman Tribune ~ A Progressive Community
I have to agree with proxy here. Obama is not just about changing policy, but changing how policy making is done. All this bipartisan stuff is not just a tactic to cover a nakedly partisan agenda, Obama believes in the “one nation” stuff. Or at least he believes it is his job to try to make it so.
So to be blatantly dishonest and double cross on this issue (however important) simply destroys Obama’s integrity, moral power and whatever hold on centrists he may now have. It also would give the GOP the first genuinely serious campaigning issue to damage his (and the DEMS) prospect for re-election.
If the Dems have a fault, it is that they often play the game by the rules so much so that they are cleaned out by the lying, cheating, double crossing tactics of the Gopers. This would reduce Obama to their level. I am all for a bit of clever behind the scenes strategising, but this isn’t it.
If you have 52 votes in the Senate for a strong public option, then use them, and don’t be afraid to say so, and don’t be apologetic for using the reconciliation option – after all you are only doing what you campaigned on. If anything, the DEMs have been far to apologetic for what the believe in – hats off to that Florida dude for not being afraid to be a progressive in a conservative district. That is leadership people can respect. People don’t respect leaders who speak out of both sides of their mouth at the same time.
If the centrists know you are prepared to ram through the Public option one way or another, they have little to gain by being seen to obstruct a President doing what he promised he would do. It is only the vacillating flatulence of Dem congressional leaders that gives them oxygen in the first place.
There is nothing more powerful than a President putting his political life on the line for something he believes in – in draws admiration from friend and foe alike. Once a final “reconciled” bill has been drafted, he should address the Nation from the Oval Office and tell them that this is the Change he promised.
Watch those centrist senators squirm as they dare not oppose a President showing real leadership. Any senator (are you listening Lieberman) who opposes the President under those circumstances should be thrown out of the party, stripped of his chairs, and face an Obama endorsed opponent at the next Primary.
Sometimes lines have to be drawn in the sand – but you have to know when and where to draw them. But when you do draw them, you have to be absolutely ruthless to enforce them. Obama has been right to give opponents plenty of rope with which to hang themselves. But he mustn’t be afraid, in the final analysis, to be the hangman if a party member opposed the settled will of the party and President. Otherwise he risks being seen as a wishy washy Carter/Gore/Dukakis/Muskie liberal do gooder who couldn’t stand the heat of the kitchen.
Anyone with claims to greatness has to make tough decisions sometimes. The trick is to make the right decisions in the right circumstances. Health Care is perhaps THE signature issue and failure to deliver undermines the whole raison d’etre for voting for them. Otherwise why bother to organise, canvass and vote. If we lose a few centrists on the way, then so be it. But it must be seen as their free choice, and not as a result of some subterfuge by the President or his supporters.
The hard, cold political reality is that Obama will be attacked no matter what he does by a group of people who so far have blown nearly every note on the race dog-whistle, don’t believe he’s even a US citizen, and aren’t afraid to lie bold-faced about him in every given outlet.
Playing softball with these assholes…well, ask Big Dog how that turned out when you try to outsmart them by standing back and giving them enough rope to hang themselves with rather than fight back.
I’d rather have a good bill and some centrists with hurt feelings than a bad bill and happy centrists.
“Playing softball with these assholes…well, ask Big Dog how that turned out when you try to outsmart them by standing back and giving them enough rope to hang themselves with rather than fight back.”
“I’d rather have a good bill and some centrists with hurt feelings than a bad bill and happy centrists.”
Though I have no idea who “Big Dog” is or what you’re talking about by “… when you try to outsmart them by standing back and giving them enough rope to hang themselves with rather than fight back”
but I can understand enough to see that when you state that you’d, “rather have a good bill and some centrists with hurt feelings than a bad bill and happy centrists,” you’re at least being candid enough to implicitly recognize that those centrists are going to have what you call “hurt feelings” for some reason—-could that be because they found they’d been tricked, double-crossed? That’s what I think you recognize is being proposed and, in that, I have to give you credit for being that candid. That’s more than Booman or Rachel Q are ready to do.
Congratulations on your advanced candor–even if it means that, when dealing with “these assholes”, for you, things like square dealing are frivolous luxuries you can’t see your way to justify.
Never mind about,
Ideals? What ideals? We don’t got no badges!!! We don’t need no stinkin’ badges !!!
How far we’ve come from Bush and Cheney!!!
I don’t understand your objection. The way that policy making is done is that the House passes a bill, the Senate passes a bill, and then the two are combined.
Unless Reid or Obama promises that the Senate bill will not change and then breaks that promise, senators should expect the bill to change in conference.
No dishonesty involved.
“I don’t understand your objection. The way that policy making is done is that the House passes a bill, the Senate passes a bill, and then the two are combined.
“Unless Reid or Obama promises that the Senate bill will not change and then breaks that promise, senators should expect the bill to change in conference.
No dishonesty involved.”
Excuse me? For you, a person is free to “offer” something with the full intention, even as he offers it, of withdrawing the “offered” thing later, and can consider that ploy not dishonest because there was no promise made that the bill [and the “offer”] would not be subject to change in conference?
What’s proposed here is the cynical use of “leaks”, “float[ed]” ideas and threats, in combination with “offers” [ “to include an opt-out provision for the states” ] which are made cynically with the full and prior intention of withdrawing that “offered” element later.
If these don’t involve dishonesty [with the American people] then I guess Bush and Cheney were “honest”, too.
Under Bush and Cheney, on a bill of major importance to Democrats, the Republicans gave their assurances of a number of features being in the legislation as passed in the House and Senate, only to remove them all later in conference; despite the fact that they only passed with Democrat support on the understanding that the provisions then in the legislation were accepted and acceptable. Apparently, what happened then was that, in conference, Republicans other than those who’d bargained over the desired-provisions came to make the determinations to remove them in conference. Thus, it wasn’t, strictly speaking, the very same people who made the deal in the House and Senate who later, in “reconciliation”, removed the bargained-for features.
When the final bill came about with the bargained features removed, Democrats’ anger at being double-crossed went through the roof.
For the Republicans, picking the lint off their suit jackets, this was all just “politics”, you know? Again, promises made? Perhaps not, but there were people who reached what they understood was a deal. No dishonesty involved?
This opposition to strategy and subterfuge is an odd malady of too many liberals. If the GOP base had a problem with reality, the Dem Base has a problem with literalism.
Politics is an art. Leadership is about winning the votes of politicians. If you need to provide cover to a politician to win over his or her vote, that’s what you do. Do they need to win some concession? Okay. Give them a concession. They needed to tell their people that that they tried to strip out the public option, or tried to decouple it from Medicare reimbursement rates, or they tried to get the tax policy done a different way? Fine. Let them have a win on it, and then have them take a loss on it later.
It’s how this shit gets done. Obama doesn’t just make a persuasive argument and watch everyone fall in line.
“strategy and subterfuge”—aren’t these nice euphemisms for blatant tickery and double-cross dealings? Do you mean, when you’d offer “First … to include an opt-out provision for the states,” that it’s just your opponents’ fault and “problem” if they take that offer literally?
By “concession”, don’t you mean a phoney concession, one that is never intended to have any real consequence–other than, of course, offering “cover”?
Aren’t you proposing nothing less than conniving in a flat lie to the constituents concerned when their reps “tell their people that that they tried to strip out the public option, or tried to decouple it from Medicare reimbursement rates, or they tried to get the tax policy done a different way“?
For you, that is just “how this shit gets done”?
Interesting.
“Politics is an art. Leadership is about winning the votes of politicians.”
Well, that’s also the case in Russia, where it’s certainly no less an art and leadership is just as much about winning the votes of politicians. In Russia, though, they simply assassinate their most unruly and outspoken critics. Some sensitive people “have a problem with that”, thinking of it as murder but, in Russia, it’s just how shit gets done. You know? Poutin and Medvedev don’t “just make a persuasive argument and watch everyone fall in line” either.
You really have no idea how politics works.
What do you think it is when a politician votes for an amendment to gut a bill, and then when that amendment fails, goes ahead and votes for the bill anyway?
It’s called ‘cover.’
The classic, “I voted against it before I voted for it,” or vice-versa.
Obama’s job is to win over votes. If he can’t, he’ll be a failure. He doesn’t have to lie to anyone. He just needs to give them what they think they need.
“You really have no idea how politics works.”
And you really have no idea how “honesty” works. You should not confuse those who object to lying and cheating (without regard for party alliance) with people who don’t understand what these are when they see them.
Yes, I do have an idea of how politics (in fact) works. It’s just that, unlike you, I object to the lying, double-crossing and double-talk even when it’s done by a party I favored (by default).
I see we’re not going to be finding ourselves in agreement much here. Does that mean I should expect you to ban me from participation? I’ve seen that, too, is part of your (rather creepy) “bag of tricks”.
Elsewhere, in a reply, you actually offered as a retort,
‘That’s how this shit gets done.”
That’s an argument? It looks like what I call “begging the question”. Do you understand what that is in argumentation? To those who are objecting to the status quo and pointing out its faults, to respond “but that’s the way it is ” amounts to announcing a surrender to that status quo without right or reason for it, and it presumes to attack and denounce those who won’t surrender to the status quo as being at fault for “not understanding how things work”. For arch-conservatives to take such a tack is absolutely par for the course. For a self-described “liberal” such as yourself to do it is, really, in my view, a shame and a disgrace.
To offer me so utterly lame a reproach as “You really have no idea how politics works,” is pathetic beyond words. If that’s the level at which you’re going to insist on arguing, then you make of yourself a joke.
Please: never presume to lecture me again on how things really are in the hard, cold, mean old world of political reality. And, most of all, never resort to a moral argument for support. For you, clearly, moral arguments are matters of sheer convenience.
I know what “cover” is. And I know what mealy-mouthed bullshit is. And your mealy-mouthed bullshit leaves you no “cover”.
If you read my post again I think you will find we are saying more or less the same thing. Of course the legislation that comes out of reconciliation won’t be identical with either the Senate or House Bills and everyone understands that. It will be a compromise somewhere in between. Putting something in the initial Senate draft is thus no guarantee it will remain after reconciliation. There is no subterfuge here – that is how reconciliation works.
Thus what senators vote for in the Senate Bill and in the final reconciled bill will be different, and only 51 votes are required for the latter. But Obama should go all out for what actually IS contained in that reconciled bill – and show there will be real consequences for Dems who then put their personal interests first and ensure that the Cover centrists will really need is cover from an Obama backed primary challenger.
He said this!? And you, you have the nerve to cite it after what you proposed, above? And you say that “the Dem Base has a problem with literalism”?
What does that mean? Should I take Obama’s words, above, “literally” or would that be me having a problem with literalism? And would I be in danger of failing to recognize “how this shit gets done”?
You have a very bad case of the malady.
True. It’s a matter of conscience with me so I guess you won’t understand.
It’s not about duping them. It’s about giving them the political cover they need to vote for what you want.
Isn’t that also what campaign contributions to Baucus from the health-care insurance industries or to Barney Frank, from the Wall Street investment industries are also designed to do: give them what “they need to to vote for what ‘you’ [i.e. the contributors] want” ?
Hey, you’re catching on!!!
They’re not centrists, they’re lapdancers for their regulars. There’s no rational or strategic reason on earth for them to join the Republican filibuster. If they do, they’re representing corporate clients, not their constituents. They will respond to whoever is best at applying pressure.
That being the case, I fail to see where such an approach is a “con job” or “chicanery” — it’s just the political game. I hope Boo is right and we’re finally about to see the Dem majority use its power to outmaneuver an opposition that is trying its damndest to win through bribery and con jobs that utilize the parliamentary dregs of a broken system. Enough already with the puritiy-virgin posturing.
Why can’t the Democrats with Obama in the lead fight this issue out on the simple issue that every citizen of the United States is entitled to health and well being? Do we need all this flim flammery to provide what is a basic function of government here in the wealthiest and greatest nation on the planet? I think the electorate is ready for this idea and if the Republicans continue to obstruct public health, let them face the whirlwind of public scorn and rejection.
Once again, I think the electorate is ahead of the politicians on this matter of health and well being. But, then, they are not the recipients of campaign contributions from wealthy corporations.
There must be some rationale at work (in the minds of these White House, House and Senate Democratic strategists, right? Maybe it goes something like this:
We have to produce some tangible results; and we can’t afford anything that ‘risks’ not getting them. If we don’t vote out a bill we can call ‘Health-care reform’ from committee, get it to the floor and pass it, we’ll suffer a terrible blow to our momentum and our credibility as we go on to try and achieve other goals. So, we have to be prepared to do “whatever it takes”—promise what we have no intention of delivering, claim that “day” is “night”, race our opponents to the lowest-common-denominator of our hoped-for goals. Just, as the title puts it, “get it done”, never mind how, never mind why. The ends justify the means.
Actually, my ‘get it done’ is getting what he promised in the campaign done.
It happens that we’ve lived for so long in an atmosphere of corruption that we can become so accustomed to it that we can actually lose sight of the extent of its destructive and corrosive power. That’s when a simple and direct question such as yours can put things again into some perspective. And, so your question did for me. For I overlooked in my previous reply certain things which should have been part of a better and more informative response, even thought they’re rather obvious. I missed them, and that’s due, I suppose, to having become inured to the corruption of our political affairs so much that it also corrodes perception and reasoning.
Here’s the gist of your question, again, in all its deceptively naive brilliance:
In a system thoroughly shot-through with moneyed-interests corruption of office-holders and of the political institutions in which they work, “fight[ing] this issue out on the simple issue [that is, via the basis of an argument which holds] that every citizen of the United States is entitled to health and well being” becomes unfeasible. That’s precisely what the corrupting force of the money does: renders moot the use of reasoned argument and saps it of the force it would otherwise have if people weren’t simply bought off.
Once money corrupts the decision-makers, the force of reason and of arguments relying on it, the value of objectives such as fairness, cost-savings, public benefits, etc., all these are immediately beside the point.
We should recognize that Senator Baucus, for example, as well as the near totality of the Republicans themselves and with them no small number of Democrats who are also opposed to a public universal health-care plan, are perfectly well aware of the fact that a genuine “public option”, that is, some real form of non-profit universal health-care system is superior in every way to what you now have. They certainly know this. The point is, their campaign-contributions, and, with them, their political offices and their power, prestige and pay, all depend on their ignoring that fact and, no matter the soundness of the reasons and arguments raised against them, they’ll persist in defending the interests of their top contributors.
As for public outrage, again, they’re paid to ignore it, too. Only if they could become convinced that, despite the largess of their campaign-contributors, their betrayal of the public’s best interests actually threatens in the immediate term their hold on their seats would they seriously take that public outrage into account. Otherwise, for them, it’s just another irrelevant factor among a host of others.
In short, when the system itself is bought off, reason and argument and public interest become irrelevant. And that is the very thing the money is spent to produce: the destruction through corruption of a meaningful and working democratic governance.
So, in a certain sense, those who argue that in present circumstances there is no alternative to playing according to the rules as they pertain under the corrupt system have a perverse point: unless that corrupted system is attacked effectively and comprehensively, it becomes true by default. In a corrupt system, you either fiercely oppose the corruption or your surrender to it and make accommodations for it in virtually everything you do from start to finish.
And, that is why what Booman and others who share his outlook here are doing is simply stating as a fatalist fact that we have no alternative to surrendering to the system as it is, corrupt through and through. For them, we’re condemned to accept that as a given for as far ahead as one can see. From a strictly syllogistic perspective, of course, they’re right:
If one surrenders to a given status quo as being inevitably and fatalistically the case, then, yes, the certain consequences are that “that is just the way things must be”.
Maybe among all the verbiage, one of these times you’ll insert an explanation of how letting healthcare reform die at the hands of a corrupt system and a corrupt opposition makes anything better. Yeah, we’re in total agreement that the system is corrupt and unsustainable. A central core of that corruption is the de facto veto of Senate legislation by a 41% minority of the most corrupt. Another central core is the millstone tied around our necks by a Constitution that demands that a citizen of Wyoming have 70 times the Senate representation of a citizen of California. Another central core is allowing paid advertising in political campaigns. Another central core is the extreme power corporations to buy legislation and legislators with money that doesn’t belong to them.
We agree, I think, that these and many other aspects of our political fundamentals need radical reform. I wish they all could have been fixed before healthcare came up. Ain’t gonna happen, so I don’t know what it is that you’re ranting about. Say it outright: Do you want to sacrifice healthcare reform if passing it means using parliamentary maneuvering? Is that your point? If not, what do all your rants about corruption have to do with the issue at hand? All I get out of it is that you’d rather feel “pure” than be sullied by dirty fighting for some small measure of economic justice.
No, I can’t reply because the lengthy answer I wrote continuously gets html tag error messages–and nothing I can do eliminates them!!!!!!!!
Please see a new "diary" entry of mine entitled; "An answer to DaveW"
http://www.boomantribune.com/?op=displaystory;sid=2009/10/19/102722/08
—the only way I’ve been able to post the text of the reply.
“i hope reid can figure it out”?
Holy shit. You literally just caused me to spray coffee across the room.
Here’s a reality check::
the words “reid” and “figure it out” go together worse than “fish” and “bicycle”.
that is pretty sad. Good for Arlen, though…self-serving though he is.
Why should they agree up front to voting for cloture before any horse trading has begun?
Because that is Party Solidarity. They are free to horse trade for their final vote, but not the cloture vote. That would be fighting their party, trading with the enemy. An analogy, as a citizen, you are free to bargain with the US Army when they want to join up, you are not free to bargain that you won’t join the Taliban in shooting at the US Army. Another analogy, as a professional basketball player you are free (assuming you have free agent status) to bargain with management about whether you are going to play, but you are not free to throw the game. If the vote is called for as a party line vote on a national convention platform plank, you can’t filibuster your own side, not and claim to be a party member.
Who said,
“America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this.”
And, to what was he or she referring to by “these last eight years” and “better than this“?
Better than what?
This is exactly the way to make it happen. The weak link remains the question of whether Reid will include the public option in the Senate bill. If he wimps out, everything falls apart. Given Obama’s talk on the insurancos (see previous article), he seems to have staked his political future on real reform. I think he’ll have to apply every ounce of pressure on Reid that he can muster. Will that be enough?
My only slight disagreement with Boo’s prescription is that I’d have no real problem with the state opt-out staying in the bill. I don’t see it doing harm, and could see it becoming a useful engine for further necessary development of the healthcare system. Withdrawing it at the last minute is the only part of the strategy that can even remotely be characterized as “old politics”, so it might not be worth fighting for.
I think the liberal/left contingent has been kind of off the mark in not paying more attention to the financing side of the reform. This is where poison pills could still be inserted, as such things happen in the Senate, that put the burden on the working and middle class and make the reform into an election issue against the Dems and “liberalism”. In an ideal world I’d have rather seen tax reform before healthcare, but as the man said, so it goes.
Not negotiable by me. As one with a so-called cadillac plan (I call it decent health insurance), it’s my ox that’s gored. Same with cutting Medicare reimbursement, that’s an ox that’s in sight. I’m willing to pay tax money to help other Americans in trouble, but I’m not willing to cut my own throat for them.
The third point that I e-mailed my Senators about concerns the mandate. My daughter has an income so low that she cannot pay for health insurance even with the 50% subsidy in Baucus’s odious bill. So she will have the extra burden of buying food or paying the fine. I don’t support any bill that has subsidies less than those in Illinois’ KidCare (S-CHIP.
I voted in November to Change(TM) health care for the better, not for the worse in order to fatten insurance exec’s bonuses.
Your fucking software is blocking me from posting here!!!!! Is that an accident?