Mary Landrieu will vote to let the health care bill proceed tonight, but she is blackmailing us by insisting that the public option have a trigger. Chuck Schumer is supposedly responsible for working out some kind of compromise. As I said before, it would have been better to put the trigger in the Senate bill and try to take it out in Conference. While that might not have worked either, it would have been an all or nothing vote. Now we are getting jacked up prior to the Conference, and that means there is basically no chance of a triggerless public option getting put back in.
Update [2009-11-21 14:44:26 by BooMan]: Landrieu and Lincoln have pledged to vote for cloture tonight, so we have 60 votes to proceed. That’s good. But Landrieu opposes any public option that doesn’t have triggers and Blanche Lincoln opposes any public option whatsoever, and strongly pledged not to support the bill as written. So, we can proceed, but proceed to what?
Unforunately, I agree with this, but see things as basically hopeless. There’s no point in asking senators to change their rules. And, frankly, I can’t even imagine how bad the last 8 years would have been without those rules.
I think if we didn’t have the filibuster, and the GOP was allowed to go whole-hog crazy, they would have been voted out of power sooner. In fact I think Bush and the GOP would have been swept out in 2004.
The downside is that Bush would have been able to put some crazy judges in power, maybe opened ANWR to drilling, and passed more PATRIOT ACT type laws, but I don’t think it would have been a huge difference. Even with the filibuster he was able to get almost anything through the Senate, from his tax cuts to revised FISA laws to the Detentions Act. I doubt he could have put an end to Social Security, enough GOP Senators would have known that would be doom to their party.
And the upside is that when the Dems took control, they could more easily fix things.
Regarding that TPM post, the Congressional aide should realize that we progressives do understand that the conservaDems are to blame, but we also hold Harry Reid accountable for not being more aggressive about ending the filibuster or pulling other tricks to get things moving.
The country is, after all, in a pretty serious economic crisis. Business as usual will not cut it.
By “Detentions Act”, I mean the Military Commissions Act that ended Habeus Corpus.
It depends on what the conditions that are placed on the trigger are. If a “public option” is not a public option, then a “trigger” need not be a trigger, but something that can launch a public option rather quickly.
I smell a coming strategy from the insurance companies of raising premiums drastically, blaming it on healthcare reform and trying to drive for repeal, just like they succeeded in doing in repealing catastrophic Medicare coverage.
Reid needed to put the slapdown on these clowns long ago.
Lieberman too.
As long as Landrieu and Lincoln vote for cloture to end the debate on the bill (i.e. the next vote after this one), what they want is not needed to pass the bill. We know that we already have the 51 votes for moving the bill to conference. They can vote for cloture and vote against the bill, meanwhile extracting all the logrolling they can from Harry Reid.
Will they vote for cloture on the Senate bill, and will they vote to end a filibuster on the motion to accept the conference report? If whatever bone Schumer throws them to vote to end the inevitable filibuster on the present bill is stripped out in committee, I don’t know.
I’m not sure how being the Dickhead That Killed The Bill ultimately helps you if you’re a Democrat. You’re not getting any new Republican votes, and Democrats could, even in a deep purple state like AR, stay home in numbers sufficient to cancel out any independents you add.
There’s a political version of the ‘uncanny valley’ effect where opposition to something popular has continuing, positive effects for a politician in ‘maverickyness’ and ‘integritude’, right up until you’re the vote blocking the passage of motherhood and apple pie, at which case you look like a moron, and a stubborn moron to boot.
Lincoln, Landrieu and Co. are playing chicken. They’re right up to the edge of the political version of the ‘uncanny valley’. I’m not sure they are smart enough to calculate exactly where it is.
Lieberman is rapidly painting himself into a corner. If he blocks a procedural motion, I think it might be bye-bye to his chairmanship. I don’t think he can be bought with much else. And he might be making an empty bluff.
Lincoln and Landrieu can be bought. The question is what other than the elimination of the public option would be required for their vote.
Landieu is now for a public option with triggers; that gives her room to compromise for a public option with opt-out.
Lincoln is toast politically if she votes against it. I believe that Halter could well primary her in that event–and win the seat. Right now, Lincoln is playing the “victim of outside agitators” card.
It really doesn’t, especially considering that the process has come this far, not to mention the fact that none of the asshats threatening to do this has come up with an alternative plan that accomplishes President Obama’s stated goals for health care reform. Until they do, they really have nothing useful to add aside from calling attention to themselves (which may be the only real reason for doing it). Just like the republicans, the so-called “conservadems” need to be constructive and offer realistic alternatives instead of simply poo-pooing everything that emerges from the Democratic caucus.
The unconsidered question is how much do Landrieu and Lincoln really care about what’s in the bill? Is there any actual principle, no matter how stupid, involved or is all this public posturing? If the latter, as I suspect, they might be content with having fought “concessions” to vote for cloture, then settling for some innocuous language in the final cloture vote. They will have been good soldiers for their sponsors and will have mollified the imagined constituency that hates getting health care. Then they can vote against the final bill to further cement their loyalties. It might be easier than some think to get the next couple cloture votes.
If you’re right about Lieberman, it seems like his fear of losing the chairmanship should apply to all the other cloture votes too. So just maybe there’s reason for optimism about how this proceeds in the Senate. It will be ironic if the House turns out to be the spoiler after all.
As long as Landrieu and Lincoln vote for cloture to end the debate on the bill (i.e. the next vote after this one), what they want is not needed to pass the bill. We know that we already have the 51 votes for moving the bill to conference. They can vote for cloture and vote against the bill, meanwhile extracting all the logrolling they can from Harry Reid.
I think the only way forward is for progressive senators to come together and agree to kill the filibuster.
It saves Blanche Lincoln from having to do her job, let’s Landrieu vote no if she feels so inclined, and puts the power in the senate were it belongs: with the majority of the caucus.
This needs to get done before Christmas to have maximum political effect and we also have a jobs bill to deal with and financial regulatory reform. The country needs the senate to work right now, progressive/liberal senators need to come together fuck comity and ram this shit through with their majority.
That’s about where I am.
What I think: 70/30 it’ll be done by state of the union and 50/50 we have some sort of second stimulus.
When did Lincoln and Landrieu become the only debate wreckers while nobody’s mentioning Lieberman anymore? Did he make some deal or statement that I missed? Seems like he’d have to do some contortions to explain what happened to his “principled” stand against the bill.
Apparently Reid thinks he loves his chairmanship too much to risk it.
I’m thinking that Joe’s little friend Lindsey G. maybe paid him a visit last evening in the Senate chambers to get his mind off his those darned public options and his “principled positions”. Odd that he went down without even a whimper today…
Sure glad we spent all that effort kissing her ass.
That effort made it clear to the American people that the Republicans were not interested in bipartisan anything. Actions speak. Which undercut all the Republican frothing about the lack of bipartisanship as a reason to stop the process.
Voinovich (R-OH) apparently was the Republican Senator who did not vote, making the noes 39 votes.