Centrists rule our world.
Landrieu said she would not support the final legislation if negotiators tinkered with the Senate proposal for taxing high-cost insurance plans.
“I can only support a bill if the Cadillac plans are taxed at the level they are in the Senate [bill,]” said Landrieu. “It’s not because I’m thrilled about taxing those plans, which I’m not, but it is the No. 1 cost-containment measure in the bill. It’s what is going to drive costs down over time.”
Nelson said he would not support the final bill if it included the House proposal to impose a tax surcharge on individuals earning more than $500,000 and families earning more than $1 million.
“I’ve already said that would be a deal-breaker,” said Nelson.
Lincoln also said she has great concern. “If it moves very much at all from where we are, it’s going to be hard,” she said.
If you want better outcomes, you have to figure out how to convince these people to give them to you. It’s really that simple. But it’s not simple at all.
Not to worry, Senator, Landrieu. The likely result will be extinction of those Cadillac plans.
Who earns more than a million there? He’s clearly not worried about his constituents.
BTW, Boran, I appreciated your Jew at XMAS diary on DK. I lurked there, read it, and related to it 🙂
Doesn’t the final vote only have to be 50+ Joe the Biden?
Yeah, but it requires a cloture vote. Erm, doesn’t require one, just requires one when Republicans are out of office.
I feel like the only way to change this rule is to follow the Republicans on this: filibuster everything they want to do when they’re in power.
We’re not getting 60 votes to change the filibuster, we can’t change the culture because the GOP has purified themselves and have no liberals to break ranks, so what the hell are we supposed to do? The only other option is to purify ourselves, leaving moderates with little to no place to go, making the GOP more liberal again. I’m not sure I want to risk that, though, given that these people are insane. I don’t want people who take their cues from God in power, ever, ever again.
This country simply isn’t governable anymore. Something has to change, or we’re going to be like California. Sure, we could live if this health care bill is defeated. What’s going to happen when we need to actually tackle the deficit? It’s not going to be possible.
Maybe we need to offer Mary 300 million more dollars. Pimpin ain’t easy is it Mary.
The left-right graph doesn’t really clarify. Better top-bottom. Lieberman, he’s representing those insurance companies up there. Ben Nelson? Same thing.
…which is why politics is called “the art of the possible.”
It’s incredibly difficult. And I dare all the Senate’s critics to do a better job.
When I was young, I was in a simulated Senate. I had to create a bill, and then run around and try to get other “Senators” to agree to vote for my bill. Naturally, everyone wants something for their vote. Few said hey, that’s a good idea, I’ll vote for that on principle. We’d love to think that’s how it works, but that’s never how it works.
I think the final bill will be more similar to the Senate bill than the house. If they can get any positive changes around the edges, that will be great. But we’ll probably be stuck with most of this “as is.”
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Interesting (graphs included), as income inequality grows, so does polarization in voting between party members in Congress. Simple logic when you think about it, you don’t vote to represent the people but rather your master: capital influx of campaign donations and lobby groups who write your legislation. Democracy upside down.
(MIT Press) – Political polarization, income inequality, and immigration have all increased dramatically in the United States over the past three decades. The increases have followed an equally dramatic decline in these three social indicators over the first seven decades of the twentieth century. The pattern in the social indicators has been matched by a pattern in public policies with regard to taxation of high incomes and estates and with regard to minimum wage policy. We seek to identify the forces that have led to this observation of a social turn about in American society, with a primary focus on political polarization.
Our primary evidence of political polarization comes from analysis of the voting patterns of members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. Based on estimates of legislator ideal points (Poole and Rosenthal 1997 and McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal 1997), we find that the average positions of Democratic and Republican legislators have diverged markedly since the mid-1970s. This increased polarization took place following a fifty-year blurring of partisan divisions. This turning point occurs almost exactly the same time that income inequality begins to grow after a long decline and the full effects of immigration policy liberalization are beginning to be felt.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Good diary:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/12/25/808924/-Clapping-Harder-will-not-make-Jane-Hamsher-righ
t.-No-matter-who-says.
“If it moves very much at all from where we are, it’s going to be hard,” [Lincoln] said.
The more the conservadems say stupid stuff like that, the sooner people will understand that the current use of the filibuster is ridiculous.
“If you want better outcomes, you have to figure out how to convince these people to give them to you. It’s really that simple. But it’s not simple at all.”
I agree. Landrieu and Nelson come from pretty conservative states. I think that maybe the only way to move those senators to the left is for the people in those states to move left on the issues. Convince the people, and the senators will come along. Problem is, the people aren’t convinced. Maybe progressives need to do a better job at talking to conservatives, helping them see that progressive stances are in their own and the countries best interest.
The idea of taxing Cadillac plans is horrid; it ought to come out. If you wanted to foment class warfare, to make people resentful of the poor, what better way to do it than to ruin some of their health insurance plans in the process of health care reform. If it does pass, the right wing will demonize progressives and left wingers who want to take your money and give them to the undeserving for it, when strangely it’s a “centrist” who insisted on it, and Republicans who enabled her by giving her the power to kill it with one vote.
THe “Cadillac” plans are ones a lot of union members have … so Landrieu is basically giving the middle finger to unions of all sorts
They aren’t centrists. Stop calling them “centrists”. jezuz.
Landrieu at least has a point, since policy wonks point to the Cadillac plan tax as a real way to control health care costs going forward. I’m not really opposed to it, as long as it is limited to really top notch plans. I’m in a union, I have union health care, I love it, so I’m the kind of person who could actually be affected by this (though I’m not sure how much my union’s health care plans cost).
Nelson is a just an idiot trying to protect the rich. How many Nebraskans are making that kind of money? What an ass. Thank god for reconciliation, we can definitely raise taxes that way later on.
Hard for me to believe any of these people would kill the bill in the final analysis. But they are more likely to win a game of chicken with the liberals who really want health reform to pass, and they probably know it.
that trends Repub on almost all outlying areas away from New Orleans. That’s the only way she gets elected.
Unfortunately, these idiots from the parishes are still victims of Repub madness. Go Repub to keep the n*g**rs down, even if it is against your own interests. It’s been a hard row to hoe for Dems and progressives to tell these folks that their interests are suffering because Repubs and corporatists are running the show. Even four years after Katrina, these people are still thinking that New Orleans is getting all the money (ha!) from the government to rebuild. No, Mississippi is faring better than all of New Orleans and Louisiana combined, all because of Repub patronage and corruption. Jindal’s tried to play the game too, but to no avail.
Landrieu, I think, is too hoity-toity and New Democrat to go populist to protect her right flank. Her brother, the former lieutenant governor, may have more going on with him than her timid self. It’s all in the fam, but she doesn’t want to go down like Blanco did. She plays along to these reactionary interests.
Louisiana Dems are going to have to get on more than just their hind legs to push this broad left of center. In fact, I would hope that they could get an alternative to her outrageous timidity. Someone who is known, who could make Dem and progressive aims sound reasonable rather than “socialist” and “tax-raising.”
Sometimes I truly wish a Huey Long without the corrupt baggage could rise again.
Call their bluff. Their vote is needed only for cloture. They can vote against the plan and get their campaign ads, and a stronger, and likely more popular bill will go through. Which, if popular enough, they will never have to use those campaign ads showing them opposing the bill.
Or do you no longer believe your analysis from several months ago? Has the situation changed that much?
Aimai thinks it has indeed changed that much since last time:
http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2009/12/before-devil-knows-youre-dead-before.html
Thoughts?
“If you want better outcomes, you have to figure out how to convince these people to give them to you. It’s really that simple. But it’s not simple at all.”
that’s because in your world, the one where your impoverished imagination cannot conceive of our not being hostage to these centrists, such obstacles are a “given” and you dismiss and ridicule the idea that the American people could and ought to actually reform their system more radically so that these hostage-takers find their leverage removed.
The simple fact which your post here leaves unmentioned other than by indirect allusion via the remarks of those you cite is that the health-care reform bill is still very much in doubt. But that didn’t stop you from a premature “celebration” thread as soon as the Senate passed its version.
I can already predict how you’ll “report” and “explain” it if in the end, there’s no reconciliation bill or none that can pass.
After this process, whatever the outcome, what then will be your excuse for continuing to put off the more fundamental reforms? There’ll always be some urgently-needed legislation the passage of which you’ll assert we can’t afford to jeopardize by such a long(er)-term project in reform.
If Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s autobiography could be entitled, Giant Steps, Barack Obama’s memoir of his term as president shall have to be titled, Infinitely Tiny Steps.
That’ not good enough; not for a world which sits on a razor’s edge and needs clear-sighted and bold thought and action to get it off that razor’s edge.
A “practical” does not dismiss this so much as argue that it cannot be achieved before an election that gives the mandate through a change in Congress to achieve it. It is the burden of the American progressive movement to see that this happens in spite of the conventional wisdom that Republicans are going to score gains in 2010. This is not a trivial task for progressives, who tend to be geographically concentrated in comfortable areas.
In case you haven’t noticed, this is no longer Henry Luce’s “American Century”. It is not yet the fabled “China’s Century” either. But the dynamics a Copenhagen were instructive. The nation with the largest paper economy and the largest military expenditures can no longer push its way around to get us “off the razor’s edge” even if domestic politics had permitted it.
And yes, it is not good enough.
You mistake the point and “lesson” of the Copenhagen conference, unanimously described as a catastrophe by environmentalists. China (that is, Hú Jǐntāo, 胡錦濤) and the U.S. (that is, Barack Obama) worked in concert to assure that their common #1 priority, namely, that neither nation faced any binding obligation in the real reduction of greenhouse gases, prevailed. As all this required was their simple agreement on that point (the conference having no power to impose anything binding without unanimous consent [what does that remind you of!?], there was no suspense involved.
Of course, the U.S. cannot “push China around” but that has been true for more than a generation and every president since at least Nixon’s time has understood this. So what? China and the U.S. have many common interests, most of them relatiing to their mutual aid in keeping the “Great Power” status quo (which has served them both) in tact and in force for as long as possible. But that will come under increasing strain as China’s ascendance brings with it more and more occasion to leave the concerns of the U.S. behind where these increasingly conflict with what is in China’s (that is 胡錦濤) political interests.
Here again,
“A “practical” does not dismiss this so much as argue that it cannot be achieved before an election that gives the mandate through a change in Congress to achieve it. It is the burden of the American progressive movement to see that this happens in spite of the conventional wisdom that Republicans are going to score gains in 2010. This is not a trivial task for progressives, who tend to be geographically concentrated in comfortable areas.”
you miss the point.
Booman and those most in agreement with him are happy to pay lip service and nothing more than that to hastening the advent of this “election that gives the mandate through a change in Congress”. For that shall require that a large part of the American people understand a great deal more about their political circumstances and their predicament. As to the work required for that enlightenment to come about, Booman and these others seem to have an attitude which says, “Yeah, whatever. (One day, my prince will come)” And, for too many, Obama is the Prince. For them, the question regarding Obama is “What’s not to like!?”
I have little common cause to make with such people. If Obama is the best we’re allowed to hope for except for pie-in-the-sky notions for someday eventually getting more Americans to understand what the hell is really being done to them then the arrival of China in the driver’s seat and the plain ejection of Uncle Sam from the passenger’s seat cannot come too soon for me.
The Chinese are going to treat the U.S. and their people to a world of doses of Americans’ own “medicine”. That’s going to be a hell of a wake-up call for a people who are apparently determined not to learn any other way.
This isn’t much of an answer, but it’s wrong that centrists Democrats should feel free to filibuster key Democratic legislation like this. It ought to be obvious it’s wrong, and we shouldn’t have to point it out.
The Republicans filibustering is another matter. They’ve declared that health insurance reform is a war against the people of the country, that it will result in the loss of our freedoms, that death penalties are a legitimate concern. This is insane of course, but given the premise this is what the filibuster is for; a desperate measure used as a last resort by the minority to prevent the tyranny of the majority from ramming something through.
But the centrists are different. They publicly support health reform. They say they want to pass it. It makes no sense to say as the bill stands they support, but if you make this one small change, not only will it change their vote, but they now feel impelled to use the full power of the filibuster, something meant for emergencies.
This should be understood; one of those unwritten understandings I heard the senate has that makes doing business possible. But they’re breaking it with impunity. The only remedy I see is to have progressives start using the filibuster to routinely kill legislation centrists favor, but I don’t know what that would be.