…or evil? He appeared on Meet the Press this morning and displayed an astonishing lack of understanding of the political landscape. Hopefully, you all are familiar with the basic lay of the land. Because there are NO Republican votes available in the Senate, the only way to pass the health care reforms is for the House to scrap the bill they carefully crafted in its entirety and embrace the Senate version down to every dotted i and crossed t. And, because the House is not inclined to see all their work thrown out, they want the Senate to agree to pass some amendments to their bill in a separate sidecar process under the budget reconciliation rules that only require 51 Senate votes. David Gregory asked Ford what could be done to pass the Senate version of the bill through the House, not how to get the Senate to pass the Senate bill through reconciliation. Watch:
DAVID GREGORY:
Har– Harold Ford, you’ve been in Congress. This is also a question of process. Not just reconciliation, which again we’ll get to, (UNINTEL) budget measure. How do the no votes become yes votes in the House? There were 39 no votes among House Democrats. And there could be 11 more that become no over this abortion language, which you heard Secretary Sebelius suggest– address. How do they get the votes?HAROLD FORD JR.:
Two ways. First, you (UNINTEL)– Democrats in the Senate were able to convince some Senate Republicans. Scott Brown, Voinovich, Kit Bond, and a few others, to vote in favor of a jobs bill that Senator Hatch and Senator Schumer played a key role in putting together. You’ve got to find those areas and those instances where you can bring people over. I think E.J.’s points are well taken. The only challenge is, I think if there were votes for reconciliation. I know we’re gonna come to this in a few minutes.If there were votes for reconciliation, it probably would have already been done. So, the question is whether or not if there are not enough votes to pass by reconciliation, do you reach out to those Democrats or do you begin to reach out to some Republicans? When L.B.J. and the Senate Republican Leader Everett Dirksen worked to pass civil rights legislation, they worked together.
It may be that the President and the team now can find ways to bring a few Republicans over. And if you have to vote with the reconciliation vote, wouldn’t it be amazing if you lost a few Democrats and picked up a few Republicans? It might make it easier–
(OVERTALK) (ORRIN HATCH STARES AT FORD WITH BEMUSED ASTONISHMENT)
HAROLD FORD JR.:
I don’t think (UNINTEL) out of reach. Warren Buffet was on one of our sister networks. On NBC’s sister networks this week. And said, “Look, if plan A, meaning the status quo is what we would have to accept.” He’s not for that. If plan B is the only option, he would take it. Which is the Senate bill. But really a plan C is needed. It might be that a plan C, which is a reconciliation approach could be adopted, if we found ways to win some Republicans over, hold on to the core of Democrats, and pass a meaningful health reform here.
It looks for all the world like the Democrats have the votes to do reconciliation in the Senate. What’s not clear is whether we have the votes to pass the Senate bill in the House. Ford is either unaware of that or is pretending to be unaware of that. Moreover, his solution is to do something to convince a few Republicans to pass the bill through reconciliation, but the Senate has already passed their bill and the Republicans hate it. In order to amend it enough that a few Republicans would vote for it, they’d have to redo the whole bill through reconciliation, and only elements that have some impact on the budget can be changed that way. It sounds like Ford wants to say that the Democrats should just give up, start over with a clean sheet of paper, and pass whatever it is that a few Senate Republicans will support (the Republican talking points). But, instead, he recommends that the Democrats plough forward using the exact same reconciliation process that the Republicans are comparing to the Nuremberg Laws.
It’s hard to know to what degree this is disingenuous shilling and to what degree it is mule-headed stupidity.