A nice catch by David Waldman. Evan Bayh assured us that the caucus could control Lieberman back when he endorsed letting the Connecticut senator keep his committee chairs. Now that the time is approaching for the caucus to exert that control, in order to get cloture for the health care bill, Bayh says it would be wrong to try to force someone to facilitate legislation that they don’t agree with. The worst part? He’s talking about himself.
When I gamed this out during the spring and summer, I came to the conclusion that the president wouldn’t get any health care bill at the 60-vote threshold, even one that was badly watered down. But, for appearances sake and as a matter of strategy, he had to give an honest try. For me, that was what all the nonsense with the Finance Committee and the Gang of Six was all about. But, despite winning over Olympia Snowe, the challenge of reaching 60 votes has always been about a few corporate whores in the Democratic caucus. I will name them: Joe Lieberman, Tom Carper, Evan Bayh (all former chairmen of the Democratic Leadership Council), Kent Conrad, Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, and (possibly) Mary Landrieu. None of these senators wants to enact the health care plan that the president ran on. And, without their support for cloture, we simply cannot pass a good health care bill in the Senate. It’s easy to apply a shithammer’s worth of pressure on a single wayward senator, but it’s a lot harder to deal with a bloc of corporate shills.
Therefore, I had assumed that the effort to reach 60 votes would fail. But we are right in the thick of the end game now. Never before has a health care bill of this scope passed through all the congressional committees that have jurisdiction. There is a lot of momentum for passing a bill through regular order. If the effort fails, the Senate wants to be able to blame the House, and vice-versa. The progressives want to blame the centrists, and vice-versa. The Democrats and the White House want to blame the Republicans, and vice-versa.
It’s this blame game that will do the most to imperil final passage. House Progressives seem resolved to force through a bill that has a robust public option. Senate centrists seem resolved to block any bill that has a robust public option, or any public option at all. Harry Reid and the White House want a public option, but Reid doesn’t want to get blamed if he can’t get 60 votes.
There are three big speed humps, or votes. The House has to pass a bill. The Senate has to pass a bill. And then those two bills have to be melded into one Conference Report, and passed again by both houses. Reid and Pelosi have a decision to make. As it stands now, they are both poised to pass bills that are incompatible with each other. They can try to bridge the divide now, as they craft their respective bills, or they can try to bridge the divide in the Conference Committee that has the responsibility of reconciling the two bills.
If this process is going to succeed in producing health care reform at the 60-vote threshold, a grand compromise has to be reached at some point. The Schumer Opt-Out Plan might be the best solution.
If, on the other hand, the House passes a bill and successfully insists on a robust public option in the Conference Committee, and the thing dies from a Senate filibuster that is joined by a few Democratic senate whores, then it will be a big blow that will do a lot of damage to the momentum for reform. As I said in my summer analysis, which foresaw this as the likeliest outcome, the whole thing will be an ugly mess. Even the alternative, where House Progressives vote down the Conference Report, as they have promised to do if it doesn’t contain a robust public option, would be a car wreck.
The only way to avoid this chaos is for the White House to use all the tools at their disposal to either get cloture in the Senate or break the will of the House progressives. In truth, going the latter route would require a lot of pressure on liberal senators, too. The decision should be an easy one, despite the unpleasantness of it all. The White House should fight for the plan they campaigned on. And, if they fail, they should use the reconciliation process and just deal with the ugly fallout.
you also said the president will get his up or down vote on health care reform. still stand by that one?
the democrats may WANT to blame the republicans if reform fails, but that’s not going to work because it won’t be the republicans fault. As greenwald wrote so pithily:
this is wrt gay rights, but it applies here too. if any democrats think people will believe them when they move the goalposts AGAIN, I think they are in for a rude awakening. The public KNOWS the democrats have a filibuster proof majority. And they KNOW the democrats have promised health care reform for years. and they will not be amused to find they’ve been punked, again, by their own party.
to put it mildly, i do not share your optimism. i am happy to be proved wrong. I do not think i will be.
What’s Greenwald’s solution ?
They will be moving forward on the DADT repeal in the coming weeks from the last heard/read reports.
it’s not a problem/solution piece. he’s describing a pattern of excuses the democrats use to avoid “controversial” legislation.
which, by the way is a word reid used to describe the health care conference. he doesn’t want anything “controversial” in there.
gee, what could he mean by that?
yeah just like they promised that Gitmo would be closed by January – last I checked that isn’t going to happen now
OBOMBA is full of promises er sorry LIES – he’s just another bought out Corporatist HACK
I think I said that for the first time all year I thought he might succeed in getting an up or down vote. That is because he has 60 votes in the caucus now. That either wasn’t, or wasn’t really, the case until Kirk replaced Kennedy.
i don’t have the time to go through all the archives, but as i recall, you made a firm and clear statement. “the president’s getting his upper down vote.”
you were quite adamant at the time. i may be wrong. this predated kennedy’s death by more than a few months.
I think you are wrong.
The reason I think that is because I cannot remember thinking that was likely. Even now, I am not sure it is better than a 50-50 bet, but it is at least something I can see happening.
But, over the course of a year I may have had more mood changes than I remember.
I might be wrong. as i recall though, your comment was a kind of snotty response to HCR naysayers. kind of the opposite of my standard “happy to be wrong but i’m not.”
in any event, my skepticism remains about the ultimate passage of a worthwhile bill.
as always, i will be happy to be proved wrong, and i mean that: I WANT the democrats to pass a strong health care reform package. i just don’t think they will because they are owned by the corporations that fund their campaigns.
Your statement was:
“In other words, Obama is going to get an up or down vote on his health care plan. “
Here is the URL:
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2009/4/1/12476/33126
thank you.
bookmarked for future reference.
i hope you’re right booman. And if you are, i will buy you a case of whatever beer you like, up to $60.00
But if I’m right, and we don’t get a real public option…
right with ya! I can’t count the times that i have let down by the political crap that has been used as an excuse.
i’ll tell you this- this is the last time for me. 72 is old enough and i have the scars to prove it.
100% agreed – the Democrats are a 100% Corporatist part led by Mr 100% Corporatist Barack Obama
There is one more speed bump. The Senate must merge the HELP Committee bill and the Finance Committee bill.
I would not prejudge what comes out of that effort.
The Senate and House bills might not be as diametrically opposed as folks are expecting.
Those who want to kill the public option want to do it without their fingerprints being on the scene.
Hey, Booman, did you see this one yet:
Schumer/Leahy Take on Insurance Antitrust Exemption
That’s a new twist… maybe they really will pass it — or maybe use that as leverage against resisting the public option… who knows? Or maybe the Dems have looked up “spine” on Wikepedia and think they’d like to try some of that?
Buy ’em off. Whatever it takes, just buy them.
Wouldn’t that be fraud — buying what somebody else already paid for?
Think of it as an auction.
I don’t think the failure of the bill, either to get 60 in the Senate or to pass muster with Progressives in the House, would be some nightmare scenario. Only if the Obama WH views it that way. It would just show that reconciliation is the only way to get it done. They should be fully prepared for that outcome, they shouldn’t be afraid of it, and they should use that possibility to get Democratic senators to vote for cloture.
Just tell them that the Public Option is going to pass with or without them. But if it passes without them, if they actually join a GOP filibuster, they should not expect any favors from the party or the president.
Don’t promise them too much — I don’t want to see Obama endorsing Lieberman’s reelection and raising money for him — but just make sure that a futile act of resistance will be punished.
I really hope such hardball tactics are NOT used against Progressives. They are actually fighting to prevent this bill from being a worthless and unpopular failure. If you are going to fight, fight for the good bill this time.
I’m wondering if it is still too early to push in their chips. I have to think about it some more. One scenario is to keep going with the wishy-washiness on the public option in order to get something passed in the Senate, and a public option passed in the House. And then push all their chips in in the Conference Committee. But I think that risks empowering the centrists too much. Susan Collins is now talking about supporting a bill that lacks even a trigger. I think the best thing to do is go all-in right now. But it’s a damn close call, and they may opt to keep the ball and momentum rolling.
As I’ve said here several times before, I’ve been of the opinion throughout the summer and fall that Obama and his team have anticipated things playing out more or less the way they stand now, and that their anticipation of all this explains their patterns of behavior along the way as nothing else does. They were counting votes in the spring, and calculating the implications of small variations in the count all along. This would explain their position on Specter and Lieberman, and Rahm’s imploring progressives to lay off Ben Nelson and other Republicrats. Evan Bayh and others worry me, but I think extreme pressure will be privately brought to bear against them.
For the first time in quite a while, as far as I’m concerned, Lawrence O’Donnell put forward something substantive last night on Keith when he revealed that in a private conversation with Kent Conrad, Conrad told him that his opposition to the Public Option was, plain and simple, because it would literally put a majority of hospitals in ND out of business, an obviously unintended consequence of the PO in a state with a tiny population (this may apply to a handful of others as well). This could be fixed, according to O’Donnell, with an amendment that specifically deals with and protects states whose systems are outside the norm. This of course would explain (though not necessarily excuse) Conrad’s somewhat inexplicable positions throughout the debate.
Another thing from Keith last night: the rhetorical question he posed about why Obama would specifically mention and praise Snowe while ignoring someone like Rockefeller who’s done so much heavy lifting is simple: Obama is, and has been, concerned with shaping the opinion of the wider public, not preaching to the choir. It has been fundamental to his strategy that at every opportunity he could be shown to be seeking bi-partisanship, to better protect himself when, down the road, he has to play hardball to ram this through.
As far as I’m concerned, Booman has it right and has been analyzing things correctly for a while now. And as he points out, there are still a number of ways this can play out. I happen to think the White House anticipated all of this, that they’ve played their cards awfully well considering the complexity of the process and the vehemence of the opposition from day one, and I think they’re fully prepared for several contingencies. I am very optimistic that their goal all along has been to hold back, not go for any short-term political gain, let this play out to more or less where it is now, AND THEN GET THE MOST PROGRESSIVE BILL, PUBLIC OPTION INCLUDED, THAT’S HUMANLY POSSIBLE IN THE CESSPOOL OF A POLITICAL WORLD WE INHABIT. The political benefits, and most importantly the benefits to the vast majority of American citizens, will be enormous if they can pull this off.
Bayh said this morning that he talked with the President in person last night and they both agreed that pressure needs to be put on certain groups within the party. I have a good idea whom the certain groups are and I bet they don’t include any group that counts Corporatist Bayh as a member.
.
A second Republican suggested she’s open to reaching a bipartisan consensus on overhauling the nation’s health care system, but set several conditions for her support.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said “there simply is no question that our nation’s health care system requires substantial reform.”
Maine’s senior senator, Olympia Snowe, was the only Republican on the Senate Finance Committee to back a Democratic-authored plan. Snowe warned, though, that her vote was no sure thing in the weeks ahead, as the legislation goes through changes.
Collins praised Snowe, and said the Finance Committee measure “represents a substantial improvement over the costly and flawed alternative approved by the Senate Health Committee as well as the House bills.” The two committee’s bills are to be merged into one, and then considered by the full Senate.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."An optics thing: we need to do everything we can to change the terminology from “not supporting cloture” to the reality: “filibustering with the Republicans to prevent a vote on healthcare for all Americans”. That’s not spin, it’s fact. Any Dem senator who fails to vote for cloture is joining the Republican filibuster. We should make it an immediate priority to do everything we can to get that phraseology through to the media and the politicians that are on our side.
Aside from that, I’m getting really sick of hearing about how we don’t want Dems to behave like Republicans are threatening to behave toward Snowe. Yes we do. There’s no excuse for not using the power of the majority to allow the majority to prevail. To vote to shut down debate and prevent a vote is to join the GOP’s attempt to kill, by a minority veto, a defining Democratic priority. Senators should be free to vote their
bankrollsconsciences on actual bills. They have no business joining a Republican minority to abort a vote. When they do, they cease to be Democrats.We’ve heard all the whining from the Bayh babies about the “big tent” and “coercion”, blablabla, but that’s total bullshit. Nobody’s coercing them to vote for the bill, just to caucus with the party on procedural matters. If they don’t want to be Democrats, let them try surviving on their own. They are less than useless to the party — they not only obstruct Democratic priorities by joining the GOP in sleazy parliamentary trickery, they weaken the real Democrats who will be blamed for losing a popular reform. If they can’t separate themselves from the GOP, we’re truly better off without them.
I think the opt-out idea could be an acceptable cover to allow the corporate podpeople to at least support their party on a procedural matter. That’s all that’s being asked of them.
If they insist on joining the GOP obstructionists anyway, it seems to me there are two good options for the Dem leadership:
1 — Make it clear and convincing that they will henceforth be treated like the party they voted with when it comes to committee assignments and party support in primary and general elections. The Democratic Party does not assign chairmanships or leadership positions to Republicans, nor does it support their electoral bids.
2 — Let the filibuster run as long as it takes. Schedule popular bills on Social Security, transportation, military funding, etc. such that they can’t be acted on because of the filibuster. Announce daily that they, along with healthcare reform, are being held up by a filibuster being conducted by the Republicans and the following Democratic senators….
We’ll hear all about how this will divide and weaken the party, etc. The fact is that it will only lift the curtain on what’s already the status quo. A convincing threat to cull the strays will do much to prevent either of the nuclear options from having to happen. All they really need is cover. Any damage to party prospects from enforcing discipline is insignificant compared to the destruction that will follow a loss due to weak-willed capitulation. There have been few moments in history that presented a party with such a vivid choice between a triumphant future and a helpless slide to irrelevancy. The moral and pragmatic path could not be more obvious.
I agree.
The choice is quite stark. And, if the centrists get their way, ironically, they’ll be the first to go down to defeat. But it won’t be for lack of corporate donations to their campaign.
Notice you mentioned that Carper, Bayh and Lieberman were members of the DLC
There’s this other fella who was also part of that “delightful body” – one Rahm emmanuel…….remind me again where he’s employed now and who put him in that position ???
Facts are that much as you want to blame the Senate etc for the mess on HRC – as much of the blame lies with Obama but the Obama worshippers will never accept that
Notice that Obama was arm twisting and pushing for his war funding / pushing and arm twisting for the money to bail out his bankster buddies at the bansk he promised he would never allow to fail but for HRC he stays out of it……easy to see where his priorities are
The better question is why is Evan Bayh such an asshat? Obama won Indiana for cryin’ out loud!! It’s ain’t fuckin’ Dan Quayle country anymore. Do your father proud Evan!! Stop being such a pantywaist.
Probably the same reason that Rahm Emmanuel is such an asshat – what election is Rahmbo facing again……..oh yeah bu then he’s too worried that his BlueDog buddies (mention no names HEath Shuler, Jim Cooper, Melissa BEan etc) might be primaried
” 60 votes or nothing” — a fear-driven strategy
… “If this process is going to succeed in producing health care reform at the 60-vote threshold” …
This from-the-start assumption that 60 votes are all-important strikes me as thoroughly bizarre. What sound reason supported it?
I don’t for the life of me understand how a party such as the Republican Party, after having produced so many and so humiliating disasters over their recent tenure in the White House and Congress, can continue to inspire such dread of open opposition from the Obama White House.
For a supposedly bloodied, wrecked and discredited bunch, the Republicans somehow continue to exact from Democrats wonders of fear-driven “respect” for what they might suffer if they dare to “cross” Republicans. The all-important search for 60 votes seems to assume that it would be just terrible if the Republicans took up a filibuster of the health-care reform bill (such as it is). What I don’t understand is, why? Shouldn’t Democrats find much useful public instruction in the spectacle of a Republican filibuster of what’s supposed to be (and certainly ought_ to be) an immensely popular bill?
Can someone please explain to me how threats of such a filibuster are rightly to be dreaded and avoided at all costs? I admit that, at this late date, this is a purely academic question, but the value of it has every good reason to be applied in other legislative battles.
Please, would someone explain how it has supposedly helped from any reasonable view of Obama’s intentions that Republicans are now clearly aware that Obama dares not tread into any territory where a Republican filibuster is alive and at large?
This is from a story in today’s edition of The Hill, see at this link:
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/63165-pelosi-seeks-centrist-support-for-liberal-public-option-plan
#
Pelosi seeks centrist support for liberal public-option healthcare proposal
By Mike Soraghan – 10/14/09 08:23 PM ET
Question, dear citizen policy-analysts,
“What’s wrong with this picture?”
Does anything “jump out at you”?
Let’s look a [A], above, first. Suppose you put yourself in the position of these Democrats who don’t want any “public option”. From that point of view, how swept away are you by the Speaker’s argument/”offer”/proposition, namely, that “if House Democrats pass the public option liberals support, they [i.e. these same House Democrats] could ultimately have the more centrist version of the provision when the final bill is hashed out in conference with senators”.
In their place, Id find it impossible to avoid asking myself (and the Speaker,) “What exactly does that mean, “could ultimately have the more centrist version”? Does it mean “might have it in the end”? Does it mean, “Well, you know, you never can tell what will happen in conference committee”? It sounds to me a little like Speaker Pelosi is proposing what resembles asking a young woman for her virginity with the assurance that later, if she should change her mind, she can always “have it back”. is it me or is there something about the Speaker’s reasoning that just doesn’t make sense at all? For myself, if I were in these “Centrists” Democrats’ place, and the Speaker, who I clearly understood wanted in the end to wind up with “the public option liberals support,” I find such a proposition as absurd as it was insulting to my intelligence. And, excuse me, but, I really don’t think these “Centrists” are that stupid in light of their expressed skepticism. So, is this the level of negotiating sophistication we’re condemned to with this Speaker? How can I escape reaching that view? How can you?
Now consider with me the next item, [B]. I’m prepared to extend to Senator Snowe the benefit of any doubt regarding her sincerity in wanting to have some possibility of a ‘fall-back’ public option in case—or, as it’s expressed in the report’s copy, “But Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) has shown support for triggering a public option if certain requirements laid out by Congress are not met.” I’m at first blush inclined to grant that she’s sincere in this. On the other hand, there’s another way of seeing such a “generous offer”. Look, unless I’m mistaken in my reading of the Constitution–and case law as it is interpreted—there is really nothing which would necessarily preclude any state which saw fit to create such an alternative public-option health program from doing so by act of the state’s legislature. [I grant that the U.S. Congress could, if it chose to, pre-empt or prohibit that course by passing legislation (under the interstate commerce clause’s authority) which forbid states from taking such measures, but as far as I’m aware, they have not done this.] Indeed, isn’t it the case already that Massachusetts has established a health reform plan of its own which goes some way toward establishing what is being sought through the Congressional reform effort?
If I’m correct in this, then, again, is it just me or aren’t Democrats “bargaining over” something [namely this “triggering a public option if certain requirements laid out by Congress are not met”] which is “theirs” already? Suppose the Democrats refused to “give away” anything “in return” for the supposedly prized possibility for a triggered public-option? What, exactly, would prevent states from adopting such a plan on their own initiative? One could argue that it’s “better to have this triggered public-option in a piece of national legislation which of course applies to the entire country”. But it seems to me that this claim that “it’s better” depends very much on what precisely is “given away” in return for the privilege of what various states could do on their own initiative anyway.
In [A], just as in [B], above, I’m filled with the apprehension that the Democrats, all around, both Congressional and White House, have shown themselves to be amazingly poor negotiators and bargainers, offering, in one case, as serious propositions what even a child could regard as a truly bum deal and, in another, bargaining away something in return for something else which, in the final analysis, is available in another form anyway.
Excuse me, but shouldn’t we expect and get “Major League” talent and results instead of “Little League” amateurism? If this were a court case, I fire our lawyer and sue him or her for malpractice!!! After eight years of being bloodied by the Bush/Cheney experience, I really expect better than this from the Democrats. Suppose they start acting like these issues are really tremendously serious and important ones, huh?
federal subsidies cannot be obtained without federal appropriations and (usually) regulations. So, yeah, states can set up their own health care exchanges. But they can’t expect to get money for them.
I really wonder if federal subsidies are essential in all state’s cases. Granted that in states with quite small populations there is probably not a large enough “pool” of insured to allow the state to devise an “opt-out” program without some outside support.
On the other hand, take California, our Speaker’s own state. With a ( 2008 est. / Source: U.S. Census Bureau; http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06000.html ) population of 36.7 million, and an estimated uninsured population of 6.6 million, (2008 / source, California Health Care Foundation; “And because of California’s large population, the number of people without insurance — 6.6 million — is the highest of any state.”; http://www.chcf.org/topics/healthinsurance/index.cfm?itemID=133820 ) it seems to me entirely feasible to arrange a “public option plan” of its own–provided, of course, that the same forces which are preventing that from happening in Washington, D.C. are somehow defeated in California. Without intending to minimize that difficulty, much less take such a success for granted, the point here is that, if they ever took it into their heads to do so, the state legislature of California could make it known to the their public that the only things that prevent them from establishing a state-wide single-payer universal coverage system are the obstacles and resistances which the health-care industries’ lobbies pose. Given, too, that in California, there’s a lively practice of public referenda initiatives, it seems all the more odd that the people of the state continue to suffer with nearly 18% of their public medically uninsured. That situation entails various health risks for the entire state—just consider, for example, the additional risks and costs from uninsured’s exposure to infectious diseases for which they remain untreated. Why not treat them, insure them, cover them, for crying out loud?!?
Are we really doing all that is possible in pointing out the risks on one hand and the possible benefits on the other, with all that this means in various imaginative alternatives which circumvent hide-bound and corrupted political processes? I wonder.
In Pelosi’s case, I’d propose to those “offering” a triggered “opt-out” plan in exchange for some concession demanded of the Democrats, “Well, in California, I intend to help push for such a plan whatever happens in the conference committee bills, so, do you have anything to offer which we can’t try doing for ourselves anyway at the state level?”
Or does that seem too hard to imagine for her?