There is a lot of anger today because the Senate Finance Committee rejected two public option amendments. I suppose it is valid to be pissed off at the Democrats who voted against the president’s agenda, but we’ve known this day was coming for nine months. The entire debate about health care this year has been predicated on the fact that the Finance Committee would never report out a bill with a public option. Everything the administration has said and done since the spring has been done with that unalterable inevitability in mind. It won’t mean much in the end, but this result might just allow Olympia Snowe to vote for the Finance bill, giving it a tiny sheen of bipartisanship. I don’t think we want that, however, because it will dampen the impression that the Republicans are united in opposition to the passage of any version of health reform. It would also give the Finance version of the bill a slight boost over the HELP version when it comes to time to meld them together for a vote on the floor of the Senate.
Regardless, the administration has known from the beginning that they would not a get a bill worth signing out of Finance. These votes are no more than window dressing and posturing. The single goal is to get something out of Finance and then meld it into something that can get 60 votes for cloture. It’s not even critical that the public option is in the melded bill. As long as it is in the House bill, it can get included during the Conference Committee. However, it is important that there is momentum for the public option (something HELP chairman Tom Harkin understands well).
The ideal situation from a parliamentary point of view is to include the HELP version of the public option in the base bill, and then force the opponents to strip it out with an amendment. But that might not work out for the best. For example, if the Senate has a knock-down drag-out fight over the public option and defeats it, it will be harder to get them to turn around and support it if it comes back at them in the Conference Report. The liberal majority in the Senate Democratic Caucus might be better served to save their ammunition. Pass whatever can pass without a lot of fuss and then fight like hell to include the House’s public option in the Conference Report. I could go either way on the strategy. The most important thing is that the progressives in the House hold firm in their pledge to vote against a Conference Report that doesn’t have a public option. They must make sure it is included in the House bill and they must prevail for its inclusion in the Report.
If they do, the only way they can fail is if there are Democrats (or Lieberman) in the Senate who will filibuster this at the end of the process. And, if that happens, we just go to the reconciliation process. I don’t sense that the administration is wobbly on this at all, although I’m sure they are plenty nervous. They are a lot of balls in the air at the moment, and anything can still go wrong.
I am more optimistic than Chris about the intentions of the major players, but I think his analysis is still pretty much spot on.
Obama has spent the strongest eight months of his administration and several tons of political capital in order to get a shitty, half-stepping healthcare bill.
Saving some of the billions going down the Iraq and Afghanistan sinkholes would have done us a lot more good.
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Nationalizing banks and financial institutions costing the taxpayer trillions. Talking about universal care … of the crooks on Wall Street.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."My imaginary hammer would find a lot of Senators’ fingers this morning after yesterday’s debacle. Kent Conrad and Maxie Baucus in particular would have a very difficult time in trying to cope with pulverized fingers after their display.
Grrr.
according to jane:
so there’s that.
then there’s harry reid, whose actions on FISA i believe are a good indicator of what goes down on health care: reid, as you’ll recall, deliberately moved the shitty FISA bill to the floor. is there any doubt he’ll favor a bill without a public option considering his recent statements?
Sorry guys: I’ll try to wave my balloon and be optimistic, but i think we’re getting fucked, “the Sun Tsu strategy of “formlessness” notwithstanding.
the punchline is that should the democrats lose ground in 2010, they will almost certainly say they were not responsive enough to conservative concerns. you can see THAT excuse coming a mile away.
I think Chris Bowers is right on this:
See? There aren’t 60 votes for a public option, which makes reconciliation impossible, because you need 60 votes to block all Republican points of order. Are Baucus, Lieberman, Lincoln, or Conrad going to vote down multiple Republican attempts to block this bill when they won’t vote for it in the end?
Don’t be naive! They will probably be absent for the floor votes and let the bill stall. It will fail a floor vote, they’ll all say “the bill can’t pass with a public option, so strip it out” and that will be that.
The desperate search for “bi-partisanship” is why Baucus made a complete ASS of himself for months chasing after the Republicans on his “gang of 6” saying in effect “please give me a fig-leaf! Something!” They’re desperate to sell out to the insurance lobby, but can’t, because Republicans won’t play ball with them!
Conrad has meanwhile raised the bar even higher, saying any bill that can’t win 65 votes (i.e. ANY bill since Republicans won’t vote for any bill) isn’t “legitimate.”
Thus, the futile efforts to craft a useless bill with triggers designed never to trigger, that Olympia Snowe might possibly vote for. (Only she won’t. She’ll play Lucy to fumbling Baucus and Obama’s Charlie Brown).
Conrad, Lincoln and Baucus, will find reasons to vote against any bill with a public option. Period. The insurance industry hates it. Ergo it’s out.
Obama will then come out and demand that progressives fold and vote for his piece of garbage health care bill with mandates and no choice. A nice big giveaway to the insurance industry. And they’ll fold like they always do.
Even the prospect of being crushed in the 2010 election won’t make them stand up and fight back. Not one progressive will dare vote down the President’s “signature agenda.”
We’ll get an utter piece of garbage that Olympia Snowe will demand, but ultimately will refuse to vote for, and Conrad, Lieberman, Lincoln and Baucus will ultimately grumble and support.
The American people will ALL hate it with a passion of course. And Democrats will wring their hands and say “we did the best we could.” Privately, they’ll all be pleased Obama ultimately didn’t make them cross the insurance lobby by drawing a line in the sand and demanding a public option.
Then after Democrats are crushed in 2010 they’ll blame the base: “liberals pushed us too hard on the public option the American people didn’t support!” (The 65% support levels for a bill WITH a public option will be conveniently fogotten and ignored).
Well, both you and Chris have some facts wrong.
The Budget Committee has nothing to do with melding the HELP and Finance bills. And the only points of order that we need 60 votes to overcome in reconciliation are the ones that the parliamentarian sustains. As for you, you’ve confused Conrad and Ben Nelson.