Harry Reid does his best Rodney King impression from the Senate floor.
“I want everyone within the sound of my voice to understand that Washington is being driven by a small number of people on that side of the aisle that are preventing us from doing things that help the American people,” Reid said. “We’re not trying to run over people with the 60 votes we have. We want to work with people. We want to get along.”
But Reid lost the vote on the Medicare physician fee schedule 47-53, with 13 Democrats voting against cloture. No Republicans voted with him, so isn’t a bit embarrassing for Reid to suggest that he trusted the AMA’s word that they could get twenty-seven Republican votes? He has Dick Durbin, the Majority Whip, to count votes for him. It’s especially hard to believe when we’re getting this 11-Dimensional Chess spin from The Hill:
If the Senate did not vote on the doctors’ fix this week, the aide explained, a lawmaker could offer it as an amendment to the broader healthcare bill. That would serve as a poison-pill amendment because Obama has set a $900 billion limit on healthcare reform legislation and the doctors’ fix would add hundreds of billions more to the price tag.
“If this amendment passed, it would jeopardize final passage of health reform. And given Republicans’ strong opposition to health reform, it is entirely possible they would have voted for this amendment,” said the aide.
“We have taken the steam out of this issue and defused any efforts to use this amendment to blow up healthcare,” the staffer added.
So, on the one hand, Reid argues that the Republicans are just being obstructionists, and on the other hand, he’s saying that he duped them into voting against the bill so they couldn’t vote for it as part of the health care reform bill. My understanding, though, is that Reid wanted to pass the physician fee amendment to win support for a public option tied to Medicare rates from rural Democrats who think the reimbursement rates are too low. He just wanted to pass it as a stand alone so it wouldn’t add cost to the CBO’s score of the health care bill.
So, who knows what really happened here?
I’ll bet i know: it’s called “incompetence”.
And not only that. The quoted staffer is pulling a story out his * .
He wanted to call Kent Conrad (and others’) bluff about the Medicare reimbursement rates being why they were against a Medicare + 5% public option. Notice how these advocates of providers in rural areas voted. Against the interests that they’ve been using as an excuse.
I found it a very helpful vote for clarifying where people stand. We now know there are five squishy votes for a public option in that 52 Harkin talks about. We know which other Democrats don’t want to deal with reality. And we know that the AMA now knows that they can no longer trust GOP commitments.
That it was helpful doesn’t mean that that was the strategy. But it does clarify who Durbin and Reid must work on.
Would you vote to add nearly 300 billion to the deficit on a cloture motion that isn’t passing? I don’t think it clarifies much at all.
Apparently 47 Democrats thought so. They needed no more than 49 for it to fail if not passing it was the point.
And adding $300 billion to the deficit over what time period?
That’s assuming that you’re right that the whole purpose of it was to fail on cloture with Republican votes so Reid could say to the AMA, “Sorry, we tried, but your guys didn’t come through.” Come to think of it, that was exactly what happened.
And look for it to reappear in the healthcare reform bill but in the form of the MedPAC advisory committee. But that version would probably require a one-year deferral of SGR to bridge to the new system. And in that case, the cost is buried in the total bill and most likely would come out to be much less than $300 billion.
But it gave folks like Conrad, Nelson, Landrieu, Lieberman, and Lincoln the opportunity to generate some soundbites to cover for the fact that they are going to stand aside and let healthcare reform with a strong public option pass. They’re down to dickering over the opt-in or opt-out or do it straight negotiating.
I’m not following you. It was a cloture vote (60 to pass).
I didn’t say I thought it was an intentional failure. I don’t think that.
I see where you are going with your argument, but I don’t buy it. I think the idea was that they could mollify moderates in both the House and Senate by paying the doctors more in their districts. It was supposed to be a quid pro quo for their vote in favor of a robust public option tied to medicare rates.
You’re saying that they wanted to demonstrate the impossibility of making that compromise. Maybe. That’s above my chess-playing ability.
I have no idea what the intent was. But there were seemingly a lot of games going on — AMA, GOP, Conservadems, Harry Reid, Kent Conrad
But despite the intent, it clarified the fact that Conrad and the Conservadems are not really concerned about provider rates. It clarified that the GOP will betray the AMA in order to be the party of “No”. It clarified the fact that 47 Dems will follow Harry Reid into a vote that could be used against them as “tax and spenders”. And it clarified that the AMA lacks the clout to get this passed.
I agree that it was probably intended as a quid pro quo for the moderates, but now all of a sudden deficits are more important than provider rates. Exactly the opposite of the position in the markups.
Will the folks that broke on this vote also join the Republicans in a filibuster of a bill with a strong public option? That’s 13 Democrats, not 8.
“Would you vote to add nearly 300 billion to the deficit on a cloture motion that isn’t passing? I don’t think it clarifies much at all.”
It was a procedural vote (on the floor, mind you). Some Democrats voted for it, and others against. Now why would that happen?–especially when there are what can hardly be described as other than very reasonable (by the standards of Washington politics) Democrats on both sides–i.e. those that voted in favor and those voting against.
I’d hazard this guess: the Democrats voting “Yea” had all their major concerns on this matter heard and attended to, while, those voting “Nay”, such as Feingold and his colleague, Kohl, couldn’t say the same for their concerns. So, having been given short shrift, (as my hunch goes,) they voted against a procedural motion which would have allowed the train to leave the station and go on its merry way. This can be seen, then, as a way of getting the leadership’s attention and reminding them that there are some people who don’t think all the kinks have been ironed out as best they might be and that—guess what?!—maybe the leadership needs the votes of those members (of their OWN party, Mr. Reid.)
Such a view gives at least a plausible account for why Democrats divided on the motion while Republicans, seeing no real partisan interest in seeing the procedural vote pass, weren’t divided.
As for the deficit, I wonder: when did deficits become so terribly important to these Republicans, hmmm? After all, they’re almost the very same bunch who batted not an eyelash when a certain high official (Pop Quiz: which high official?) said, “Deficits don’t matter!” because, at that time, their party was running the dog-and-pony show.
Here are the questions which continue to stump me:
Not so very long ago, Republicans ran the government and did so often by determining issues during meetings held at times and places of which they didn’t even bother to inform their Democrat opponents. They also were conspicuous in their flagrant disregard for deficits. How about that!? Since they were setting the spending priorities, apparently, as one of them said, pithily, “Deficits don’t matter!”.
So, my question: Why are Democrats running scared on that score now? Do the Republicans really get to so terrify the Democrats that they can literally have things both ways?—denouncing deficits when the Democrats are in power and shrugging them off when they, the Republicans, are in power? This is smart political work? Or in the public interest? Or, in any other sense defensible?, respectable?, reasonable? Why?
Second, could someone please explain to me how a plan which has as a provision a clause which allows all the states to “opt out of it” is in reality some sort of great plan to which the word “progress” may be applied? I still haven’t heard the explanation for why anyone’s and everyone’s being allowed to “opt out” is somehow not just a grand thing but something to be proud of.
thanks.
“We have taken the steam out of this issue and defused any efforts to use this amendment to blow up healthcare,” the staffer added.
Well then, it’s full steam ahead now that things have been diffused.
It actually sounds like the spinning of poor planning.
“So, who knows what really happened here?”
The overarching problem is that the answer, no matter how you look it at, is “Not Harry Reid”.
using 11 dimensional chess and harry reid in the same sentence is an oxymoron of the first caliber. the only thing it clarifies is how dismal a strategist, and subsequently, impotent majority leader he really is…certainly not new news to those who’ve paying attention.
this should have been a slam dunk as they’ve passed similar bills every year to this effect in the past. reid got set up and rose to the bait as usual.
as for the ama, as an organization, they have no interest in seeing a public option succeed regardless of what nearly 3/4 of physicians support when polled. truth be known, they may have been acutely aware of, and involved with the scam going in.
it also exposes a rather wide schism within the caucus, and begs the question whether durbin’s whip count of 52 votes for the public option is worth the paper it’s written on.
Maybe Durbin’s way of stabbing Reid in the back? I don’t know otherwise. Because it begs the question of why Reid brought this up for a vote. Did Reid really rely on the AMA and not Durbin to whip this vote?
if anybody was being stabbed it was reid knifing durbin…assuming durbin had told him he didn’t have the votes. ergo, reid obviously relied on the veracity of the ama in the interest of bipartisanship no doubt…which, as it turned out, wasn’t such a smooth move.
we’ll never know, but, like boo, l don’t believe this was an intentional failure. it was a serious fuck up that they’re desperately trying to spin as strategy…total BS.
the d senate caucus is in serious disarray.
It’s up to almost $58K
http://www.actblue.com/page/harryreidad
Kevin Drum explains it perfectly:
“I see today that the legislation to do away with the annual ritual of pretending to cut doctors’ pay has failed. So instead we’ll just keep on pretending. Ain’t politics grand?”
In this case, everyone gets to look good because they can vote to note cut doctor’s pay every year or two. Why give up optics like that?
At least, that’s what I’m taking from it.