There never was any chance that the Senate would pass a robust public option (pegged to Medicare reimbursement rates) in the original bill that they would seek to merge with the House bill. In fact, no one I know thought that the Senate would pass any form of a public option in their original bill. If there was going to be a public option, it was going to be added in the Conference Report, and the impetus for it would be from the House legislation. Unfortunately, it turned out that even the House cannot pass a robust public option. That makes their negotiating stance with the Senate weaker. But, all is not lost. Harry Reid made up for the House’s weakness by strengthening the Senate’s hand. He included a public option in the base Senate bill, meaning that it will take 60 votes to take it out. But, in making such a decision, Reid put health care reform at risk. He needs 60 votes for cloture, and that means that he needs all 60 members of his caucus to give him the procedural votes required to overcome filibusters. Joe Lieberman is a member of that caucus, and he needs to be on board.
Sen. Joe Lieberman has reached a private understanding with Majority Leader Harry Reid that he will not block a final vote on healthcare reform, according to two sources briefed on the matter.
The unpredictable Democrat-turned-Independent last week publicly stated he would join Republicans in filibustering the Democratic legislation after Reid (D-Nev.) announced he had included a government-run health insurance plan in the bill.
But sources said Reid’s staff is telling liberal interest groups that Lieberman (Conn.) has assured Reid he will vote with Democrats in the necessary procedural vote to end debate, perhaps with intentions to change the bill.
The only reason that Lieberman would cave on this issue is if Reid had threatened his committee chairs. So, good on Reid. He may trust Joe Lieberman, but he seems to know when to give him a good poke, just to be sure.
I’ll be impressed if Reid actually did make that threat…
Reid’s senate seat is on the line. he surely did make that threat.
Lieberman, at the end of the day, is a punk-ass chump.
Half the time I think Reid is a chump too, but at least he’s right on this one.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
But yes — threatening a committee chair is the best way to get the votes of these people. Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln, etc. Hopefully Reid is using such tactics to get the job done and avoiding looking foolish.
I’m still waiting for Reid to put an end to the filibuster. Just use the nuclear option and get shit done for chrissakes. It’s unbelievable how slow the Senate moves when a determined minority filibusters everything.
“But, all is not lost. Harry Reid made up for the House’s weakness by strengthening the Senate’s hand. He included a public option in the base Senate bill, meaning that it will take 60 votes to take it out. But, in making such a decision, Reid put health care reform at risk. He needs 60 votes for cloture, and that means that he needs all 60 members of his caucus to give him the procedural votes required to overcome filibusters.”
As one recent news report of the back-and-forth between the “White House” (i.e. Obama) and the Senate (i.e. Reid) put it, summing it up, the whole dispute between them turned around who among Democrats precisely—the White House or the Congress—was going to shoulder the “blame for passing a bill without any public option in it”. Neither the White House nor the Senate or House Democrats want that responsibility in the eyes of the public.
But it seems that they’d recognized that in one way or another, in the rather likely event that a public option couldn’t pass and would have to be removed or, failing that, the whole bill would have to be sacrificed, somebody was going to have to bear responsibility for removing the now-included-to-much-fanfare public option.
Do you see what the Republicans may have done?
Rather than walk into the patently preposterous kinds of disingenuous “deals” you’ve described here as the strategy of the Democrats, the Republicans have, rather cleverly, it seems to me, turned the tables on the Democrats and given them an untenable position—which they seem to have taken.
It seems now that the Democrats are faced with a no-win decision. Either remove the public option which they were so proud of themselves for getting into the legislation (somehow, apparently, Pelosi on the House side and Reid on the Senate side can simply achieve this by fiat!) over the “opposition” of the Republicans or, when the final vote on the passage of the conference bill comes–on the floor of the House and Senate as a whole, to see that go down to defeat.
As a strategy goes for beating the Democrats’ best-laid plans to get a public option in the sneaky way, I have to say, this is devilishly clever of the Republicans. It appears that they may not only succeed in scuttling the bill altogether but, into the bargain, also achieve the amazing bonus of making it look as though its the fault of the Democrats for having insisted on including elements which “couldn’t pass” through the committee and floor votes—as you yourself have repeatedly admitted here, most recently in the copy above.
So, rather than ” Harry Reid ma[king] up for the House’s weakness by strengthening the Senate’s hand[.] [when] He included a public option in the base Senate bill,…” he actually weakened it, if the arguments you’ve been insisting on for weeks now make or made any sense. And that is precisely because it “mean[s] that it will take 60 votes to take it out” and, therefore, only the Democrats can “do that”.
I’m now expecting to hear from you that the Democrats hopelessly botched things up when they ignored your advice and went off half-cocked—by doing what? By doing exactly what you claim here today is a “strengthening” of the Senate’s “hand”. Later, if the conference bill fails on final passage, you’ll need to blame that on the hapless mismanagement of the Democrats, claiming that they failed to get done what they might have achieved if they’d worked at it sensibly; in other words, you’ll claim, because you can’t bear to admit the alternative, that the system didn’t work, the Democrats botched the job, and it could’ve and should’ve been done differently and better.
What’s that “alternative” view that you can’t bear to accept? It’s the standard view which the Republicans will have in the event the bill finally fails: the system didn’t “not work”. Rather, it worked exactly as they intended it to work, in a fully predictable manner.
When do we get around to grasping that signal fact? At what point do you accept that it’s not that the system “doesn’t work” but rather that it does work as it’s intended to work?
I’ve been repeatedly told that we ought to accept this convoluted mess of a system because, as bad as it is, it’s the only workable means at our disposal. If this bill fails, giving us yet another example of how the present system doesn’t produce what anyone outside the world of corrupt and moneyed power would call “success”, then how do we go on dismissing needed reforms as being a diversion from “the only way things can work”?
When all is said and done, if the reform bill doesn’t pass, then not only will you have no reform gained, but, worse, nothing will have been gained in public awareness or understanding—nothing!!! There’ll be zero progress in the public’s knowledge, because we’ll have once more followed a process which was done in the dark, without any useful awareness of the points of progress and of blockage. Though an “autopsy” would be helpful–even indispensable—we won’t be able to hold one because we’ll lack ALL the necessary elements. We’ll have no “body” to examine since we won’t know more than the murderers themselves are willing to say about what happened and why and how; we’ll have no evidence trail; no record other than the for-public-consumption posturing which is on the record.
We’ll be once more where we usually find ourselves: in the dark and on the outside, left holding the short end of the stick while those responsible fall all over themselves making excuses for themselves.
And you? This is the system you say we have to work with because things work this way and they can’t be any different.
Well, I say we’re wasting and losing valuable time, time we don’t have, in not getting on with the frank recognition that the system is “working” as it’s intended to work and that if the public doesn’t recognize the imperative need for reform and that this will depend on them, the public, to demand of Congress, then we may “run out of time”. That’s a real possibility. We don’t have forever to get around to learning these lessons.
I don’t care whether you accept it or you don’t. It’s the system we have for the 111th Congress, so I will continue to report on it instead of reporting on, oh, I don’t know, the Diet of Japan.
When you realize that the Senate cannot pass a robust public option without resorting to the budget reconciliation process because of the opposition within their own ranks, then what Reid did actually strengthened the bill. He either assured that it would be filibustered by a lonely couple of Democrats or that a public option would pass.
This isn’t how I would have done it, nor how the WH originally planned to do it. But the House was supposed to pass a stronger bill that would be watered down in conference. That became less necessary once the Senate assured Pelosi that a public option would be in their bill. They still meet in the middle, it’s just that they both start out closer to it.
You’re not just “reporting”, you’re a partisan advocate—which is all fine, but it’s typical of the way you operate to present yourself as just “reporting”. Also typical is your absurd straw-man that our choices amount to “this” or “Japan’s Diet”.
I thought I’d read an earlier comment from you where you “reported” that Reid’s having put the public option in before the conference committee got to the negotiations was a huge mistake. Did I just imagine that? And am I just imagining it or do you really like the freedom of being able to argue everything and its opposite as the winds and the circumstances shift about?
I already said that if a decent bill comes through, I won’t deny you the credit you seem so bent on enjoying–or credit to the rest of those involved, too, in Congress and the White House. On the other hand, if the bill is ultimately D.O.A. after conference, what should we expect from you in the way of admitting anything concerning the critics’ view(s) of the process? So far, all I’ve seen you say is that you’ll consider that you’d have egg on your face. And so far, everything I read from you suggests that you’ll be ready with excuses.
BFD. Your embarrassment, should the Democrats come up with zilch really doesn’t move us anywhere ahead. And the idea that personal embarrassment is somehow even worth weighing in the balance when compared with all the rest seems truly bizarre to me.
what I said was that Reid has put the entire bill at risk and that I thought he didn’t need to do that. I said he’ll be an idiot if he can’t get cloture for the bill. But I also congratulated everyone who had been fighting to get him to use the public option in Stage Two because that strengthens the bill. Are you following along?
When Reid went stronger than expected, Pelosi immediately responded by going weaker than expected? Why? Caucus management. They’re still headed for a public option with negotiated rates, which is the best bill we were ever going to get without using budget reconciliation.
Yes. I’m following all that. And you know what? It’s been so long that I’ve had this habit of thinking things through and interpreting them for myself, that I’m too used to it now to simply throw it over in favor of anyone else’s pre-packaged version.
By your logic, as I see you hold it, these aren’t incompatible:
A) “Reid has put the entire bill at risk and … he didn’t need to do that” (taken with) “he’ll be an idiot if he can’t get cloture for the bill”
and,
B) “I also congratulated everyone who had been fighting to get him to use the public option in Stage Two [i.e. prior to the Conference Committee] because that strengthens the bill”
while to me, they are.
By my reasoning, a “stronger bill” which doesn’t pass is not better or any improvement over a weaker bill which also doesn’t pass. One is “as good as” the other, as I see things.
That said, I won’t argue that you don’t have the right to see things differently and to say so! and, if you do avail yourself of these privileges to see and think differrently, I won’t accuse you of trying the equivalent of wanting to divert us into the realm of the Japanese Diet and its workings.
It’s kind of hilarious for you to argue about how logical you are and then fail at basic logic.
A bill is more or less strong according to its language, not according to whether or not it passes. The senate bill is now stronger than anticipated because it includes a public option. The House bill is now weaker than anticipated because it’s public option is not robust.
As for the end result in conference, if we get that far, nothing has changed except that some form of public option is assured (so long as Reid doesn’t pull the bill or the PO isn’t stripped out by amendment). So, provided that we achieve cloture pre-conference, the Senate bill is stronger.
If, however, the bill stalls in the Senate because of Reid’s decision, then we’ll either have to start all over again or go to budget reconciliation. In either of those two cases, the momentum for a PO will be far less than if the bill had stalled under the plan I, and the WH preferred.
You’re trying too hard to disagree or find disagreement: I only said that
“By my reasoning, a “stronger bill” which doesn’t pass is not better or any improvement over a weaker bill which also doesn’t pass . One is “as good as” ( i.e. as effective, as helpful, as useful, after failing ) the other, as I see things.
True, by the language contained within each, one is undoubtedly “stronger” in promoting desired health-care reform than the other. I didn’t dispute that at all. What I pointed out was that the stronger language won’t in and of itself make passage more likely– and may indeed make it either less likely or impossible, if I’m reading the opposition correctly. It’s a key distinction and you seem determined not to see it.
How can I not see it when I am the one who pointed it out in the first place?
Don’t understand why you think the dems are going to take it out – the dems may pass a bill that has it removed, but why would a dem offer an amendment to take it out since the repubs are guaranteed to do so (hence can be blamed for its absence). seems to me once it was in the original bill it’s easier to add it back in conference.
From one of the press accounts I read, the problem is just that: the Republicans won’t remove the public option for the very fact that it serves them as the excuse they’ll offer to the public for their votes against this legislation. And, though you and I and just about everyone else here knows that they’d have also voted against the bill without that provision, that’s the excuse they’ll offer to their partisans and it’s the excuse those partisans will accept as valid.
That represents an undeserved “gift” of sorts to the Republicans who’ll not only, at least as they see it and hope it to be, will kill the bill, but also have a ready rationale for who deserves the blame for the bill’s failure; in their scheme, it will be the Democrats, for their having put the “poison pill” public option in.
So, in this light, the choices will be either to remove the public option (that is, Democrats would have to ‘drop it’ from their Conference Committee negotiating claims) or face what they’re sure to understand will be the bill’s failure to get the required 60 votes.
The supposition that these lonely Democrats, who join all or virtually all of the Republicans, are going to feel isolated is the part I find too strange for words. As they see themselves, they’re not “isolated”, they’re in the midst of the cohort which for them is “home”: the decidedly conservative Republican-Lite wing of their “party”. Which should remind us. The majority in the Senate, as perhaps in the House, is the Conservative majority, not the “Democratic Party” majority. And, while President Obama differs markedly with that conservative majority on this issue, there are others, more than a few of them, where the differences are too narrow for Rush Limbaugh to squeeze through.
meant reconciliation for adding it back
Okay, I see.
To me, putting it into a budget reconciliation measure is neither easier or harder to justify because of its previous existence in the committee, floor, or conference version or any combination of them. At this point, could anyone doubt that the entire point of resorting to the budget reconciliation procedure would be, after all, precisely so that the public option would be resurrected where it would be safe from threats of filibuster?
Since anyone who is paying attention knows that is the object of such a resort, I think they could offer and include it without the slightest surprise and objection for their doing so.
It’s actually not plain at all.
Assuming that a bill fails to pass the Senate, necessitating the budget reconciliation process, there will be a narrative built up about precisely why that happened.
Under one scenario, the narrative will be that Harry Reid is a dunce who couldn’t count votes and didn’t realize that the PO was a non-starter. That’s what happens if he can’t even get this bill to the Conference Committee.
Under another scenario, both house pass a bill, but Joe Lieberman kills reform at the last moment because he’s got a hard-on for the Connecticut insurance industry. In that scenario, it is much easier to argue that we’re going to keep the PO in the reconciliation process rather than let Joe Lieberman exercise a veto.
Is that so hard to understand?
I’ve agreed with all of your analysis with the exception of one point you reiterate here: that Reid has threatened reform by including the public option at the outset. I believe you make a couple of incorrect assumptions.
First, the suggestion is that there would be less of a risk had the public-option not been there. But is there really good reason to believe that Lieberman would not be up to the same shenanigans if Reid had proposed a different bill, perhaps with a weak trigger? I would submit that Lieberman was ALWAYS going to be an issue.
Second, I think you overstate the difference between the threat of a filibuster now, as opposed to the threat of a filibuster later, after the committees did their work.
Third, I think you might understate how Reid has helped the House to pass a better bill. You note it, but this seems to me to be very, very significant.
Just my take.
Lieberman disputes this piece, so who knows?
My assumption going into this was that because we couldn’t pass a public option through the Finance Committee, we couldn’t pass it through in the melded bill either. Reid claims otherwise, but I’m still skeptical. Therefore, they only chance to pass a public option in regular order was to attach it in Conference and rely on the enormous momentum for reform that would result once both chambers passed their versions and everyone had a big party.
There was no assurance that this would work, either, but it was the best bet. And the fall back was reconciliation.
By making the Senate pass a 60 vote threshold up front, we give too much leverage to people like Lieberman to hijack the process before maximum momentum has been built.
re: gideon’s “filibuster later” – aren’t only 51 votes required after reconciliation?
yes and no.
If we are talking reconciliation of the House and Senate bills, then we’re talking about the Conference Report. That vote is privileged, meaning that it doesn’t require 60 votes to open debate and is not subject to amendment. However, it does require 60 votes to move to a vote.
if we are talking about the budget reconciliation process, it only requires 51 votes to pass, but it may need 60 votes at various points along the way to sustain pieces of the legislation. This relates to points of order that pieces are not germane to the budget deficit.
“Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (I-CT) office is shooting down a report in The Hill that Lieberman has reached an understanding with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to not block health care reform.”
Is there ANY mystery going on here? On “Face the Nation”, Lieberman told Bob Schieffer point blank that no bill at all would, in his opinion, be better than a bill containing a public option.
The idea that Lieberman might not oppose (at any and every turn but especially on an ultimate vote for or against final passage, if that ever came) a bill with a public option is sheer lunacy.
I kind of have the same feeling, but those who are more optimistic emphasize Lieberman’s track record of being erratic and a general ass.
Reid, Lieberman Offices Both Strongly Deny Report That Lieberman Won’t Filibuster