If Joe Lieberman won’t vote for a reasonable health care bill, it really makes more sense to just use the budget reconciliation process, even though that will mean that we can’t move on to other things like jobs and climate legislation. You can only appease so much before you look ridiculous. And passing Lieberman’s version of health care reform would be impossible to sell to the Democratic base. So, don’t worry about it and just change the strategy. Pass a package of insurance reforms, and then do the rest under reconciliation rules. Make sure to blame Lieberman. And take away his chairs and kick him out of the caucus after next year’s elections. He’s a Republican now.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Why can’t they move onto jobs and climate change? The Senate is able to multitask these days, as we saw with today’s passage of the year-end spending bills.
I’m wondering if they should pass the public option through reconciliation first, or pass the current health bill (minus public option) through regular means first. After all, we would have to pass one regular bill and then one reconciliation bill. Might as well use the hard work that has gone into the current bill for all the good structural elements that can’t go under reconciliation.
Of course, I wouldn’t be surprised if Lieberman would find a reason to filibuster that as well. And you’d have to assure the liberal Dems that the reconciliation companion bill is on a fast-track.
Hopefully some very smart Congressional staffers are plotting this out as we speak.
The issue is, if Dems can’t even pass healthcare, the Holy Grail of the Democratic Party after the crushing elections of 2006, 2008 and Obama then they are not going to pass the more difficult legislation even with 60. That is going to signal “every dem for themselves” so any kind of party unity is going to be degraded.
The point is that the Dems do not have 60 votes in the Senate. They have only 58 nominal Democrats, subtract Nelson, Lincoln and Landrieu and add Sanders.
That count is 56 Senators in the face of the conservative Republican party of “No!” As long as the Republicans remain a monolithic “No!” capable of wielding the filibuster there is no effective way to pass bills through the rich man’s club.
This is especially bad because the Republicans dominate the small population rural states and will use the Senate as the founding fathers (rural wealthy oligarchs that they were) designed it. They stop legislation desired by the voting majority.
This is not a failure of the Democrats. It is a failure of the voters to demand representation.
Very well put.
I was responding to the question of why they can’t just move on right now. For one thing they are moving on it in the committees I believe, but the other is they need to pass something of the caucus will begin to splinter in the face of ineffectiveness.
I think you are saying that the Senate is currently designed to stop legislation, while the Democrats were elected to pass legislation.
If my characterization of your comment is correct, then we agree. Part of the solution is in the next election (a problem) and part is in changing the rules of the Senate.
Something has to pass for health care, and frankly if Lieberman were to die tomorrow I would not be a bit unhappy. In the absence of such a favorable act of God, there needs to be a revision in the rules of the Senate, and perhaps in the general power of the Senate to stop legislation. The powers of the Senate need to be changed in the same ways the previous powers of the UK House of Lords have been removed. Society changes too rapidly now for the powers of the Status Quo to have the level of veto they have with the Senate.
The only way to change the Senate rules is the Nuclear Option. The gang of 14 that prevented the Republican majority from using it against the Democrats had Lieberman as a member. Do we have 50 votes plus Biden to break a tie on a vote to table an appeal to the point of order ruling that the filibuster is unconstitutional?
What if the Republicans ever again get a Republican president and a majority in the Senate? They could do a lot of damage to the courts.
While I don’t see us getting the kind of change we need without this, is it worth it? Maybe.
“This is not a failure of the Democrats. It is a failure of the voters to demand representation.”
Your comment points to an issue which is at the heart of the problems but it doesn’t really address that issue adequately. Though, as a matter of fact, I think your comments also indicate that you may already understand most or all of the following. I point it out for others and as a (another) reminder:
Just how would “voters …demand representation”?
My point is precisely that they cannot do this and the reason they cannot is that the system is corrupted in such a way as to ensure that their votes, even if they continued to participate in the electoral processes, do not actually produce the results which voters may clearly intend and want to see produced. There are really many and various reasons behind that and it would be both interesting and useful, I believe, if those were discussed here in some depth. The thing is, that simply almost never happens. To do it requires patience, resolve, an ability to listen, to question, to hear and consider many infuriating claims and counter-claims, to open one’s mind wide enough and long enough to seriously consider an opponent’s arguments, and to answer them responsively rather than evasively or, worse, fling straw-man rebuttals and then run away from the discussion.
And those things are just what are so lacking by so many.
There’s not even a generally prevailing interest in addressing the “our system is completely broken,” and, lacking that, we certainly can’t get even further to address why and how it came to be that way.
Yes, we do agree.
The problem is that the voters must demand change and the current system is set up so that the voters cannot get change.
So the system must be changed.
The change has to happen. It is not a liberal or conservative issue, because liberal and conservative means to be working within the system. The change is going to have to change the system itself.
That is a radical demand in politics. “Radical” is defined as believing that the existing system cannot provide social justice so it must be destroyed and rebuilt into a system that will provide social justice.
At the moment I don’t know how that could be accomplished, but the current political climate and events clearly demonstrate the need to do it.
the Sun rose (again) this morning, catching nearly all oberservers off guard.
A surprise setback? Only to the deaf, mute and blind.
There is another gambit.
The Defense Appropriations bill has not received it’s Senate vote yet and sits in the manager’s amendment step.
It already has in it the raising of the national debt limit.
Just add a provision opening up Medicare to all and provide two ways to fund it–a tax on incomes over $250,000, indexing the tax rates, and elimination of the cap on payroll taxes. Also raise the base medicare compensation rate by 5%. Have enrollment begin by April 1 and claims be accepted by July 1. Authorize DHHS to purchase the necessary additional IT processing capacity.
While we’re at it, why not give the deficit scolds something to vote for — a transactions tax of 0.025% on securities transactions over $10 million, a transactions tax of 0.050% on the value of naked hedge transactions. And just to be democratic a transactions tax of 0.00001 on all financial transactions over $100,000. All funds to pay off existing national debt. And a 10% war surcharge on incomes over $5,000,000 to pay against 2010 DoD spending. And for John McCain, strip out all of the earmarks that have been added.
Put that in the defense appropriations bill, let the Republicans and Lieberman vote down the defense appropriations, or if they don’t take it to the House for reconciliation and passage.
That’s a grand compromise that I can live with.
Can’t they unofficially shun Joe right now? I’m imagining the next time the caucus holds a meeting, they could literally block him from entering the room. And, the next time Joe wants to schedule a committee meeting, Reid simply refuses to put it on the calendar. I know, I have difficulty imagining Reid being tough but, if he were more like LBJ, what could he do to punish Lieberman — right now?
He needs to take away or hold a vote-whatever the process is -to take away his Homeland Security chairmanship.
Right. Now. This SHOULD BE the straw that broke the camel’s back. The publicity is already hitting the fan- C-SPAN, Morning Blow and I imagine it will be on the lefty shows tonight. So at least it’s out there-only problem with that is this publicity just feeds his ego even more.
He is a disgrace, insufferable blow hard. The folks in CT should be raising hell also-and maybe they are I don’t know.
And, obviously he should be thrown out of the democratic caucus if that’s possible. He can caucus with himself as far as I’m concerned.
The chairs and ratios of the committees are set in stone for this Congress. That’s why Specter is still sitting on the same committees as when he was a Republican and those committees now have an extra Democrat. The Republicans can’t reset the ratios. It’s put together at the beginning of each Congress. The Democrats can move people from one committee to another (for example, Sheldon Whitehouse was briefly placed on the HELP Committee) but they can’t change the chairs. It would take at least 60 votes to change them, and I think it’s actually 67 votes.
But, they can strip Lieberman off any committee he serves on where he is not the chair. That doesn’t really do anything for them though. Just like Specter, it wouldn’t gain them a vote.
They have to wait until 2011.