Do you think they are actually going to fail to pass any health care reform? For the first time, I am beginning to think that that might be the case. What I am hearing about using the reconciliation process is that they don’t think they have 60 votes for that either. They’d only need 51 votes to pass it, but they’d need 60 on a variety of procedural questions.
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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.
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One of my Facebook friends, a journalist and the wife of a liberal senator, is, for the first time, very, very discouraged and angry.
You do get around, SN.
I am, too. I just saw that Howard Dean is saying might as well kill it. I hope it goes down in destruction now. A mandate for uninsured (read poor) to pay for-profit companies should be illegal. It’s certainly unconscionable.
I think we need to cut Congress’s healthcare plans altogether until they can find one WE can live with. Revocable IMMEDIATELY.
Why do they need 60 votes for procedural questions?
overcoming points of order and the like…
Why are you skeptical “for the first time?” I thought one would have had to have been headless to not have seen this coming. Obama (nee Rahm Emanuel) never wanted anything to be enacted into this “reform” that would jeopardize the corporate cash that he will need to be reelected. This is because Obama knows that his policies will not carry him to victory after his first lackluster, limp, compromised term. Once upon a time, Obama was for “single payer.” Then, when “pragmatism” because en-vogue (you know, “Villager-based centrism”), he postured about this new “public option” concept but never cared enough about it to push for it in any but the most abject, unconvincing way. See it for who Obama is and stop all the “hope” jazz! He’s a bum.
How can he give himself a B+ for his first year when he has accomplished absolutely nothing other than getting the job and fulfilling his wish? I wish my teachers gave me a Nobel Prize (and over a million dollars) for “hope.”
“Because” should be “became.” The sentence should read:
Then, when “pragmatism” became en-vogue (you know, “Villager-based centrism”), he postured about this new “public option” concept but never cared enough about it to push for it in any but the most abject, unconvincing way.
Your predictable and childish Obama-hate is getting really tiresome. You don’t know any more about what he wants than anybody else. Personally I wish you’d take it somewhere else — you’re not adding anything of interest around here.
The point is that NOBODY knows what Obama wants. Not you. Not me. Not anyone. He’s been on the international stage for almost a year, not including his campaign, and he has no discernible principles, other than “we’re at war with Oceania.” If you know what he wants, then educate me. I’m all ears. It’s pretty obvious, though, that Obama isn’t for progress.
Obama isnt for progress? That is downright silly.
Personally I wish you’d take it somewhere else
So that this becomes the Democratic equivalent of RedState, with only true believers voicing opinions?
The reason I’m visiting this place after the absence of about a year is to see how many people are waking up after the double blow of a second Afghan escalation followed quickly by the explicit endorsement of the Bush doctrine of the US’s right to unilaterally wage unprovoked wars, given while accepting the Noble Peace Prize.
This is really a definitive moment, as the governing coalition Obama thought he had (59 dems, plus lieberman and sometimes plus the GOP Maine senators) is crumbling before it even accomplished any significant legislation. I think Obama is a smart politician, but he badly misread the political landscape and should probably consider firing his legilslative team. To be honest, I can live with no public option, assuming Obama and the Senate leadership learn from their failure to grasp the new political realities, and adjust accordingly. If out of the dust of this failure there emerges a new playbook to pass progressive legislation, I can live with them passing now HCR without a public option (if they are determined to pass it once they figure out how to pass anything through the senate). I’m not sure exactly what the new playbook looks like. I’m sure it involves some form of punishment for Lieberman (still don’t know why we can’t take Lieberman’s chairmanship and his share of the pork and give it to Snowe or Collins in return for their vote), frequent use of reconciliation on all sorts of bills, or changing the filibuster rules.
Unless they go nuclear and kill the filibuster, no they do not have the votes to do this. That is the only way that they are going to be able to pass health care reform IMO.
Well, Boo seems to think killing the filibuster is not a possibility. I still can’t seem to get a good read on what can be done NOW with the rules, and what it would involve. Hard to believe any such move wouldn’t require 60 votes along the way.
OK, first of all, they’re NOT trying to pass health care reform. They’re trying to pass “health insurance reform”, as all the signs in my neighborhood say, in the same font as the “yes we can” signs. and man, those signs really piss me off. that’s not what i voted for.
Second, I never believed for a minute they’d pass either health care for health insurance reform. I honestly don’t believe many of the democrats (in the senate especially) believe in it. It’s a slogan, not a policy, just like “overturn roe v. wade” is to the republicans. They don’t honestly want to do that, it would rob them of an issue.
so yes, i think they will fail to pass health care reform. and they’re gonna look like the schmucks they are.
And you really figure no Dems in the Senate can figure out what’s going to happen if they fail? There’s a lot of stupid in there, but not so much when it comes to holding onto their jobs.
“There’s a lot of stupid in there, but not so much when it comes to holding onto their jobs.”
Ahem:
Republican senator becomes lobbyist less than two weeks after quitting.
How a Clean Water Advocate and Senator Became a Chemical Industry Lobbyist.
Tom Daschle on His New Role as Lobbyist.
Tauzin switches sides from drug industry overseer to lobbyist .
Ain’t no big thing losing your job when there’s another one that pays more waiting for you.
Where are you hearing?
Who are you hearing it from?
Didn’t you just speak about anonymous sources (close to the WH) in the last post?
Sorry, but I can’t divulge every thing I hear and who I hear it from. People I know who talk to Senate staffers are telling me that they don’t think they can do this using reconciliation, or, at least, that they won’t be assured of being able to do it.
Several Dems are against using reconciliation, including Byrd (for whom the Byrd Rule is named), Feingold, and Conrad.
I don’t think Democrats ever had the will to pass real healthcare reform. They still don’t. Too many of them are in the pockets of the insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and big hospital systems.
If they did, they would ram through a single payer bill with any legislation they had. All it takes is 218 in the House and 51 in the Senate. House attaches the defense appropriations bill (something Republicans can’t vote against. Senate takes it to the floor as reconciliation. And we see who is really for a military budget.
There is a way to do it. The Congress just isn’t interested in doing the people’s work.
I raise a (completely spurious, but it doesn’t matter) point of order that your single-payer plan is infirm under the Byrd Rule, and thus not subject to the reconciliation process.
Back to 60 votes.
How exactly is extension of Medicare to age groups below 65 a problem with regard to the Byrd rule?
All you need is one senator raising a point of order that the addition is ‘extraneous’. I know it’s not extraneous, and you know it’s not extraneous — how could a massive extension of Medicare not affect the budget? — but unless 3/5ths of the Senate — 60 votes again — determine it’s not extraneous, the provision is stripped out of the conference report.
I don’t think there are 218 votes in the House. In fact, I don’t see how anyone could think there are.
I guess it depends on what the alternatives are as to whether there are 218 votes in the House. If the public option is dead. If any regulatory reform is dead.
What exactly is the House going to take to the voters in 2010 as their accomplishments on healthcare reform.
Sorry, folks. We gave it the old college try. Is that the platform?
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/12/09/60minutes/main5954261_page4.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentB
ody
Something, yes. What it is, I cannot say.
Disheartening, isn’t it.
Come rain, come snow, the status will be quo.
Of course, I knew I would be disappointed in Obama. I knew he was not elected to overthrow the government. I knew he could not be as progressive as I wished. I understand that there are real limitations on the office of the President.
But…but…nothing at all ?
No peace. No justice. No economic discipline. Not even insurance reform, nevermind health care reform.
Are the American people so conditioned by their entertainment media that nothing less than a present, not just imminent and/or predictable catastrophe is the only justification for change ?
We don’t need to move quite yet, that avalanche is not even halfway down the mountain.
Homo Sapiens: the first species to go extinct by choice.
BooMan says:
They don’t need 60 votes to use reconciliation.
Shouldn’t you know that? Or do you know it, but just want to confuse issues with this post?
Anyway, to answer your more important question:
They will pass something and call it “health care reform,” though it won’t be health care reform at all.
Please just stop. You conveniently left out the next sentence.
Stick to the facts and people will respect your opinions more. Right now you look like a hack.
They will pass a law. It will mandate insurance coverage. The pre-existing condition ban will be whittled down to something manageable, i.e. high deductible and/or low lifetime limit for pre-existing. There will be no public option or medicare buy-in. There will be no drug import or Medicare drug negotiation. Medicare reimbursement rates may be increased to satisfy providers, or maybe not, to satisfy Republicans (Drown it in the Bathtub). Some sort of increased abortion ban will be included. Gay couples will be excluded from family coverage. They will call it “Reform”, the insurancecos will lick their chops, Republicans will scream “SOCIALISM”, and Democrats will claim a “historic victory fulfilling Harry Truman’s Dream”. I will vomit along with many of you. And, I will fulfill my vow not to vote ever again for any Democrat who insulted my intelligence by voting for this bill and calling it Reform. Even if Ogg the caveman or Sarah the Stupid is running against them. They will do more than sell us down the river. They will insult us while doing it. That, I cannot abide.
I find this almost too incredible for words. You’re the guy who previously ridiculed me for being naïve, unaware of political realities and the way things work in Washington, D.C., etc.
I’ve read your tortured and fabulous theories about how all the Democrats had to do was be tricky enough to keep the public option out of the works until the last moment when, like clever devils, they slip it in and then just grin and say to the Republicans who’d supposedly been led along the garden path up to that point, “So, sue us!”
It seems you just forgot one (or a few dozen) tiny little detail: the Republicans are ruthless, experienced and not dumb as a box of rocks; so it happens that they (gasp) were able to see this wonderful curve-ball plan coming before the hapless Democratic party dumb-fucks even launched it.
and, elsewhere, you offered me this:
1) “If you want to make the argument that this all would have happened anyway, well, how does that refute my point?”
Really, if you can pose such a question, how can I dare hope to be able to explain that to you? Obviously, if things were going to turn out botched by Republican opposition, then the plan (in all its dizzying versions and shapes) going to work, then, was it ? I thought your point(s) relied on claims and beliefs that the Democrats had a workable strategy! Please note your own pathetic recent words:
“Do you think they are actually going to fail to pass any health care reform? For the first time, I am beginning to think that that might be the case.”
You’ve richly earned uncounted “I-told-you-so’s” from the readership here whose reasoned protests and arguments showing how your assessment was gravely flawed (in fact, a stunning exercise in make-believe) you’ve routinely dismissed and belittled. At this point, I’m inclined to scream, Well, FUCKING DUH!!!!
2) “My point was that my plan and the plan originally envisioned had a better chance of success.”
Uh, yeah, when, as you apparently are incapable of recognizing, it never did .
3) If no plan had any chance of success, how is that Obama or Reid’s fault?
No plan which they came up with and tried had any chance of success. And, you see, that’s their fault. It comes with the power and responsibility of their offices.
“You can’t do what is impossible. The premise is that there is/was a solution. Maybe there wasn’t, but I could tell that this plan wasn’t it.“
But you’d asserted again and again that not only was there a workable strategy (which you were rather confident, even, would produce a satisfactory health-care reform bill despite the evident Republican opposition in the Senate), but that Reid, Obama and their colleagues were right on the job with that! In the process, we learned from you that here and there “our team” “dropped the ball”.
Sorry. Our team never had the fucking ball. You’re the last to figure this out.
At this point, all I’m waiting for are the obligatory cries of
“Who could have known???!!!”
P.S.