Tom Harkin has pretty much caved, although I can’t say that I blame him. Reid swung for the fences and struck out. Some people, including myself and apparently including Rahm Emanuel, warned that Reid was taking an unnecessary risk by buckling under to well-meaning progressive pressure to put the public option in the base bill. As we predicted, the bill got picked apart and held up for ransom. We could have had a trigger as a starting point in negotiations. Now, we will not even have that. The gauntlet has been laid down, and strengthening the bill in Conference will be pretty much impossible. With progressives both in Congress and in the general population so disappointed and frustrated, there is a good chance that no bill will pass at all. I tried to warn people that procedure matters. We’ll see what comes out of the Democratic Senate Caucus meeting tonight. I am not optimistic.
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.
Strengthening the bill in committee would also have been impossible.
If there’s anything this process should show, Lieberman is willing to blow up any deal at any time.
He wouldn’t care if he was the single guy stopping a bill, even after committee. He’d probably enjoy it that much more.
Question:
Is there anything stopping progressives from (1) caving to a non-public option bill in January; and (2) after it is signed, resurrecting the public option via reconciliation in February?
I mentioned that same idea down below. Liberals need to just tell the WH that they will kill this bill unless there is a promise to introduce a public option/Medicare buy-in companion bill next month, to be passed through reconciliation. Get Obama himself to guarantee that he will fight for it.
If Obama won’t make the promise, kill the bill. If liberal threats can’t be taken seriously then it’s not like the rest of our agenda will have any hope.
http://www.boomantribune.com/?op=displaystory;sid=2009/12/14/184421/17
I don’t see what limits what can be done in conference.
Certainly the stimulus bill was imporved a great deal in conference.
I actually am optimistic. Frankly, Lieberman looks like Newt shutting down the government. The Medicare buy-in was a credible option he himself defended 3 months earlier. This is historic legislation and I have no doubt that if it comes down to it there will be 51 votes to pull a Frist and go nuclear or head back towards reconciliation if necessary.
This is going to get done and I think that at the end of the battle the country will see financial reforms and health care legislation passed with no help from the other side of the aisle and blatant obstructionism.
That won’t play well ’10.
I think it’ll get done because at the end of the day to many senators need this bill too, just as much as the president.
Or they’ll all cave like little bitches, take insurance reform, and call it a success.
God willing, the House will fix this mess.
So, if I understand you, here is where we are:
First, clearly, this thing is going to get done;
Second, maybe not. Maybe it won’t, after all because they might all cave like little bitches.
Third, in case they all do cave, then the House (of “Representatives”) will “fix this mess”.
Fourth, “third” is assuming, however, that God is willing. If not, then I’m not sure who’s covering things for us. Obama?
Booman:
Reid failed as Majority Leader to get the Caucus in line on a procedural vote (pathetic), included a weak public option with an opt-out(pathetic), and then caved on that (pathetic).
See Smoke, Mirrors, and CBO Scores: The Health Care Reform Bait-and-Switch.
Booman:
A triggered public option = no public option, ever.
Booman:
They will pass something and call it “health care reform,” though it won’t be health care reform at all.
Check out the entry on Jay Rockefeller in Do Believe the Snark: Sunday Talk In Review (Dec 13, 2009).
Booman:
In your previous post, you revealed that you know nothing about procedure. Remember writing that they need 60 votes to go to reconciliation? That would be incorrect.
As I noted earlier, you are not familiar with my work or you would be familiar with my discussion of the budget reconciliation process.
Brian, a public option trigger might have given us a public option. It would have been a powerful incentive for the insurance companies not to get any worse, in any case.
I’m in support of a trigger if we can’t get a public option. I’m not in support of a bill with NO public option and no trigger.
I don’t know you, but you don’t seem particularly well informed. You seem driven by ideology, not reality here. You certainly mispeak every time you talk about Booman.
Booman’s arguments are weak. Either he’s incapable of formulating a good argument, or he’s deliberately trying not to (for reasons that I’ll leave others to decide).
You can say I’m misinformed, but that doesn’t make it so.
A trigger would only be one of several ways to give cover to Democrats as they fail miserably to achieve real reform. Nothing more.
Thanks to Lieberman, there’re no bs positions in the middle any more on health care reform. The final scrap that would have allowed Obama and the House and Senate Democrats to pretend that they’ve achieved health care reform is gone.
With the latest news, I’m calling on everyone to return attention to Harry Reid.
The White House tried to pressure him.
We must too!
RECONCILIATION = MAJORITY RULE.
Now we want a strong public option. Nothing less.
Sign the petition.
Spread the word.
what shadowy overlord sent you here to insult our leader?
Sigh
“We could have had a trigger as a starting point in negotiations. Now, we will not even have tha”
Prove that please. If that is the case, the deal should still be there, because we should still be able to trade Lieberman’s vote for Snowe. Except, of course, Snowe has been saying forever that the whole thing is moving much to fast for her. And Nelson is using his anti-abortion stance as a fig leaf for not voting for it. At no point have 60 Senators lined up and said they would vote for the thing with a triggered option.
“The gauntlet has been laid down, and strengthening the bill in Conference will be pretty much impossible.”
And why, pary tell, would we have been able to improve this thing in Conference? What makes you think Snowe would not have filibustered the conference report if it didn’t have her precious trigger and whatever else she wanted to water down the thing?
“With progressives both in Congress and in the general population so disappointed and frustrated, there is a good chance that no bill will pass at all.”
Why should a bill pass? There is nothing in the bill that will keep people form going bankrupt from medical expense: the subsidies are too low and not about to be raised; there is nothing absent a PO to keep the premiums from going up; there are annual caps on coverage. There is nothing to keep insurance companies from denying claims for a whole host of reasons and there is a fraud loop hole in the non pre-existing conditions sections that the insurance companies will drive a truck through. So the bill probably wont give people real health insurance, as most wont be able to afford it, and it does pretty much nothing to prevent insurance companies form jerking people around in an attempt to wait until they die rather than pay-up.
I know you have a dislike of aggressive progressive tactics; I know that you are temperamentally a cuatious, compromising person. But you are allowing your personal preferences tro colr your opinions here. There is no evidence that a trigger option had 60 votes, and yet you insist that it is so and further that the bill could have been strengthened in conference despite the fact that it would have survived because one member of the opposing party demanded and got a weakening of the bill. I am sorry, but that seems like wishful thinking, not real analysis.
No, Booman NEVER said a triggered PO could get 60 votes. He said that his path was the only way he saw that was possible. It doesn’t mean it was possible, it was just the only way he saw that WAS possible.
Correction.
A triggered PO could have got 60 votes. What couldn’t get 60 votes was an untriggered PO. The only possible way to get an untriggered PO was to pass one in the House and keep a weaker version of it in the conference negotiations. I never guaranteed that that would work, only that it would be the only way to possibly get a PO at the 60 vote threshold.
I don’t think Reid would have had any problem getting Snowe to sign off on her trigger, and that would kept Lieberman irrelevant and compliant.
“I don’t think Reid would have had any problem getting Snowe to sign off on her trigger,”
That is, to put it mildly, a hell of a supposition. And, again, I ask you: why isn’t that deal there now? Why would Nelson not have pulled the Stupak nonsense like he is now? Why would Snowe, who is vulnerable to a challenge to her right, and who has been complaining to this day that the bill is moving too fast, gone along with a triggered PO? Why would Snowe have agreed to any changes in the conference report after she put herself at risk to vote with the Dems?
You want to believe that being a centrist is the best way to get progressive goals accomplished. But you don’t actually have any evidence for that in this case. Or, if you do, you have been too interesting in pointing out that the big bad progressives have shot themselves in the foot to present it.
Snowe is not vulnerable to a challenge from her far right. The woman gets a majority of Democratic voters voting for her in a general election, and owns the Maine state Republican party apparatus. She’s not going to get Scozzafava’ed.
The seat is hers till the heat-death of the sun.
According to the latest polling, she is vulnerable to a primary challenge from the right:
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2009/11/10/snowe_vulnerable_to_primary_challenge.html?utm_source=f
eedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PoliticalWire+%28Taegan+Goddard%27s+Political
+Wire%29
She runs as an independent, she wins. Whomever the teabaggers nominate, provided she loses the primary, becomes the right-wing Ned Lamont, only it won’t even be close. This state loves independents. Maine was Perot’s best state, beating Bush pérè in 1992, We’ve had two popular independent governors in the last 25 years.
Yes, I think I see our problems now. Thank you for “clearing that up”.
I guess we’re all Lieberman’s bitch now.
Sherrod Brown (on Olbermann) looks worn out.
No bill is better than a bad bill.
Lieberman should be told to go fuck himself.
Obama needed to show some leadership and showed none. Do you know what kind of bill he wants – even now?
Any bill.
Right. Anything. He’ll call it success and give a wonderful speech. After using the Noble Peace prize award ceremony to talk about the needs for waging war, this should pose no challenge to this great, great man.
“Reid swung for the fences and struck out. Some people, including myself and apparently including Rahm Emanuel, warned that Reid was taking an unnecessary risk by buckling under to well-meaning progressive pressure to put the public option in the base bill.”
I don’t think Reid had any choice, given that he’s in the political fight of his life for reelection and needed his base to understand he was fighting for them.
But you did call it from the onset.
Reid needed to realize that the collegiate rules of the game had changed, but he is too much a part of the process now and too enthralled with the idea of the Senate to break with courtesy. If he had used his platform more aggressively it might have changed things. But then again… maybe not.
I’m of the mindset that this day was coming no matter what strategy Reid pursued. If we were in conference committee right now, Lieberman would be saying the same exact crap. And then Obama and Rahm would tell the conference committee to just drop the public option/Medicare from the bill so that it would have Joe’s vote.
It’s naive to think that Lieberman would not be doing this if we only added the public option in conference.
I really am aghast at what an asshole Lieberman is. Seriously. No principles – just make up shit as you go along. String people along with lies, whatever it takes.
So will he win in the next election as a Republican?
I’m wondering why they can’t just pass this shitty bill and then pass a full-on Medicare buy-in/public option bill through reconciliation next month?
Get all the insurance regulations and exchanges and shit that Ezra Klein loves passed in this bill. Then get all the liberal cost-control stuff passed through reconciliation.
Wonder if anyone is talking about this idea? Because if nobody is, I think the liberals should just vote no on the bill and force the Obama team to get real.
yes!!!!!
there has to be follow-up or nothing is accomplished
so what will we get? a bill that MAY get rid of pre-existing conditions but will force people to underwrite the insurance companies but being forced to buy insurance policies not controlled by the government.
oh boy!
Obama refused to lead at the beginning of this process and has continually ceded ground. we will get a Republican bill that the Republicans won’t vote for.
how’s that for leadership?
Like I said here from day 1 of Reid so-called “audacity”: I wonder if Reid’s move (turning us onto a deadend street) was all a ploy to ensure that reform got killed, while putting on a “Hey – I tried, really!” face to the stupid, credulous, American public.
Reid can’t simultaneously be dumb enough to get suckered by Lieberman, and clever enough to pull off a grand scheme as suggested.