Responding to the release of Obama’s health care plan, the House Minority Leader forgets to mention that the plan pulls the plug on grandma:
“This new Democrats-only backroom deal doubles down on the same failed approach that will drive up premiums, destroy jobs, raise taxes, and slash Medicare benefits,” said House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). “This week’s summit clearly has all the makings of a Democratic infomercial for continuing on a partisan course.”
What’s interesting about this official response is that it appears to fall directly into a trap that the White House has been quite candid about in their off-the-record comments. The White House is using this summit on Thursday to “shine a light” on the lack of any serious counterproposals from the Republicans. They will also be able to demonstrate that independent experts disagree with Republican assertions that the proposed legislation will drive up premiums, increase the budget deficit, create death panels, raise taxes (except on the wealthiest Americans), or slash Medicare benefits.
There’s a basic clash that is being set up on the White House’s terms. On the one side, the White House is presenting this as a situation where health care reform is going to pass. That aspect is removed as part of the debate. All that remains to decide is what precisely will be in the legislation. On the other side, the Republicans simply want to defeat any health care reform, no matter what is in the bill. But that position violates the entire premise and spirit of the summit, including its aspirational bipartisanship. It also means that the Republicans do not concede that some reform is urgently needed. That’s why the Blue Anthem rate hikes of 39% are being put forward by the White House. How can hikes that large not require a response?
The Republicans had already convinced their supporters that the battle to kill health care reform was won. This puts them in a bind. How can they concede that something needs to pass? How can they accept the very premise of the summit that they feel politically compelled to attend? Yet, if they do attend the summit and they behave in the way they’ve been behaving, they’ll be sharply corrected by representatives of the Office of Management and Budget, the Congressional Budget Office, and the Joint Committee on Taxation.
It appears that the Republicans are headed full-steam into a political trainwreck. If they engage seriously during the summit, embracing the premise that reform needs to pass, they’ll enrage their base beyond description. But if they petulantly refuse to accept the premise and keep repeating their mantra that the American people have already rejected reform, they’ll come off exactly the way the White House wants them to come off. And then the Democrats will have renewed momentum for passing a bill under reconciliation rules.
There’s no good strategy for the Republicans, which is why this summit was a very good idea.
Good ideas still have to be implemented well.
It’s not over until it’s over.
Are the Congressional Democrats all on board yet?
If OMB, CBO, and Joint Committee on Taxation staff are there, there might be hope for the public option. The scoring numbers have been good and it is still popular. Not saying it will happen, but if Obama shoves that through in a “both and” manner, he won’t have to worry as much about a demotivated base. And he might well break the Republican logjam by embarrassing them and their “Waterloo” comment. One can hope.
It does no good to not only paint a target on the public option right now, but to give the Republicans a reason to bail on this meeting. At this point, as far as the optics are concerned, reconciliation is only an option, not an inevitability. the public option can only be passed via reconciliation, so why would Obama include it? If it’s a proven non-starter for republicans and some Democrats?
The WH and the Dems are in a very good position and have set about as perfect a political trap as I’ve ever seen from them. Why would they blow that by including a public option now, when the Republicans would almost surely latch onto it and call so much attention to it that nervous ConservaDems would almost certainly run for the hills the minute the GOP and the media start spotlighting it again?
I’ll point to another tell as to why they should save it for reconciliation, besides the simple fact that it’s the only way a public option is gonna happen: In it’s plan the WH raised the penalty for the mandate from 2.0% to 2.5% of annual income.
While Progressive groups have freaked out about how this, minus a public option, is political suicide, this also gives the Republicans just enough to bitch about, but not enough to bail on the meeting. If Republicans complain about it, it can be scaled back again and the Dems can, again, demonstrate that they have compromised.
If after all this the Republicans still won’t vote for HCR, and odds are very high they won’t considering how much they’ve hyped that opposition and the teabagger pressure, then no one is going to say they didn’t have it coming when the Dems pass the bill they want including a public option via reconciliation.
In the meantime, look for more Democratic Senators to sign onto Bennett’s letter over the coming week.
I’m enjoying this.
Great points. Of course we still don’t know how much Obama really wants the PO, but either way this looks like the best possible strategy for getting it in.
Given the ability of the Dem caucus to screw up even the most certain of certainties, I am still holding onto my skepticism. There is what appears to be an ever-increasing possibility that the planets might be in the early phases of alignment necessary to pull something off. What that is in the end is anyone’s guess.
But if what you say in your post pans out into reality, it might almost be worth taking a vacation day to watch the HC summit live on the teevee.
There is nothing more fun that watching the GOP show their ass on national television.
Seriously. This is gonna be good.
On a related note, I think a similar dynamic will happen if and when Democrats put forward an immigration bill. The Republican base is simply not going to be able to control its racism. It will be another political disaster for the GOP and wreck what little chance they have at winning over non-whites for the next couple of generations.
I said a few months ago that Dem chances in 2010, and their GOTV efforts, were going to hinge on three things:
2 is already done. 1 keeps inching closer to the goal line. And if 3 gets sprung sometime in, say, the late spring…
Chris Bowers agrees with me in that if there is a public option vote, we should have them vote on a Medicare buy-in:
http://openleft.com/diary/17513/health-reform-state-of-play-february-22nd
Iunno why they didn’t do that from the start.
Sure would be easier to implement quickly, instead of having to set up a separate organization, IT systems and all of that.
Not to mention there should be no question as to whether it can make it under the Byrd Rule, AND…we can stop calling it a public option. Call it Medicare; people like the PO, but they LOVE Medicare. Why? They know wtf it is!
Bowers however, reminds us that so far, Republicans have benefited from obstruction. So the trainwreck is not a fait acompli.
Key electoral indicators, Election Day 2008 and now
Indicator Election Day 2008 Current Republican Gain
Party ID D +7% D +2.5% 4.5%
House ballot D +9.7 D +0.5% 9.2%
Dem Favorability +7% -5% +12%
GOP favorablility -9% -6% 3%
Past history is no guarantee of future performance.
Republican obstruction was paired with Democratic attempts at bipartisanship, which the media reported as Democrats not trying to be bipartisan. But people saw only “gridlock in Washington”
Now Republican obstruction will be made obvious for all to see. Or they desert their base to become bipartisan. That is a different situation.
“… so far, Republicans have benefited from obstruction.”
That’s why it’s called the “Rope a Dope” strategy.
Is the GOP healthcare plan online yet?
Yes. It’s been out for a while…
Yeah, but it’s encrypted so the Dems can’t steal Precious.
Can even the RepRobo base avoid a cognitive meltdown when they hear about the Democrats-only backroom deal that’s taking place on live national TV? All of a sudden they’re going to buy into the partisan-bad meme when they’ve been mocking the Dems for it all this time? When their leaders are being urged to contribute their ideas? Boner’s statement is so stupid, even for him, that it almost scares me. They gotta have something better than that.
I’ve thought the same thing for a while. But as each day passes, it becomes more and more believable to me that they really don’t have anything but basic talking points to repeat ad nauseum.
They really do think that they can just throw tantrums, say idiotic and blatantly false things every day on national television and somehow, through some heebie-jeebie hocus-pocus Republican voodoo make the Obama administration just wilt, throw up their hands and walk away. It is an astounding thing to watch. They are projecting the total teabagger mentality that if I scream in your face enough, threaten you and call you names, you’ll concede and give me everything I want. The problem is, they are real close to having their bluff called, and they have no alternative plan. This is the only tactic they have. And they will cling to it like a shipwreck victim holds onto a piece of driftwood in the middle of the ocean.
Why shouldn’t they think that? They’ve been getting away with it for nigh on to 20 years. Anyone who knows how to do anything else has either died or quit the party.
Boner lost me at “Massive Government Takeover of Health care.” But we’re all so used to hearing that whopper that we don’t even question it anymore.
I wonder if he’ll break down and cry like he did when it looked like he wasn’t gonna get his endless war.
They got Frank Luntz.
Other than that, they got nothing. On any issue.
It’s because they have not faced up to the face that their vaunted “conservative values” drove America into two wars, the economy into a ditch, and left a gaping deficit in the federal budget.
I more or less expect the monsters to have something up their sleeves: some stunt, some distraction, something they” be staging at the summit to steal headlines. I also more or less expect that Obama will be ready for it, no matter what it might be.
I agree with some above that holding back on the Public Option until after the summit makes strategic sense. But what about Howard Dean’s critical point that whatever reform is passed should be implemented THIS year, not several years down the road? Is that, too, a change that might find its way into the reconciliation package? I haven’t heard any talk of it in a long time and it’s one of the things I find most disturbing.
Time to bus in some teabaggers to scream, wave their Glock’s, unfurl their Confederate flags and put up a few Hitler posters in front of Blair House later this week.
Maybe they can burn a few Obama/Ape effigies for good measure. It will be the Republican “party of the year”. CPAC won’t hold a candle to it.
Well put, Booman.
Assuming the summit goes well for Obama, the Democrats and the goal of passing major health care reform legislation this year, the next challenge is winning the post-summit battle to interpret the meaning of the summit.
I’d expect the TV news networks to begin spinning the “results” of the summit as soon as it’s over, much like with the presidential campaign debates. (Expect many of the experts to be as wrong about what the public thinks of the summit, as they are about what the public thinks of the debates.)
They’ll likely also have instant polls; and many of the major polling organizations probably already have plan to be “in the field” within the next 10 days to find out what the public thinks of the summit.
Post-summit, it will be important for the Democrats to have a strong and unified message about the meaning of the summit, and a clear plan for moving forward in Congress to pass health care reform. (Expect Obama’s closing remarks on Thursday to be the first cut at that message.)
It will also be important for the Democrats to repeat that message over, and over, and over, for the next few weeks. (Hopefully the message includes the phrase “up or down vote”.)
Fox will interrupt to spin during the event.
Since Obama took out the Nelson’s (and Landrieu’s?) bribe from the WH bill, the glaringly offensive backroom deal that remains is the one with PHARMA. Can Republicans do anything with this strategically?
It stinks to high heaven to everyone not employed by the industry. Removing it would improve support for the bill and the President among most rational people, Republican or Democrat.
But Republicans made the same deal with Medicare D, so I don’t know how they would bring it up.
Is there anything preventing Obama at this point from addressing the issue in this new political context?
Are they getting rid of Harkin’s terrible alternative medicine giveaway? It’s as bad as the Nebraska business.
This plan, as I read it, starts in 2014, is that correct?
I love it. This is going to be so much fun, Republican heads will explode, they will come unglued, lies will fly around like never before…..the sky is falling, oh no……I may have to take the day off from work, have a superbowl-like party
hope it works out the way you see it BooMan.