It’s an interesting thing to see the new Republican talking point that uses Barack Obama’s own words against him. Several times since be became a candidate for federal office he has discussed the need to get 60 votes to pass significant legislation through the Senate. In context, he has used this argument to explain why more aggressive health care reforms that are preferred by progressives are non-starters in our current political system. As you might imagine, a Democratic politician who is touting anything less than the kind of health care enjoyed by every other industrialized nation in the world is going to get asked about their rationale for compromising on the issue before negotiations even begin. And, the honest answer to that question is that you need 60 votes in the Senate to pass anything and no Republicans are going to vote for cloture on a single-payer system that does away with or significantly diminishes the profits of the private health insurance industry. So, rather than promising something that cannot be delivered, Obama has all along said that we must settle from something sub-optimal or get nothing.
Now, a funny thing happened that confused things a bit. The Senate Democrats actually had 60 votes in their caucus for four months (Sept-Jan) and they passed Obama’s health care on Christmas Eve. So, while they didn’t get any bipartisan support, they did reach the magic number. And the Senate does not intend to vote again on that bill. They expect the House to pass it as well, and then they will both send the bill up to the White House for Barack Obama’s signature.
I know that the passage of health care reform is more complicated than that, but we really need to focus on the fact that the 60 vote threshold has already been met. The fact that the Democrats now only have 59 members in their caucus means that the Senate cannot amend their bill any further, and that means that the House can’t make any changes either. The loss of Teddy Kennedy’s seat to republican Scott Brown short-circuited the negotiations over the House and Senate bills to find a middle ground both chambers could support. So, the House is not inclined to vote for the Senate bill because they like their bill much better and want to see some of their ideas incorporated. So, the problem we have is that the House won’t pass the Senate’s bill with a simple majority. The obstacle is the House and the only reason that 60 votes matter at all is because the Democrats no longer have the votes to make changes to a bill that they have already passed.
That is where the reconciliation bill comes into play. The concessions the Senate would have made to the House if they still had 60 votes will be made in a separate bill that incorporates just those changes. That bill will only require 51 votes to pass. It’s a way of making Scott Brown irrelevant. Nothing more or less. The Senate Health Care bill has already passed through the Senate, and it will be the bill (god-willing) that the president signs.
So, the president may have said in the past that any health care bill will need 60 votes to pass, and he wasn’t wrong. It did.
The desperation is so thick around this thing that it’s created its own microclimate.
Excellent post. Great punchline. Thanks BooMan!
Stupak seems to have created problems in the House. Hoyer is offering Stupak the possibility of a separate bill to handle his amendment because it can’t pass the Byrd rule. That means there are enough Stupak allies to keep the approval of the Senate healthcare bill from moving forward–the issue being the substitution of the Nelson amendment in the Senate bill.
So there might be two bills from the House. The sidecar amendments to the Senate healthcare bill and a separate, independent bill that incorporates the Stupak amendment–which might get some Republican support just to ensure that it passes and separates pro-choice voters from the Democrats in Congress.
It’s not complicated at all. Obama and the Dems are playing Lucy while all the progressives and people who had “hope” for “change” are all Charlie Brown trying to kick Lucy’s football. AAaaargh!
What will the excuse be when 65, 70, 75, 80 Dems are in the House of Lords? There willalways be an excuse because Obama and the Dems are wholly-owned pawns of Industry and, to be quite frank, they don’t want too much progress nor too much change. Obama is already talking about the next election, and that’s where his head is. (Never mind that he will not get reelected.) It doesn’t matter what industry. If you are a chief of any “industry,” you get first dibs at their table because they have the cold, hard cash that is the mana for all compromised politicians.
Then one had better hustling les aristos a la lanterne, then, hadn’t one?
To do anything less is to be complicit.
Lately I find my self humming the great old folk song, I owe my soul to the Company Store whenever I read about the Health Care fight.
As I read my billing statement yesterday where the bill was for $1,500 and the company gracefully offered to pay all but $367 I was chatting with the doctor’s billing dept where I was told that they had billed the insurance company $427. Quite the tidy profit for insurance. I owe my soul to the company store.
I doubt many of us, no matter how well informed, truly understand the size of the tentacles that the health care providers have wrapped around the balls of our congress, and surely around the psyche of MSM and unfortunately, eventually, around Obama.
Well, according to the billing statement for my doc, who is in a large university medical system, he is billing $1000 an hour. And giving you a flu shot is $35 but actually injecting it into your arm is another $12.
A 15-minute office visit, two flu shots, and two routine lab tests totaled $750+ of which my insurance paid less than half.
It is not the docs so much in primary care, but it is the primary care “providers” (the CEO of mine get more than $1 million for his management). And it is the insurance companies. (Or the employers who are self-insuring so they can see your personal health information.)
That was exactly my point. Interestingly, the blood wrk I had done was inhouse, they do about 6 patients an hour and the results are over to the doc within 45 minutes wherein he takes 15 minutes to tell you you’re ok, but then the insur folk shuffle some papers and get the biggest cut.