Health care state of play in the Senate

by: Chris Bowers

Mon Nov 09, 2009 at 12:32


After two weeks where most health care attention has been on the House, we now return to Senate.  Here's where things stand:

Five Problem Democrats
The only barriers to health care reform at this point are Senators Evan Bayh, Mary Landrieu, Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln, and Ben Nelson.  There are fifty-one Senators who support health care reform with a public option, and four--Max Baucus, Mark Begich, Kent Conrad, and Mark Pryor--who have made absolutely no threats to filibuster.  The same cannot be said of the five "problem" Senators listed above.

Three cloture votes--threats are on the second and third
There are three votes where the problem Senators could potentially join with Republicans to block the bill.  First, on the cloture vote to bring the bill to the floor for debate and amendment.  Second, on the cloture vote to end that debate and bring up a floor vote on the overall bill.  Third, on the cloture vote to end debate and bring up a floor vote on the overall health care bill after the health care bill is returned from conference.

Right now, most of the threats to block the bill are on the second of these votes.  Evan Bayh and Joe Lieberman have said they are likely to allow the floor debate.  Ben Nelson has not said he will bock the floor debate, and Mary Landrieu senses a compromise is close.  Blanche Lincoln recently had a one-on-one with President Obama.

So, a floor debate will likely go forward.  However, that will not mean the five problem Senators have been forced into line.

Timeline
The current, vague timeline for the Senate is "the end of the year."

Since Harry Reid announced that the merged Senate bill would contain a public option, the process in the Senate has slowed to a crawl.  The hold-up appears to be that Reid is waiting for CBO estimates which will not be completed until the end of this week.

This means, at the earliest, floor debate and amendments will start for the health care bill one week from tomorrow.  If it does not start next week, then it will start the week after Thanksgiving.

Harry Reid is also telling Senators to get ready for Saturday sessions in December.

Stupak moves to the Senate (more in the extended entry)

Chris Bowers :: Health care state of play in the Senate
Stupak moves to the Senate
To no one's surprise, reproductive rights opponents are working to include the Stupak amendment language in the Senate version of the bill.

Now some Senate Democrats, including Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Ben Nelson of Nebraska, are pushing to incorporate the same restrictions in their own bill. Senior Senate Democratic aides said the outcome was too close to call.

Jon Walker suggests that reconciliation might be the best way to go in the Senate right now, because a Stupak-like amendment could not pass through reconciliation.

The Stupak amendment language did not kill the House bill because of an apparent promise from President Obama that he would "personally" work to remove the Stupak language from the bill during conference committee.  Just in case that doesn't happen, Diana DeGette is working to build a block of House Democrats to oppose a final bill that includes the language:

Although House liberals voted for the bill with the amendment to keep the process moving forward, Rep. Diana DeGette (Colo.) said she has collected more than 40 signatures from House Democrats vowing to oppose any final bill that includes the amendment -- enough to block passage.

"There's going to be a firestorm here," DeGette said. "Women are going to realize that a Democratic-controlled House has passed legislation that would prohibit women paying for abortions with their own funds. . . . We're not going to let this into law."

It is a nice threat, but I have mixed feelings about Progressive Blocks right now.  They succeeded as a negotiating tactic to keep the public option alive to this point, but it was not the public option they were targeting.  Also, Stupak's regressive block was able to force an amendment vote on the House floor, while the Progressive Block was unable to do so.

Overall, Progressive have advanced their influence, but still don't hold as much power as conservative Democrats.  The basic reason for this is that House Progressives still haven't held together to defeat a bill because their demands were not met.  Until they do so, it is unlikely anyone will take their threats seriously.  Maybe they should kill the climate change bill once some horrifying version of it passed through the Senate.

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Health care state of play in the Senate | 34 comments
Can someone tell me ... (4.00 / 1)
if Birch Bayh ever got behind any kind of good health care reform?  It should be obvious why I ask .... it might be uncouth ... but I for one think Bayh can be broken .. because I'd call his office and ask him if he really thinks it's cool to crap all over his dad's legacy ... basically ask him what is more important .. his wife's cushy Directors seat at Wellpoint ... or crapping all over this country ... and if he chooses the former ... he can kiss any chance at 2016 goodbye
didn't bayh tell rachel maddow he won't filibuster? (4.00 / 1)

[ Parent ]
october 29 show (4.00 / 1)
Well, today, Senator Bayh's office issued an about face on that issue, releasing a statement that reads, quote, "Senator Bayh will support moving forward to a health care debate on the Senate floor, where he will work hard to address his concerns and craft affordable legislation that reduces the deficit and lowers health care costs for Indiana families and small businesses."  In other words, according to his office's statement today, Senator Bayh is now promising to allow the bill to come to the floor.

But would he still, like Lieberman, filibuster the final vote with Republicans?  Would he block a majority vote on the final bill and force his party to get 60 votes to pass health care reform instead of 50?

Well, exclusively, this afternoon, Senator Bayh told us this, he told us that his position on health reform is not the same as Senator Lieberman's.  Senator Bayh told us it is extraordinarily unlikely that he would filibuster health reform.  He said there is nothing in the bill that he is aware of now that would cause him to vote to filibuster and he said that he currently, quote, "can't think of a set of circumstances under which he would vote against cloture."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33...
[ Parent ]
Quite True, But Don't Forget (4.00 / 1)
Bayh is already an extraordinarily unlikely guy.

If only, if only he were a chip off the old block!

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
It's all good to wish Evan were more like Birch (0.00 / 0)
but children are their own people, and can differ from their parents all the time.  I'm much more to the left than my parents (who regularly vote Democratic), for example.

Evan is not the liberal Birch was, and we have to deal with that.  I wish we could knock him off in 2010, either through a primary or through the Republican candidate if necessary.

[ Parent ]
You mean Evan Bayh?? (4.00 / 2)
I wish we were dealing with Birch Bayh, who is 1000X the democrat his son is. It's not even close.  
[ Parent ]
Birch's son is a former chair of the DLC -- (4.00 / 1)
-- a crew that includes these Dem stalwarts:

   * Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri (1985 - 1986)
   * Gov. Chuck Robb of Virginia (1986 - 1988)
   * Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia (1988 - 1990)
   * Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas (1990 - 1991)
   * Sen. John Breaux of Louisiana (1991 - 1993)
   * Rep. Dave McCurdy of Oklahoma (1993 - 1995)
   * Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut (1995 - 2001)
   * Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana (2001 - 2005)
   * Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa (2005 - 2007)
   * Former Rep. Harold Ford of Tennessee (2007 - present)

(Titles listed are those held at time of assuming chair.)

[ Parent ]
it's reconciliation or bust (4.00 / 1)
I don't think we can get lieberman & co.

the bill that would be able to get lieberman would be horrible

correction (0.00 / 0)
I don't think we can get lieberman & co.

I don't think we can get lieberman & co., mostly lieberman, to support an ok bill (even with opt-out)

[ Parent ]
Lieberman Can Be Stopped (0.00 / 0)
Lieberman can be stopped if progressive Jewish organizations targeted him, i.e., something like:

"You will be remembered as an embarrassment to the Jewish people and a betrayer of American democracy."

If anyone knows how to accomplish this, go to it.

[ Parent ]
afraid you're right (0.00 / 0)
Yeah, I was suprised that this post (and others on OpenLeft in the past couple days), haven't mentioned Lieberman's big threat on Sunday, to prevent a floor debate. I believe that's the second of the three filibusters Chris mentions here.

What kind of leverage do we have over this guy??

[ Parent ]
or (0.00 / 0)
Or has it not been mentioned on OL because Chris and others don't believe this is a credible threat? If not, why not??
[ Parent ]
I dismissed the Lieberman threat (0.00 / 0)
hearing news reports, it might have been Maddow, talking about how Lieberman likes to grandstand for the publicity, but won't follow through.
[ Parent ]
Harry Reid has leverage.... (0.00 / 0)
The question is, does he have the testicular fortitude to use it.  I'm referring, of course, to the Majority Leader's power to strip Joementum of his seniority in the caucus, and consequently of the chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.  He'd probably be kicked off the Environment and Public Works and Armed Services Committees, too, leaving him as a back-bencher on, probably, the Small Business and Entrepreneurship committee, with perhaps junior seats on Veterans Affairs and Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, and the Special Committee on Aging thrown in to keep him busy and out from underfoot.

The progressive movement also has at least a credible threat to hold over him: the $3.5 million+ pledged by Move-On members to support a primary challenge to any Senator in the Dem caucus who helps the Rethugs filibuster healthcare reform.  Of course, since it's pledged, rather than actually donated, we can expect that not all of it will materialize, and 3.5 million doesn't have as much impact in Connecticut's media market (IIRC, much of Connecticut shares NYC's hyper-expensive market) as it would be in Nebraska, Arkansas, and probably Louisiana or Indiana -- and Joe won't be running in the Democratic primary, anyway, though I suspect he might seek the Rethug nomination.

"A fantasy is not even a wish, much less an act.  There is no such thing as a culpable or shameful fantasy."  -----Lady Sally McGee

[ Parent ]
Hate to say it (4.00 / 1)
But it might be time to start pushing to kill the entire process.  If you think this bill is going to get better in reconciliation instead of worse, I would ask what Congress have you been watching for the last 30 years?  Reconciliation with empty promises to remove all the toxic sludge is a con game meant to stall our ability to kill the bill.  The only thing that will survive reconciliation intact is the mandate.  Stupak might be chunked, but the pricetag for that will be an evern weaker PO.  I dare you to say that isn't the most likely outcome.

I'm sorry, this "reform" was lukewarm from the start, it is now mildly toxic and becoming more so everyday.  It's time to kill it so we can have better positioning on the next big issue.  If we suck it down this time, we're as big a whores as the moderates IMHO.  No bill is better than this crap.

I Share Your Frustration--And Judgment Re The Bill, But The Problem With That (4.00 / 3)
is that killing the bill entirely really could hand the GOP a major victory, even the chance to win back the House.  Particularly if the economy continues as is, with no sign of employment recovery.

The argument for passage is that the bill is so bad that the issue will have to be revisited much sooner than Versailles can imagine. So if we can build progressive power in the meantime, this can actually be the first step toward something decent, regardless of what Obama & Co intend.

So right now, I think it's best to keep moving forward.  But that doesn't mean I oppose killing the bill somewhere on down the road if it will build progressive power to do so, and passing the bill would be just too toxic.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
Opportunities to improve it (0.00 / 0)
We could be coming up on several good opportunities to improve the health care situation soon after this bill is passed.

One direction to move toward Medicare for all would be to lower the Medicare eligibility age. Some wonks want to 'reform' Medicare soon anyway, cooking up projections that show it running out of funds, and the sky falling, within Chicken Little's lifetime if not sooner. OK, let's reform it: raise the cap on salaries covered by the Medicare tax to $1 million a year. Make Medicare an option at age 55. Short of funds again? Dedicate some taxes to pay for it: Restore what the Repubs call the Death Tax and what we could call the Wealth to Health Tax, putting all taxes on inheritances toward paying for Medicare. Not enough? Make the tax on alcoholic beverages based on the alcohol content to apply equally to beer, malt liquor, wine, whiskey, whatever, and restore it to the inflation-adjusted level it was in 1953, which was, iirc, the last time that tax was increased.

Early option Medicare could also be rolled into a second stimulus/bailout plan. The entities bailed out would not be Wall Street's organized gangs of thieves and/or incompetents this time, but businesses like GM committed to paying medical for early-retired employees, and for state and local governments with the same obligations. Shifting this enormous expense from local and state governments would help them balance their budgets without more job cuts, in other words, stimulus.

Early option Medicare would also reduce the costs of all the insurance plans in the pools, including the public option plan, by removing most of the oldest, fattest, been-smoking-the-longest, most-degenerative-disease-prone people from their cost side, making them cheaper and reducing needed subsidies.

All this fundamental improvement without changing the structure of the current reforms, and without refighting the abortion war, for that matter.

[ Parent ]
if this bill is so bad (0.00 / 0)
The argument for passage is that the bill is so bad that the issue will have to be revisited much sooner than Versailles can imagine. So if we can build progressive power in the meantime, this can actually be the first step toward something decent, regardless of what Obama & Co intend.

if this bill is so bad and is passed with progressive support, no thinking person will trust progressives with a second chance. including me.

this bill is a not a step forward, as a matter of policy it is a step to nowhere. and i can't see how, as a matter of politics, it makes any sense to tie progressives to it. if the public hates the bill, they will hate us too.

[ Parent ]
Suicide (4.00 / 1)
I would argue that the opposite. The only way we're going to have leverage on the next issue, the climate change bill, is if the Democratic leadership in Congress is seen as victorious on this bill, regardless of the bill's particulars. Failing to pass a bill will be seen as weakness, and no more big bills would pass.
[ Parent ]
I'm Schizophrenic (4.00 / 2)
On the one hand, I'm as frustrated and outraged as anyone at the progressives failure to stick to their guns.

On the other hand, I look at how utterly out of it they were until just very recently, and I think they've come a long way fast.

But the bottom line is that Chris is right--they need to kill a bill before they will be taken seriously... even by themselves.

The climate bill certainly looks like it could be the stinker to kill.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

I agree (0.00 / 0)
I didn't like ACES, and whatever version comes back from the Senate will be worse. On the other hand, it's possible no bill will come back from the Senate.

I don't for a second believe that pro-choicers in the House will kill health care reform. Neither does anyone else.

Join the Iowa progressive community at Bleeding Heartland.

[ Parent ]
I Diagree (4.00 / 1)
I don't for a second believe that pro-choicers in the House will kill health care reform. Neither does anyone else.

I think it's possible.  It would help explain why a few more strong pro-choicers didn't defect on final passage.  But "possible" is pretty far from a done deal.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
I agree with Paul (0.00 / 0)
some of you are underestimating how important this issue is to progressive Dems, and women in particular. This isn't like single payer, or Afghanistan escalation. Many women in congress came of age when Gloria Steinem and others help win this battle more than 30 years ago, its a very very big deal to them. Although I don't trust the source, the Politico article saying there was crying upon Pelosi's inclusion of Stupak's ammendment is something i can totally see happening.
[ Parent ]
this will be an interesting history class (0.00 / 0)
i can hear students in 40 years in the refugee school. "But what the hell was wrong with them? Why did people let all this crap happen?" while the teacher patiently tries to explain about the cultural settings and the limited general understanding of issues and excuse and excuse and none of them buy it...

the single most urgent pressing issue - the one with a real world deadline, where we either take sufficient action in time or we face catastrophe - and Obama and the Democrats hit a whiffer.

i am not sure i am disagreeing with you, really, but geez. epic empire fail.

not everything worth doing is profitable. not everything profitable is worth doing.

[ Parent ]
Agreed. (4.00 / 1)
Nobly striking down imperfect or even deeply flawed bills when it is unclear if/when you'll get another chance is foolish. Flaws can be fixed, but momentum is key.
[ Parent ]
well (0.00 / 0)
i dunno. not so much with climate change. momentum is on the side of the heat engine that's simplifying our ecosystem out from under us. the whole "it's a long process" epic generational struggle look at civil rights women's suffrage keep fightin' Democratic usual story doesn't really apply. there isn't time. failure to act sufficiently soon enough will result in such large changes that further argument becomes moot because your system collapses.

which is why i am not sure if killing the climate bill would really matter or not, because what will be offered up for passage will be such weak tea and this is the high point. if it fails, Obama is not going to come back to it in a second term, unless he's forced to by the rest of the world. President Palin will probably institute a National Burn-A-Forest program.

not everything worth doing is profitable. not everything profitable is worth doing.

[ Parent ]
Indeed! (0.00 / 0)
There's a reason I can never get "Memphis Blues Again" out of my head...

And here I sit so patiently
Waiting to find out what price
You have to pay to get out of
Going through all these things twice

First as tragedy, then as farce, as Marx said, putting words into Hegel's mouth.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
Where is Chris getting (0.00 / 0)
the info that Obama supposedly promised progressives he would strike Stupak's ammendment out in conference. Haven't seen it reported anywhere.  
Kennedy was Right (4.00 / 1)
When FDR and LBJ were trying to pound Social Security and Medicare through Congress against fierce resistance from Republicans and conservative Democrats, Democrats to their left expressed pretty much identical sentiments about the inadequacies of both bills in their original form. They were so horribly flawed and compromised, that they thought it would be better to pass nothing than to pass bills that were far from perfect. Fortunately, bills don't have to be perfect the first time because Congress actually has the power to reshape laws after they're enacted. Thanks to this virtually unknown power of Congress, both Social Security and Medicare were expanded and improved in subsequent years and, in every case, it was vastly easier to make them better than it was to enact them in the first place; because, as it also turned out, the hard part is getting Congress to accept the concept. Once they did, the rest followed. Just as Democrats to the left of LBJ failed to learn anything from FDR's experience with Social Security, today's perfectionistas have failed to learn anything other than what their dogma tells them. The people who wanted it perfect the first time are a big part of why we're here at the 21st century trying to catch up to where Europe was by the middle of the 20th. Ted Kennedy was one of them in the early 70s and he went to his grave regretting it.
- NCSteve, TPM

The above excerpt is aboslutely true BUT (0.00 / 0)
there are 2 things that need to happen with the initial bill for it to follow the course of medicare and SS:

1)The structural programs need to be in place so future  expansion and improvements are possible and doable, even in a stagnant congress. Thats why this issue of the PO has been a big issue for progressives, and why those who claim it only would enlist 5-10% of the population totally miss the point. Those naysayers who claim its a small part are actually the Dems who haven't learned the lessons of SS and Medicare, and how 5% today may be 20% tommorow.

2)The second thing is the bill, in its initial phase, has to be robust enough and good enough to have popular support once it's implemented. The popular support for SS and Medicare were what made their expansion tough for the opposition to derail. So if people like Paulo Begala think this bill will be strengethened in the future if it's initial incarnation isn't popular, or is a 50/50 issue with Americans, then they're confused. You can't pass garbage initially and then improve it, especially when the bill barely passed congress to begin with. You have to pass something substantial enough to garner the necessary political support with Americans.  

[ Parent ]
Right (4.00 / 1)
it's one thing to pass something that represents a small step forward and hope to improve it later.  It's another to pass something that is a step backward, and this health care bill is a step backwards in some respects.  If the PO isn't able to get off the ground, the reputation of government health care will be ruined and we'll have lost the chance to pass Medicare for All for a generation.  There will be no "fixing it later" for some time.

I can't stand Democratic Party hacks (not saying anyone here is one) who push that "pass something now, fix it later" excuse as a way of legitimizing the crap they're forcing down our throats.

[ Parent ]
So...how has that worked out with monstrosities like: (4.00 / 3)
Truman's National Security Act of 1947?

Taft-Hartley?

The 70s deregulation of airlines, trucking, etc?

The Reagan tax cuts?

Or, the Clinton capital-gains tax cuts, welfare deform, elimination of Glass-Steagall, exempting derivatives from regulation, expanding pharmaceutical advertising, the WTO, NAFTA and its progeny, restrictions on habeas corpus and expansion of the surveillance state, extraordinary rendition, expanded definition of "terrorism," Plan Colombia, vast expansion of the number of incarcerated Americans, expansion of the "war on drugs," etc?

[ Parent ]
Nonsense (4.00 / 1)
Government programs may have the propensity to expand, but it doesn't follow that legislation has a propensity to expand.  Social Security and Medicare didn't expand because its easy for Congress to improve legislation once it "accepts the concept."  Rather, those programs created constituencies that pressed Congress to expand those programs.  Those programs were designed to allow that to happen.

The complaints being made today are not identical or even similar, because the whole point of the public option was to make use of similar dynamics, yet the PO we got is designed to avoid those dynamics. That is, the pro-PO complaint from the left is that we're not doing it similar to SS and Medicare.

Tying today's left critics to yesterday's left critics is not an argument - it's rhetorical sleight of hand. What's dogmatic is to believe that the left is always wrong and that so called moderates could get things done if only the left would settle down.  

It was the bulk of the Democratic Party that has refused to seriously engage the health care issue except once very 20 years or so, which makes it their fault where we stand. The left didn't make them do that.  



Politics is the art of the possible, but that means you have to think about changing what is possible, not that you have to accept it in perpetuity.

[ Parent ]
Hmm. "The only barriers to health care reform at this point are..." (4.00 / 1)
Senators who might not vote for a shitty bill.

I guess that covers it, alrighty!

Health care state of play in the Senate | 34 comments
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