Which House Democrats are in danger in 2010? According to the Cook Political Report, mainly it appears to be Blue Dogs and New Dems, and unaffiliated Democrats:
Given how few Progressives are in danger, in the extended entry I discuss how the 2010 elections are likely to increase Progressive power in the House Democratic caucus.
(* With 10% of the country following some form of vegetarian diet, this number is based on the assumption that vegetarians break Democratic 3-1, which is a margin very similar to the LGBT community, non-Christians, and not "white non-Hispanic."
Also note: Women are also disproportionately Democratic. However, unlike all the other groups listed here, women make up a significant percentage of Republican voters, too.)
Even though there is some overlap between these categories, the vast majority of Democrats fall into at least one of these five. And by "vast majority," I mean "over 70%."
Now, of course there is still a not-insignificant straight, meat-eating, non-union, white Christian contingent within the Democratic Party rank and file. However, that group is older than the rest of the party, and as such continues to shrink as an overall percentage of Democratic voters. Non-whites, non-Christians, LGBTs and vegetarians are all disproportionately under the age of 50, which will make future incarnations of the Democratic Party even more skewed toward these groups. This process is accelerated even further by Republicans targeting their messaging, and making the vast majority of their gains, among Americans who do not fit into one of those five categories.
I write--or at least attempt to write this--in a value-neutral sense. It isn't good or bad, it is just who the Democratic Party is at this point. It is significantly not-"white non-Hispanic," and the "white non-Hispanic" segment is significantly vegetarian, non-Christian or non-straight. Among Democratic voters who fit into neither of these groups, it is significantly union. Further, demographic and political trends will only make this more so in the future. The end result will be a Democratic Party that looks much more like that Congressional Progressive Caucus, and a Republican Party that includes the Blue Dogs and Conservadems.
During a three-hour tirade about Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to transfer five detainees from Guantanamo Bay to the United States for criminal prosecution, Rush Limbaugh attacked the "dangerous" "ideologue" Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA), who in a Fox News interview that day discussed his support of Holder's decision.
--If Democrats do lose a significant number of House seats in 2010, the chamber as a whole will shift to the right. However, given who will lose, the Democratic caucus will actually shift significantly to the left.
--Yey, there is lots of water on the Moon! That's great and all, but if you want something that will really excite you about potential human colonization of space, check out the new VASIMR rocket--it can travel to Mars in only 39 days! Best of all, it was actually designed to ferry people and goods back and forth to a permanent Moon base, and is already being tested on the international space station. The pieces are really falling into place...
--New Stargate Universe tonight-and the premier of the Prisoner on Sunday. Woo-hoo
Health care reform was always going to be tough as hell, as difficult as any issue that could ever be tackled. As I learned from the agony of the 1993-94 Clinton attempt at health care reform, this issue is so massive, so complicated, so unwieldy that it is prone to be derailed by lobbyists pulling on any one of the hundred hanging threads and unraveling the whole thing. Culture war issues like abortion and immigration combine with issues peculiar to individual districts like having a medical device manufacturer based in a congressperson's district, and all of those things combine with bigger worries about overall ideological and political concerns back home.
When people over the weekend would ask why getting the votes for the health care bill was so hard, I would have to say: it just is - it is the nature of the beast. Every step along the way will be tough and painful and decidedly not easy. Every time we complete a step, like we did on Saturday night, it is easy to look at how hard it was and say, "Oh my God, the next step is even harder, how we will ever get there?"
Determined leadership can find a way through. In the 1993 budget fight, every step of the way was complete torture, and at numerous times it looked like we were completely done for. But we kept battling, took on one step at a time, and we got it done.
Speaking of determined leadership, Nancy Pelosi deserves enormous credit for finding a way to get this done. Like all progressives, I am deeply unhappy with the abortion language that was allowed to be voted into this bill. That language is unacceptable and has to be changed in conference committee. But I was looking at the vote count on Friday night too, and we really were done unless that vote was allowed. There were literally no good choices at that moment, because to let the bill fail or pull the bill from being voted on would have caused everything to get unraveled. We still have a very good chance at stripping this terribly restrictive anti-abortion language in conference committee, and need to keep fighting to do that.
On the final vote, the whipping process was intense and impressive. Democratic leaders I have known in the past have rarely played this kind of hardball, but some kneecaps were broken Saturday night to get these votes, and the Speaker did a masterful job of doing every little thing that needed to be done. She gave no passes to people, and she was very clear there would have been consequences to all who voted no. She got the job done.
I also wanted to commend the congresspeople from tough districts likely facing very competitive races who did the right thing on this vote. It was a good political move on balance because it will help them turn out the base in the 2010 election, but when you are getting hammered by the big money forces against this bill, it never feels like a tough vote like this is going to help you. As a strong progressive, I give more conservative members of the Democratic caucus a lot of flack sometimes, but these Democrats from tough districts deserve a lot of thanks:
AZ-01 Kirkpatrick, Ann R+6
AZ-05 Mitchell, Harry R+5
AZ-08 Giffords, Gabby R+4
CA-11 McNerney, Jerry R+1
CT-04 Himes, Jim D+5
FL-08 Grayson, Alan R+2
IL-08 Bean, Melissa R+1
IL-11 Halvorson, Debbie R+1
IL-14 Foster, Bill R+1
IN-8 Ellsworth, Brad R+8
KS-03 Moore, Dennis R+3
MI-07 Schauer, Mark R+2
MI-09 Peters, Gary D+2
MN-01 Walz, Tim R+1
NH-01 Shea-Porter, Carol R+0
NV-3 Titus, Dina D+2
NY-01 Bishop, Timothy R+0
NY-19 Hall, John R+3
NY-24 Arcuri, Mike R+2
NY-25 Maffei, Dan D+3
OH-15 Kilroy, Mary D+1
OR-5 Schrader, Kurt D+1
PA-3 Dahlkemper, Kathy R+3
VA-5 Perriello, Tom R+5
WI-08 Kagen, Steve R+2
On the other hand, there are some Democrats I am appalled by. As a 30-year supporter of single-payer, and with full knowledge of the imperfections in this bill, I am angry that single-payer supporters Kucinich and Massa were happy to let any hope of health care reform for a generation die because the bill wasn't everything we hoped it would be. To let another generation go by where tens of thousands of people die every year from being under-insured, and have the insurance companies continue to be allowed to screw people over pre-existing conditions, lifetime caps, and recessions is just wrong.
Then there is the large collection of Blue Dogs who care nothing about the President or the Democratic Party's top priority, let alone all those people without insurance. After all that Rahm Emanuel and Nancy Pelosi did for these reps in the 2006 and 2008 elections, all the money and time and staff and consultant help they gave them, for those Blue Dogs to walk away on the biggest issue, when they were needed the most, is a sign of their selfishness. These are Rahm's people, recruited by him and supported by him at every step of the way, and they don't care that they are making him look terrible by leaving him out to dry. They are also dumb about their own political fate: if Democrats don't deliver, Democratic base voters will walk away in massive numbers, and it will be the people in marginal districts that will suffer the most.
The health care debate was always going to be a knock-down, drag-out fight, with every stage a harrowing journey to get through. But we survived another big step on Saturday night, and are alive to fight for another round. We will figure out how to win this one way or the other, making history when we do.
Blue Dogs like to say that they are fiscal conservatives. In fact, "fiscally conservative" is the first way that Blue Dogs describe themselves on their website. That description is right next to a deficit clock, because I guess reducing the deficit is their number one priority.
Fortunately for the Blue Dogs, there is a health care bill in the House right now that the CBO projects to reduce the deficit in both the near term and long term. From the CBO:
CBO and the staff of JCT estimate that, on balance, the direct spending and revenue effects of enacting H.R. 3962, incorporating the manager's amendment, would yield a net reduction in federal budget deficits of $129 billion over the 2010-2019 period. (CBO has not completed a comprehensive estimate of the legislation's potential impact on spending that is subject to future appropriation action.) In the decade after 2019, the bill would probably result in slight reductions in federal budget deficits.
Great! Reducing the deficit is what Blue Dogs are all about, right? This should be a slam dunk for them!
The number of Blue Dogs leaning toward or committed to "no" votes could be in the 30s, according to members, although Blue Dog leaders stress that they've done no whip count.
"I've been spending a lot of time with my members who are kind of going from pillar to post saying, 'Look, we don't need this; we can't afford this,' " Taylor explained.
Truly, only fiscal conservatives like the Blue Dogs would argue that we can't afford to reduce the deficit.
While there is some drama in tonight's elections--most notably in Maine and New Jersey--there is little to no drama in the two prominent campaigns featuring conservative, Blue Dog style Democrats. In Virginia, Creigh Deeds is going to get crushed by Bob McDonnell. In the New York 23rd congressional district special election, Bill Owens is likely to get trounced by Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman.
Even though conservative Democrats are about to lose--and lose hard--at least one Blue Dog is none the less declaring that these defeats are a sign that Democrats as a whole should act more like Blue Dogs. Representative Jason Altmire:
Centrist Blue Dog Democrats might see their position strengthened if Democrats suffer broader electoral losses, one Blue Dog member suggested Tuesday.
Rep. Jason Altmire (D-Pa.) argued that an election night rebuke for Democratic candidates across the nation could lead some in the party to rethink their plans on healthcare reform and other issues.
"It looks as though the anger that has been boiling up the last couple of months is going to lead to a pretty high turnout from Republicans and from people who are concerned about increased spending," Altmire said Monday evening during an appearance on Fox Business Network.
The message here is that Blue Dog losses are a sign that more Democrats should be like Blue Dogs. Presuming that Blue Dog victories would also, in the eyes of Blue Dogs, be a sign that Democrats as a whole should be more like Blue Dogs, then really there is nothing that can happen at the ballot box that would not be a sign Democrats should be more like Blue Dogs.
In a way, this is actually perfect thinking for our current system of government. Wall Street crashes the economy, so give more money to Wall Street. Health insurance costs too much, so give them more customers with little competition. Energy and agriculture conglomerates are the largest polluters in America, so construct a climate change bill that gives those conglomerates tens of billions of dollars.
Blue Dog Democrats lose, so Democrats should be more like Blue Dogs. It all makes perfect sense, as long as your goal isn't actually for Democrats to win elections.
Here is the calendar for the ongoing process of merging the three House health reform bills and the two Senate health care bills:
House
October 16-19. House leadership receives and reviews Congressional Budget Office "scores" for various health reform bills. Some of these CBO scores had been received by Friday the 16th, as demonstrated by the leak of two partial scores to some media outlets.
October 20: The entire House Democratic caucus will meet, at which time the leadership will share all of the CBO scores with them.
October 21-26: Following the release of the various CBO scores to the entire Democratic House caucus, the House leadership will whip the entire caucus to determining which health care bill has the most support.
October 26: Based largely on the whip and the CBO scores, the leadership will choose a health care bill to send to the floor.
October 26-29: The House health care bill will be released to the public for a 72-hour review period. The leadership will also begin the process of sending the bill through the Rules committee.
October 29: Earliest day the House leadership could pass the health care bill through the Rule Committee, thus bringing it to the floor for debate and amendments.
This means tomorrow is a big day for health care in the House. Expect to see all of the CBO scores on the various health care bills, as well as initial estimates on which bill is most popular with the membership.
Speaker Pelosi's goal is to pass a bill through the House with a public option that is cheaper than the Senate Finance Committee's bill which lacks a public option. The idea is that it would put public option opponents, who have repeatedly harped on the cost of the bill, in a position where they would have to support a more expensive bill in order to oppose the public option.
The goal of the Congressional Progressive Caucus is to pass a health care bill with a "robust" public option, which means a public option tied to Medicare rates +5%. As of last week, they had about 206 or 207 members on board with that public option. While that is close to passage, it also means they need the support of the House leadership get over the 218 vote finish line.
It is unclear whether it is possible to achieve both Speaker Pelosi's goal, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus's goal. This is largely due not to the cost of the robust public option, but to Speaker Pelosi's desire to pass a bill with around 230-240 votes, rather than a wafer thin 218. The best case scenario is probably for a compromise Medicare +5% public option that includes $20 billion in funding for rural hospitals.
Information on the Senate merger process in the extended entry.
Update: The House caucus meeting is tonight, not on the 21st, as I originally reported here.
That is the big question everyone is wondering about these days. Most of the traditional media is drooling over the idea of a train wreck, hyping the disagreements and hoping for failure. But the disagreements are also quite real and quite significant. Conservative Democrats don't want a public option, progressives are insisting on it. Conservatives don't want to spend too much, progressives want to be sure insurance is actually affordable to the middle class.
Conservatives don't want businesses to pay anything for their workers' health care, progressives don't want businesses to get a free ride, especially if their workers are being forced to buy insurance. Conservatives want workers taxed on their health plan if it's a good one, progressives would rather have the super rich pay more in taxes instead of the middle class worker with a decent insurance package.
These are tough issues to work out, but I am confident that the White House and the legislative leaders will figure out a way. When legislation is this important to pass - substantively and politically - leaders figure out a path to getting it done. I have seen it happen many different times over the years- seemingly impossible to solve policy differences worked out with patience, muscle, and creativity.
Take the public option. In what is either a sign we will pass health reform, or sign of the apocalypse (or maybe both for certain fundamentalist Christians), conservative Blue Dog Mike Ross and I, one of the original hard core public option advocates, actually agree on something related to the public option. Ross is now suggesting that "instead of creating an entirely new government bureaucracy to administer a public option, Medicare should be offered as a choice." I have fought like crazy for a new public health insurance option to be created for people under 65 years old, but I actually think that this idea is a very reasonable compromise: don't create a new entity, just open up the perfectly good public option we have - Medicare - to anyone who wants to buy into it. That would actually strengthen Medicare because younger, healthier people would be joining the risk pool. And it would satisfy progressives by giving some real competition to the private insurance industry.
Or take affordability. For the fiscally conservative Democrats, they can take reassurances on that issue from the latest CBO report which says that both of the two House bills comes close to (one slightly above, and one slightly below) the $900 billion amount targeted by fiscal conservatives, but they also cover more people, are far more affordable and are deficit neutral.
Here's the bottom line on middle class affordability: the compromise the Blue Dogs forced on the House Energy and Commerce bill made the cost for middle class families $551 a year more, while the Senate Finance bill was a staggering $3,900 a year more for middle class families than the Senate HELP Committee bill. And yet the CBO now says that the better House version of the bill (which is closer to the Senate HELP Committee) is just as fiscally responsible as the "centrist" alternatives that cost the middle class families so much more. When you look at the actual numbers and policy implications of the bills, it's easy to come to terms. In this case, the House bill allows both fiscal conservatives and those of us who want more affordability for the middle class to win.
When conservatives and progressive Democrats in the Senate and House sit down to look at these bills, compromise ideas like Ross' idea of letting everyone buy into Medicare will emerge, and when the merits of the bills are analyzed, I believe that people will come to understand that the political and policy logic of going with the better alternatives in all these areas. This is too important - to the country, to the President, to the Democratic Party - for this not to get resolved.
And if Mike Ross and a lefty like Mike Lux can find a common ground, then anything is possible.
Using constituent data from Techpolitics and updating the membership for the 111th Congress, here are some demographic comparisons between the constituents of the Blue Dogs and the constituents of the Progressive Caucus:
Blue Dog vs. Progressive, Constituent Demographics
Demographic
Blue Dogs
Progressives
Other Dems
Median Income
$37,798
$41,405
$44,890
% in Poverty
14.02%
16.03%
12.13%
African-American
11.63%
22.35%
12.09%
Hispanic
10.41%
18.28%
14.62%
Other non-white
3.76%
7.04%
5.96%
It is worth noting that both Progressives and Blue Dogs have constituents who are, on average, poorer than the rest of the House Democratic caucus. How is it then that these two groups are on the opposite end of the Democratic Party?
One tempting conclusion is the substantial ethnic difference between the two constituencies. 47.67% of the constituents of Progressive Caucus members are non-white, while only 25.08% of the constituents of Blue Dog House members are non-white. It isn't that the Blue Dogs have wealthier constituents, just that they seem to have whiter constituents. Somehow, in and of itself, that is enough for Blue Dogs to take a more corporate, conservative policy line.
These numbers are pretty disturbing. They remind me of the old saying: "the rich man keeps blacks and whites apart so he can steal from them both." Seems about right.
According to an internal Blue Dog whip count, the public option doesn't even enter their top four concerns on the health care bill:
The Blue Dogs have been surveying their membership over the last several days; coalition co-chair Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.) has been collecting the responses. She listed the four top priorities that have emerged: Keeping the cost under $900 billion, not moving at a faster pace than the Senate, getting a 20-year cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office and addressing regional disparities in Medicare reimbursement rates.
So, the Huffington Post asked, the public option is not a top priority?
"Right, the group is somewhat split," she said.
Given this, it would seem that if the other Blue Dog concerns are met, there should be negotiating room to include a public option tied to Medicare rates. That is, as long as the Blue Dogs are negotiating in good faith, which they might very well not be.
Meanwhile, the Progressive Caucus has completed its whip count of members willing to vote against a health care reform that does not include a robust public option. Progressive Caucus co-chair Raul Grijalva is claiming success, but not releasing numbers or names:
After conducting an internal and informal count of House liberals who are still willing to oppose health care reform without a robust public plan, Dem Rep. Raul Grivalja, the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, says he's still confident that he has a big bloc of House liberals on board to vote against anything that falls short.
"We are comfortable with the sustained support for the public option and, for myself and others, the original letter we signed is still our position," Grijalva said in a statement emailed over to me, in a reference to 60 House liberals who signed a recent letter pledging to oppose any bill without a public option.
A Grijalva spokesperson confirms that he reached that conclusion after multiple conversations with House liberals in the last few days.
The lack of names and numbers leads one to believe that there is negotiating room for House Progressives, too. So, right now the best bet is that some kind of deal is out there that would get enough votes to pass the House, although exactly what that deal is remains unclear.
Over the in the Senate, which will have 60 functioning Democratic votes tomorrow if and when Paul Kirk is sworn in, the leadership is focused on stopping a Republican filibuster rather than on reconciliation. This is a viable strategy, given that not a single Senate Democrat has said s/he will vote against cloture on a health care bill with a public option. Some, like Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu, haven't committed to opposing a Republican filibuster, but they haven't ruled it out, either. Others, like Joe Lieberman, have said they oppose a public option, but haven't said they would vote against any health care bill with a public option.
And so, the public option remains very much alive tonight. Far from secure, but very much alive.
There will be a full meeting of the Democratic House caucus on Thursday. Both the Blue Dogs and the Progressive Caucus are finishing their health are whip counts in advance of it. Ryan Grim:
The Blue Dog Coalition is engaged in a member-to-member whip operation in the House, beginning with a survey of its 52 lawmakers, to find out where they stand on critical health care issues. The principal focus is the public insurance option, but the canvass also touches on various tax and revenue increase proposals to pay for reform.(...)
The Congressional Progressive Caucus completed its first survey and began whipping back in the spring. They launched a final whip count last week that will be finished by Wednesday evening.
The whip count builds on an earlier letter that 60 members of the progressive caucus signed, pledging to oppose any health care bill without a "robust public option."
Expect both the Progressives and the Blue Dogs to announce the results of their whip counts either tomorrow or Friday morning. Further, expect both groups to declare that health care won't pass the House unless their demands are met. After that, look closely at the language that both groups release, because politicians love wiggle room and will seize on any that is offered them. And then, after that, don't trust quite a few of them anyway, because they could just break their promises.
From that point, expect significantly more pressure on the Progressives from established pundits, prominent Democrats, and the White House. After all, it is simply impolite for the Progressives to upset the order of things. Don't they know that only Blue Dogs and gangs of Conservadems are allowed to alter Democratic legislation by threatening to oppose it? And don't they know that when Blue Dogs do this, it is because the Dogs are common sense, bi-partisan pragmatists? By contrast, everyone knows that when Progressives do it, it is because they are rabid ideologues who just want ponies.
Next week will be gut-check time for the bloc of progressives standing in opposition to any bill that doesn't include a public health insurance option.
The leadership of the Congressional Progressive Caucus plans a "whip count" for early in the week to gauge the strength of their coalition, caucus members tell the Huffington Post. The whip team will also approach members of the Congressional Black, Hispanic, and Asian Pacific American Caucuses.
Democrats hold 256 seats in Congress and need 218 to pass a bill, meaning 39 progressives, voting together, could tank the legislation, assuming all Republicans vote nay.
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a member of CPC leadership, estimates that eighty to 100 members will make the pledge.
So, next week we will know if the Progressive Block will be continuing their campaign or not. The odds appear to be in favor of continuing.
Here is my favorite part of the article:
A senior administration official said Wednesday that killing the bill for not including a public option would be "tragic." Centrist and conservative Democrats have expressed frustration at the forcefulness of the support for the public option, arguing that it's a distraction from the broader package.
If the public option is just a minor distraction, then why don't moderate and conservative Democrats just give into the Progressives? Seriously--if the public option is so meaningless, then what's the big deal? Just give into the demands, and pass the bill.
The reason why this doesn't happen is that the basic political calculation for most moderate and conservative Democrats is to claim credit either for voting against, or watering down, a Democratic bill that passes. By voting against or watering down the bill, they can claim credit for standing out from the dirty hippies that make up most of the Democratic Party. However, if no bill passes, then the Democratic Party as a whole is severely damaged, and these moderates and conservatives are usually the first ones to lose their seats in a bad political climate for Democrats. So, they need a bill to pass, but they need to stand apart from that bill at the same time.
However, through their ongoing threat to defeat any bill that lacks a robust public option, the Progressive Block is taking that option away from conservative and moderate Democrats. Now, conservative Democrats can only choose a stronger bill (giving into the Block) or no bill at all (not giving in). From their perspective, they are screwed in both cases. They don't get the option of voting against a bill that passes, or removing the provision the dirty hippies love. Thus, the Block denies Conservadems and Blue Dogs their primary political mode of operation, and all of the power that comes with it.
As such, the Progressive Block actually threatens the continued dominance of Conservadems and Blue Dogs within the Democratic Party. In addition to taking instructions from their corporate masters, that is an important reason why the Conservadems and Blue Dogs don't want to give into the supposedly minor distraction that the Progressive Block is demanding.
Responding to the Progressive Block strategy, which was designed to put the Progressive Caucus on equal footing with Blue Dogs, Ezra Klein seems to conclude that Progressives can never have more influence than Blue Dogs. This is because Blue Dogs only have incentives to oppose must-pass Democratic legislation, while Progressives only have incentives to support it:
What, in other words, is the endgame of this strategy? The hope seems to be that Rahm Emanuel turns his attention to beating Blue Dogs, rather than liberals, into line. Maybe. But what makes people think that's possible? What's his actual leverage against vulnerable Democrats voting for initiatives their voters don't obviously support in districts Barack Obama didn't win at a time when the president is no longer popular?
There's no successful model for blunting the power of centrists to write -- or kill -- the final compromise.(...)
The outcome of this strategy, then, seems to be that the Democratic Party pretty much collapses into infighting and fails to pass its top priorities and loses a bunch of seats in the next election. The media explains that the liberal Nancy Pelosi and her liberal House Democrats caused the electoral disaster, or that Democrats couldn't agree on an agenda.(...)
But it's hard to imagine that liberals will ever beat the Blue Dogs at their own game. The likelier outcome is that everybody loses.
Klein's central premise is that Progressives have no leverage to make Blue Dogs want to vote for good legislation, since opposing Democrats is popular in their districts. However, Blue Dogs have leverage over Progressives, since Progressives don't want Democrats to lose seats.
The reason I disagree with Klein is fairly simple: if no health care legislation passes, and Democrats lose seats as a result, Blue Dogs are the people who will lose the seats, not Progressives. Even if Klein is correct and Democrats lose a bunch of seats because Progressives blocked it, Blue Dogs are actually the ones who will bear the brunt of those losses. As such, Blue Dogs have more to lose if health care fails to pass than Progressives.
And yes, we can afford to do this. Not only do Democrats have a wide majority, but demographically the country is turning in a decidedly progressive direction. Further, most (but admittedly not all) Blue Dog approved public policy sucks. They pushed the Iraq war just as much as Republicans. They pushed for financial de-regulation that led to our financial crisis just as much as New Democrats and Republicans. They wouldn't even come to the negotiating table on cap and trade without removing EPA authority to regulate carbon, adding huge give-aways to polluters in their districts during the negotiations, and then most of them voted against the bill anyway.
If we feel that we have to protect Blue Dogs at all costs, then of course it will be impossible for Progressives to have as much leverage as Blue Dogs. However, as soon as we make it clear that we don't feel much of a need to protect Blue Dogs, then they are the ones who have a lot more reason to cave into our demands. If another Republican wave really is coming, Blue Dogs will be the first Democrats to lose.
Will healthcare reform include a public health insurance plan to compete with private health insurance? President Obama campaigned on the promise of a public option, but over the past week he and his top advisers have repeatedly signaled that they aren't willing to fight for it.
On Saturday, Obama told a town hall meeting in Colorado: "Whether we have it or we don't have it, [the public option] is not the entirety of health care reform. This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it."
"I don't understand why the left of the left has decided that this is their Waterloo," an unnamed senior White House official gripes in this morning's Washington Post.
The White House is sorely mistaken if it thinks that the public option belongs in the "nice but not necessary" category. Josh Holland of AlterNet explains why the public option is the pillar of healthcare reform. Without it, there's little hope of containing costs or reigning in the power of insurance companies:
It may be just one "aspect" of health reform, but without it, the legislation promises to be a massive rip-off; a taxpayer give-away of hundreds of billions of dollars to an unreformed 'disease care' industry.
The industry would get millions of new customers thanks to generous government subsidies and a law requiring that (almost) everyone carry insurance. And that windfall would come without the structural changes needed to bend the medical "cost curve" in years to come -- without any provisions that might endanger the industry's bottom line.
In Salon, Robert Reich agrees. Competition between private insurance companies and the public option is the only hope to controlling costs. A public plan could bargain with providers to reduce costs and pass the savings on to taxpayers. The private insurance industry would have to slash its prices to compete.
Without a public option, "reform" would likely involve subsidies to private insurance companies, temporarily dulling the pain as premiums rise unchecked. That's the worst of both worlds.
Progressives shouldn't be surprised at the White House's noncommittal stance, though. Obama campaigned on a public option, but he has always framed it a darned good idea, not as a non-negotiable demand.
Why is it so difficult to get a healthcare bill through the Senate with the supposedly filibuster-proof majority? The simple answer is that the Dems need 100% of their delegation to cooperate in order to break a filibuster. So, the Democrats have 60 seats in the Senate but no way to advance their agenda without capitulating to the conservative Blue Dogs. The Republicans can be counted on to filibuster whatever the Democrats come up with. Which means that conservative Democrats like Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) hold the balance of power.
As Ari Melber of The Nation explains, Baucus and his Republican counterpart Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) also rule over the powerful and conservative Senate Finance Committee, which has been tasked with writing the Senate version of the healthcare bill.
Also in The Nation, Tom Geoghegan argues that it's time to break the stranglehold by abolishing the procedural filibuster. Unlimited debate in the Senate is enshrined in the constitution. In an old school filibuster, senators simply refuse to shut up until the session ends and the bill dies without a vote. In 1975, a group of liberals wrote a rule of Senate procedure that effectively allows senators to "filibuster" simply by saying they want to. In the old days, a filibuster was a grueling public ordeal. Senators slept on cots and spelled each other off. Today, "filibustering" means signing a form. It's private, easy and cost-free. The Republicans can, and will, filibuster all major Democratic legislation without having to stand in public and risk being branded as obstructionists.
As a result, 60 is the new 50 in the Senate. Since it's just a rule, the procedural filibuster could be abolished by a simple majority vote. Friends of the filibuster defend it as a bulwark against tyranny. Abolishing the procedural filibuster would discourage frivolous obstructionism, but keep the filibuster for cases when legislators actually care enough to lose sleep over it.
Ever wonder why the strongest public option, single-payer, was never on the table? Maybe because even the strongest proponents of the public plan are taking money from the insurance and biomedical industries. Mother Jones Rachel Morris wants to know why UNITEDHealth consultant Tom Daschle was on Meet the Press Sunday. A former Democratic senator, Daschle is a senior adviser to Obama on healthcare reform and a leading advocate of a public plan. However, he recently resumed a private consulting arrangement with UNITEDHealth, America's largest health insurer. Even public plan champion Howard Dean is a strategic adviser on healthcare policy to the lobby firm of McKenna, Long, and Aldridge. Dean won't disclose his clients, but McKenna represents a number of clients in the biomedical and health science industries.
The prospects of a public option are dimming, but not necessarily because of any rapid about-face by the White House. The Senate bill is in the hands of the Blue Dogs, who say they won't have legislation until November. Obama won't put the screws to the Blue Dogs, but there's still plenty of time to for citizens to make their voices heard.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about healthcare and is free to reprint. Visit Healthcare.newsladder.net for a complete list of articles on healthcare affordability, healthcare laws, and healthcare controversy. For the best progressive reporting on the Economy, and Immigration, check out Economy.Newsladder.net and Immigration.Newsladder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and created by NewsLadder.
The folks who read my blog posts might be surprised to learn that there is an alternative to the public option I could live with (besides single-payer, of course, that being my preferred option from the beginning). I have been an advocate for a very hard line on the public option, as I discussed here yesterday. But there is one other alternative I would feel okay about, and Bob Creamer outlines it today in his great post, Three Reasons Why a Strong Public Option is Likely to Be Part of Health Insurance Reform.
More on Bob's post, the alternative I could live with, and an action to take, in the extended entry.
There is an argument taking place right now in the progressive blogosphere about whether or not President Obama supports a public insurance option in health care reform. There are two quick responses to this fight:
In the theoretical abstract, of course President Obama supports a public option. He said so on the campaign trail. White House spokespeople reiterated that support yesterday. Inside sources I have tell me that President Obama has told them personally that he supports a public option. And I'm not the only one. So yes, every indication is that President Obama supports a public option.
The goal isn't to have a President who agrees with the concept of a public option. Rather, the goal is to actually have a robust public option that is available to all Americans. Some people might be confusing these two ideas. Personally, I think this is because some people in progressive media are more interested in engaging the long running "Obama is a progressive versus Obama hurting progressives" argument, rather than actually achieving legislative results. I don't know how large either group actually is, and even combined they are certainly not a majority of the progressive blogosphere community, but both groups are more interested in winning that argument than actually achieving legislative results.
We are at an impasse where, due to a Progressive Block in the House, health care reform legislation cannot pass that chamber without a robust public option. In the Senate, it appears that no bill with a robust public option can reach 60 votes. As such, whether or President Obama supports the concept of the public option is not the important point. Rather, the important point is whether the Obama administration, in order to achieve a health care bill, is more willing and able to pressure the Progressive Block in the House or the Conservadem Block in the Senate.
In this light, I don't actually blame the Obama administration and elite Democratic surrogates from starting to apply more pressure to the Progressive Block in the House. From the bailout, to the housing bill, to the stimulus, to the climate change bill, Progressives have consistently proven more willing to fold than Blue Dogs and / or Conservadems. Given this, the White House is simply pressuring what recent history has shown to be the more easily pressured group when it needs to pass legislation. Past collapses have made the Progressive Block on health care less credible, and so pressuring Progs is the obvious play.
Well, we have to change this dynamic once and for all. It needs to be made clear that Blue Dogs / Conservadems are just as, if not more likely, to fold than Progressives. Otherwise, not only will be lose meaningful health care reform, but we will lose pretty much all legislative fights down the road.
So, it is up to us is making sure that the House Progressive Block turns out to be stronger than the Senate Conservadem Block. That is the only way we are going to win this, not with arguments about what the White House supports or does not support in the abstract. As such, get on the phone and thank as many of the members of the Progressive Block as you can for standing firm. Make sure that the easier play for the White House is to push Senate Conservadems to fold. That is the only way we are going to win this.
Here is the current status of the House Progressive backlash against the health care "deal" negotiated by Henry Waxman and four Blue Dogs on the Energy and Commerce Committee:
53 House Progressives will vote against deal: In their press conference today, the Congressional Progressive Caucus stated that 53 Progressives will vote against any bill containing the measures in the Waxman-Blue Dog deal. With 218 required for a majority, and 178 Republicans, that is more than enough to block health care reform from passing the House until these Progressives are statisfied.
Medicare rates are the line in the sand: There were several Progressive objections to the Waxman-Blue Dog deal, but the line in the sand appears to be a public option with Medicare rates. From the letter signed by 53 House Progressives:
Any bill that does not provide, at a minimum, for a public option with reimbursement rates based on Medicare rates - not negotiated rates - is unacceptable.
Waxman-Blue Dog deal will pass out of committee. The progressive backlash will not stop the Waxman-Blue Dog deal from passing out of committee. The markup in the committee has continued today, and none of the 53 progressives mentioned above sit on the Energy and Commerce committee.
Progressive plan is to change the bill both before, and in, the Rules Committee. Before there can be a full House vote on health care legislation, the three different health care bills that have / will come from three different committees need to be merged by the Rules Committee. One of the other committee chairs to produce a health care bill, Charles Rangel, has made it clear that strengthening the public option in the rules Committee is his plan.
Rules Committee is relatively progressive. You can see the members of the Rules Committee here. Democrats hold an 8-5 advantage on the committee. There are five members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, plus Doris Matsui. There are also two Blue Dogs, Mike Arcuri and Dennis Cardozza. However, while they are Blue Dogs, neither Arcuri nor Cardozza signed any of the various letters expressing "concern" over health care reform. As such, this is indeed fertile ground for making sure the Waxman-Blue Dog deal doesn't make it to the floor.
Of course, all of this remains contingent upon the ongoing strength of the Progressive Block relative to the Blue Dogs. We have to make it easier for the leadership to break the Blue Dogs than to break the Progressive Block. Keep up the calls--this fight remains very winnable.
And we're back! Thanks so much to Dave, Ian and everyone else for taking care of the place while we were gone. Looks to me like they did a fabulous job!
The big health care news on Wednesday was that Blue Dogs and the Democratic House leadership apparently reached a deal on health care reform. In 2009, this has been the template for how legislative fights end in the House of Representatives. Blue Dogs hammering out the final details with Nancy Pelosi and the relevant committee chair, the rest of the Democratic caucus swallows whatever is served up, and the place of the Blue Dogs as overlords is cemented even further.
This time, however, progressives appear ready to force the House down a different path. The Energy and Commerce Committee's markup of the bill, which was originally scheduled to begin Wednesday at 4 p.m. eastern, has been delayed until at least Thursday:
Waxman Postpones Health Markup Amid Liberal Backlash By Steven T. Dennis and Jackie Kucinich
Roll Call Staff
July 29, 2009, 5:16 p.m.
House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) postponed the health bill markup that he planned to hold Wednesday afternoon amid a backlash from liberals to the deal that he cut earlier with four conservative Blue Dog Democrats.
It is pretty amazing that an article about liberal backlash was co-written by reporters Dennis and Kucinich, but I digress.
Exactly what, and how much teeth, this progressive backlash against the Blue Dog deal is remains to be seen. Fortunately, we won't have to wait long to find out the details, as the Progressive Caucus will hold a 2:30 p.m. news conference to explain. A few hours ago, I received the following message over email, meant for public consumption:
The blue dog compromise is clearly in direct conflict with one of the core
tenets of the Congressional Progressive Caucus's criteria for a robust public option. The belief appears to be that the progressives will once again just roll over. They won't.
Tomorrow afternoon, the CPC will be holding a press conference in conjunction with their allied caucuses the CBC, CHC, and CAPAC. They are going to draw a very clear line in the sand. We need the largest crowd we can get at the press conference:
Thursday July 30, 2009
2:30 pm
At the triangle on the southeast side of the Capitol
Waxman will face a difficult task if the committee's liberals vote their objections to the Blue Dog compromises. Because Democrats hold a 13-vote majority over panel Republicans, Waxman can afford to lose six votes on any measure. Eight Democrats on the committee are members of the liberal Progressive Caucus, including the chairman and two of his close allies - Health Subcommittee Chairman Frank Pallone Jr. , D-N.J., and Edward J. Markey , D-Mass., chairman of the Energy and the Environment Subcommittee.
The agreement Waxman reached with the four Blue Dogs would reduce the bill's cost by trimming eligibility for subsidies available to help the uninsured buy coverage; make it easier for private insurers to compete with a new, government-run "public plan"; and exempt more small businesses from requirements that employers cover their workers.
With only eight Progressives on the committee, getting seven to vote against this bill would be very difficult. Still, it is best to see how events continue to unfold tomorrow before making any proclamations about whether or not a health care deal has been struck in the House.
If you are in D.C., please attend the press conference tomorrow. And no matter where you live, join in the fight with the Fire Dog Lake Whip Count tool
The Senate Finance Committee is reportedly very close to finishing its healthcare legislation. But as the bill's details leak, anticipation is quickly turning to dejection in progressive healthcare circles. Early word has it that the almost finished a bill includes no public option, no employer mandate, and no insurance exchange. Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly explains why the Senate Finance Committee bill is going to suck.
At TAPPED, Scott Lemieux argues that if the Senate legislation doesn't have a public option or an employer mandate, we'd be better off not passing a healthcare bill. Conventional wisdom is that even a bad bill would be better than nothing: Once we get the basic infrastructure for universal healthcare in place, it will be easier to build on that rather than starting from scratch. However, as Lemieux points out, a bill with no public option would only further entrench the insurance industry and make it easier for them to block reforms in the future.
Remember that the bill that comes out of the Finance Committee still has to be reconciled with other versions, like the version from the Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee. So, it's possible that progressive Senators will win some concessions. However, as we've discussed before, the Senate is the key to passing healthcare reform, and the Blue Dogs are the key to passing the bill in the Senate. Whatever comes out of the Finance Committee is going to carry a lot of weight with the Blue Dogs.
It's no wonder we're fighting over a bunch of lackluster options. As Isabel MacDonald observes in AlterNet, corporate-run media has virtually banished all talk of single-payer healthcare. If you're a single-payer advocate and you want to get on TV, you have two options: Be Bernie Sanders or get arrested in the Senate.
Democrats should try implementing a radical progressive agenda one of these days-they'll be accused of doing so, anyway. Amanda Marcotte of RH Reality Check notes that even though universal healthcare is more likely to cover iPods than abortions, mainstream media and the anti-reform brigade insist on discussing abortion funding as if it were a live option. Here in the real world, pro-choicers don't even have the votes in Congress to overturn the Hyde Amendment, which bans the usual sources of federal funding for abortion. According to some experts I interviewed a few weeks ago for a forthcoming article, there might be a clever legal way to set up the healthcare program so that its funding wouldn't fall under the Hyde Amendment, but no one expects the Democrats to even try.
Make sure to keep an eye out for Ms. Magazine's summer issue, which contains a moving profile of assassinated abortion provider Dr. George Tiller by Michele Kort. The piece is titled "The Man Who Trusted Women" after Dr. Tiller's credo, a phrase that one admirer paid their last respects with, via a funeral wreath with the words "Trust Women" emblazoned in the center. Kort quotes Tiller explaining what that quotation means in practice:
"Chromosomal abnormalities make up about 24 percent of our [late abortion] patients, and sometimes the heart, the lung, the intestines, all of this is outside of the body [of the fetus]. Most places in the United States say that even if you have this kind of a problem you may not have a termination of pregnancy. ...What this says is that...women are not smart enough, they are not tough enough and they do not love enough to make these family decisions about their children and their families."
James Ridgeway of Mother Jones reported that Tiller's alleged assassin, Scott Roeder, was savoring his moment in the media spotlight while he sat in prison, awaiting his first court date on Tuesday. Roeder has been bragging lately about his bigshot anti-choice friends and hinting at a broader conspiracy. Maybe he'll take a few more terrorists down with him. That would be a bright spot on a bleak healthcare landscape.
If the Finance Committee produces a bill with no public option, no employer mandate, and no insurance exchange to bring down costs, then insurance industry gets everything and we get nothing but orders to buy their crappy product. Let's hope things shake out for the best.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care. Visit Healthcare.newsladder.net for a complete list of articles on healthcare affordability, healthcare laws, and healthcare controversy. For the best progressive reporting on the Economy, and Immigration, check out Economy.Newsladder.net and Immigration.Newsladder.net.
This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and created by NewsLadder.
Do the Blue Dogs really only have 52 members? By my estimation, it is more like 250.
Via FDL, Carolyn Maloney sums up the progressive mentality that has made Blue Dogs, conservodems, and Arlen Specter the overlords of us all. Or, perhaps more accurately, the mentality that has made us all into Blue Dogs:
To NYCEVE, Jane and the blogging community fighting to make sure health care reform includes a public option: (...)
In terms of how we achieve universal health care, I believe the best way is a single-payer health care system and I've long been a co-sponsor of that legislation. But, if single payer isn't on the table, then we must give all Americans the option of enrolling in a public health insurance plan and I will fight to make sure the public option is included in any health care reform bill.(...)
So, while I agree health care reform must have the public option and I will fight for it; I also believe health care reform is too important to maintain the status quo and, even though I won't like a bill that doesn't include the public option, if that happens, the principle of getting people health care who don't currently have it must come before any one particular method to achieve it.
Shorter Maloney: I will vote for any health care reform bill, no matter how watered down. I will give in on single-payer. I will given in on the public option. I will give in to every demand made by every conservative Democrat, and vote for whatever our Blue Dog overlords tell us to vote for in the end.
Structurally speaking, this mentality effectively makes Carolyn Maloney a member of the Blue Dogs. She will eagerly pass whatever legislation is approved of by the Blue Dog caucus, while making no counter-demands on the Blue Dogs of her own.
In the same way, most Democrats became Collin Peterson when we voted for his cap and trade bill back in June.
And most Democrats became Arlen Specter when we voted for his stimulus bill back in February:
"The agreement we reached was the best one we could under the circumstances. We were able to cut out $100 billion from the package and include 35% in tax relief in the overall bill. My preference would have been John McCain's proposal, which I voted for, to have the stimulus package of $421 billion in tax cuts alone. I voted for the Reagan tax cuts back in 1981 and that would be the best course, but in a legislative body you don't have exactly your own choice.
As I wrote earlier today, the legislation that is passed under a Democratic trifecta is viewed nationally as progressive, whether or not it actually is progressive. If progressives are willing to vote for whatever legislation is approved of by the Blue Dogs, and the conservodems, and Arlen Specter, then effectively all Democrats become Blue Dogs, conservodems and Arlen Specter.
Progressive Democrats are on the hook for policies that, because we make no bargaining demands of our own, are ultimately determined and decided by conservative Democrats. If we want to change that, then we need to keep building the progressive block. Without a progressive block, then we are just all a bunch of Blue Dogs.
