A Mike Lux Golden Oldie
From Jan 20, 2010. Original HEREIn all the hundreds of thousands of words being written and spoken about the implications of last night's special election in Massachusetts by all the pundits and strategists and drum-beaters for various interest groups, only one thing really matters right now: the character of the leaders of the Democratic party. It is up to them whether this generation of Democrats has the guts to keep moving forward boldly even as they run into resistance and trial, or whether they fall back into the collective character flaw that has held the Democrats, and the country, back for 40 years now: that sense of abiding caution that would have them pull back into a shell at the first sign of trouble and give up on trying to change anything. As I wrote in my book The Progressive Revolution:
In the culture of caution that dominates Democratic politics in the modern era, when you try something big and fail, even if the failure is due in great part to your own timidity, you only become more cautious.
President Obama deserves enormous credit for taking on big tough issues like health care and climate change and financial regulation, but the problem is that the pursuit of these noble causes has become bogged down in the slowness and special interest dominated world that is Capitol Hill right now. The Obama White House has compounded the problem by not taking on the special interests head on and full force, but instead giving in to them on a variety of issues that really mattered to both the Democratic base and to middle class voters: the big banks got bailout money while being asked to do little in return; the drug companies got taken off the hook in order to bring them aboard with health care legislation; the insurance industry won all their big battles on health care, leaving them free from public plan competition or anti-trust worries; polluters got massive set-asides in the energy bill.
Here's the deal: while there are significant differences between Democratic base voters who didn't turn out to vote in very big numbers yesterday in Massachusetts, and the working class swing voters who voted for Scott Brown, these two kinds of voters actually have a great deal in common in terms of what will move them to vote for Democrats:
1. They want big change.
2. They are tired of having wealthy special interests, especially the big banks and insurers, run things in DC.
3. They expect the Democrats to get things done on the big issues of the day- they want jobs created, a better health care system where the power of the big insurers is reigned in, investments in renewable energy, the big banks broken up.
The same debate every political party has after every big loss started up immediately again last night. The completely predictable voices of cautious conservative Democrats are already in the usual high pitch whine: we have to pull back, we have to go slow, we have to not change things so much. The quintessential cautious Democrat, Evan Bayh, spoke for this line of thinking in his usual way:
It's why moderates and independents even in a state as Democratic as Massacusetts aren't buying our message. They just don't believe the answers we are currently proposing are solving their problems.
Although he was arguing this in the context of pulling back, the ironic thing is that Bayh was right about one thing: voters really don't believe Democrats are solving their problems. And why is that? Because the big change we promised them hasn't materialized. Because the deals being cut with the bankers and drug companies and insurance industry are not solving their problems. Because going in slow motion on issues like health care has convinced them that we can't deliver.
At this moment, Democrats face the ultimate test of character: do we have the courage to head into the wind of the pontificating pundits and the culture of caution Democrats, and deliver the real change American voters are asking for? Or do we turn tail and run from the challenge? The irony is that doing the gutsy thing is by far the smartest thing Democrats could do politically. If we actually pass health care reform, if we actually go after the big banks, if we actually get things done on immigration reform, we convince swing voters we are capable of getting things done, and we convince our base that we are worth turning out to vote for.
Voters will reward us if we do the right thing. And so will history. When the revolutionary war was going badly for Washington, when the civil war was going badly for Lincoln, when civil rights reform threatened the Democrats in the South for a generation, our leaders did not turn tail and run away from the challenge. They had the courage of their convictions, and they have a special place in our country's history as a result. Now is the time for this generation of Democratic leaders to do the right thing. Voters will reward them in the short run, and history will reward them in the long run.
In June, I did a piece titled "How not to pander to the LGBT community on DADT". It was about various Republican members of the House of Representatives voting against repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, then turning around and saying they wanted to vote for it but just, sigh, couldn't get there. Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA) was a classic example, who said:
"Let me be clear: I am not suggesting homosexuals should not be able to serve openly in the military. One of the greatest duties of this Congress is to protect the freedoms and liberties of all Americans. I hope we can all agree that it is unjust to deny people the right to pursue the American Dream and realize success and opportunity in the workplace. That's why I've supported legislation such as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. However, I believe policy decisions affecting the military must reflect the input, perspectives, and judgment of the generals in command, and a decision on this issue must be entrusted to them. We must continue to support the men and women who are risking their lives each and every day and ensure that they have the best training and equipment available to carry out their duties."
I wrote at the time:
Reichert is trying to have it both ways in terms of wanting to get LGBT community support. Since January, everyone has bent over backwards with the purpose of helping individuals like him are moderates or from tough districts have enough "cover" to get to a yes vote in favor of repeal, and he still can't do it. The President announces at the SOTU. Sec. Gates and Admiral Mullen testify in support. Colin Powell and even Dick Cheney (you read that right, Dick Cheney) come out in support. Last week's CNN poll put the public at 78% in support, a number that goes back, give or take a few points, for three years. Then a compromise is made to give the Pentagon review even higher attention and priority and to require the President, Secretary of Defense, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to "certify" that this is essentially good for the country. Then a 60-day waiting period is added to the language, post-certification.
All of this, and Reichert still can't bring himself to vote for repeal? Please. Don't come 'round here saying you really wanted to vote for repeal but just couldn't bring yourself to do so after the entire world bends over backwards to give individuals like yourself all kinds of reasons to support repeal. The same goes for Jim Webb and anyone else using that excuse.
This afternoon, my crystal ball did it again, as Sen. Scott Brown put himself in a place to support DADT repeal and announced such. It's great news. Unfortunately, Brown did not commit to voting for cloture on the underlying bill.
The largest gay rights organization, Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement that Brown's announcement was "welcomed" but ultimately "of little value" without a commitment to advance the underlying bill.
"The true measure of whether or not one supports an end to this policy will come as the Senate considers if they will begin debate on the defense bill. Make no mistake, a vote against the motion to proceed is a vote against DADT repeal," HRC President Joe Solmonese said.
Exactly right. Scott Brown will get no love from me if he tries to have it both ways by announcing he supports repeal and refuses to advance it, then turns around and says, gee, he tried his best. Not good enough, particularly because he nearly screwed us over by announcing his opposition in committee.
Brown knows full well that if repeal does not advance this year, it has a slim-to-none chance of doing so next year. This is our last shot, and tax cut politics be damned, Senator. So he stays on my target list, and he should on yours. Call 202-224-3121 and ask Brown, along with the other swing, Senators listed in this State of Play post, to commit to repeal and to vote for cloture the motion to reconsider.
Update: Over e-mail, the following excerpt of a press release is also spot-on.
"Given that Sen. Brown signed on to the GOP letter earlier this week, saying that they would obstruct all lawmaking until their demands of specific tax cuts and spending bills are met, we would like to remind Sen. Brown that our community and America is watching," said Claire Naughton, Co-chair of Bay State Stonewall Democrats. "We hope that, as a soldier, Sen. Brown is aligned with what military leaders have been saying in Senate hearings: that the military is based on a culture of integrity and DADT demands just the opposite."
Say what you will about the tea party but it has been remarkably effective at pushing select fringe candidates to electoral victories.
In late 2009, you would have been hard pressed to find anyone in Washington who would have believed that a Republican would soon fill the Senate seat held for decades by the late Ted Kennedy.
Brown -- a state senator at the time of his election -- was the first in what would become a long line of tea party endorsed candidates with rather colorful pasts.
It's been a fairly long time since Attorney General Martha Coakley famously lost Massachusetts to State Senator Scott Brown. A look back at the race gives an insightful view into the Republican machine, and how Republicans are often quite effective when campaigning.
Mr. Brown ran a classic Republican campaign. He effectively painted Ms. Coakley as lazy and unwilling to campaign, a politician who didn't care about Massachusetts, who simply assumed that Massachusetts would vote Democratic because it always did. Every minor mistake Coakley made - a stupid statement here, a word spelled wrongly there - was turned into further support for this theme.
Democrats are very close to the 60th vote on Wall Street reform. With Maria Cantwell and Susan Collins already indicating they are voting "yes," Republican Scott Brown appears to be the 60th vote. Annie Lowrey:
Speaking on a Massachusetts local television news broadcast, Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) indicated that he's leaning towards voting yes on financial regulatory reform. "I'm going to be making a decision soon, but I'm liking what I see," Brown said.
This by no means rules out a Lucy and the football moment, where one of the Senators currently on record as favoring passage withdraws his or her support (this includes Democrats, too). However, if all existing yes votes hold, and assuming Robert Byrd's replacement will be available next week, two defecting Republicans (Brown and Collins) would be enough to cancel out one defecting Democrat (Russ Feingold).
On Feingold's "no" vote Speaking of Feingold, one question I have been wrestling with is if having credible progressive leverage on future Wall Street reform bills from Feingold's "no" vote is more valuable than the concession Scott Brown wrung out of the conference committee last week (replacing a $19 billion tax on banks over five years with a cancellation of TARP and increases in FDIC insurance fees to larger banks) because Feingold refused to vote yes. Given the strong political ramifications of ending TARP, it very well might be. Or, at least it isn't clear right now if Feingold's "no" vote is a net negative.
A revolt among big donors on Wall Street is hurting fundraising for the Democrats' two congressional campaign committees, with contributions from the world's financial capital down 65 percent from two years ago.
The drop in support comes from many of the same bankers, hedge fund executives and financial services chief executives who are most upset about the financial regulatory reform bill that House Democrats passed last week with almost no Republican support. The Senate expects to take up the measure this month.
There are actually multiple reasons for this decline. One reason, obviously, is Wall Street reform. Another is that Chuck Schumer is no longer running the DSCC, and he had strong connections to NYC-area Wall Street doors. A third explanation is that some of these wealthy donors are also upset over the lack of progressive progress in the Democratic agenda, and as such don't want to donate to party committees that will focus their spending on conservative Democrats. A fourth explanation is that many wealthy donors simply like to back the party that appears headed to victory, and right now Democrats are far from a lock.
The simple fact is that there are a lot of good reforms in this bill, voting to maintain the status quo won't prevent a financial meltdown either, and that no one I know in the Wall Street reform community thinks this bill ends the overall fight.
More than two years after the collapse of Bear Stearns, the House and Senate finally ironed out their differences on Wall Street reform in the wee, small hours of Friday morning. The bill now goes back to both the House and Senate for final approval, but it's fate in the Senate is uncertain following the defection of Tea Party Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA).
Scott Brown, after succeeding at weakening the entire financial reform bill so that he could carve out exemptions for his Boston bank buddies, is now threatening to pull his support for the bill over a tiny tax on banks to pay for the costs of implementing the new bill. With Robert Byrd's death, Brown's defection would leave us one vote short of the 60 votes needed to end cloture. Chris has more on the vote-counting below.
Call his bluff. Call their bluff.
If the Republicans want to create a huge news story going into the July 4th break by standing with the big banks to keep this bill from becoming law, and then spend the entire July 4th recess talking with their constituents as to why they were with the banks instead of helping to clean up the system, God bless them all. That is a complete winner for Democrats on our strongest issue going into the fall elections. It would be a godsend. And if in order to get this bill passed, Democratic leadership has to go back and negotiate with Russ Feingold regarding how to toughen the bill up in order to get his vote, that's ok too (of course, that would mean Feingold would have to actually negotiate instead of playing the I'm-too-pure-to-get-serious-about-strengthening-this-bill-by-negotiating act he has been doing throughout the process). If the deal is with Feingold, not Brown, all those carveouts for Boston banks go bye-bye, and maybe the bill actually gets better instead of worse.
Make my day, call his bluff. Let the Republicans marinate in their juices with their friends from Wall Street, and let the Bank of Boston get screwed. It's a political windfall all the way around.
The conference committee may be over, but the resulting Wall Street reform bill still must clear passage in both branches of Congress in order to reach President Obama's desk. With the passing of Senator Robert Byrd today, this is now far from a guarantee. Here is the state of play:
In the House Because of a deal made between Blanche Lincoln and the New Dems on derivatives, the House is expected to pass the bill. In all likelihood, the rule will be voted on today, and passage will occur tomorrow.
In the Senate After the bill passes the House, it will go to the Senate. Senator Reid had been expected to file for cloture on Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning, leading to a vote on either Thursday or Friday. However, the outcome of the vote, and thus the process leading to the vote, is now in doubt. Its time for some vote counting:
Narrow margin: Back in May, cloture was achieved on the Senate bill by the narrowest of margins, 60-40.
Robert Byrd: Five weeks ago, Robert Byrd was one of the yes votes for cloture. Since he has passed away, that is one less vote for reform until West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin appoints his replacement. Such an appointment would be extremely likely to vote for reform, but is not available until the appointment is made. It now seems unlikely to me that the appointment would take office this week, as Governor Manchin would likely wait until after Robert Byrd's funeral. He also may wait until after July 3rd, a move which might prevent an election for the seat from being held in 2010.
Maria Cantwell: Maria Cantwell (D-WA) voted against cloture five weeks ago. However, she was closely engaged in the process during the conference committee, and her specific concerns about the Volcker rule were met. As such, it seems very possible that she is now a "yes" vote, although she has not issued a formal statement to that effect. If she is a yes vote, that makes 60 votes for cloture.
Russ Feingold: Russ Feingold was the other Democrat who voted against cloture five weeks ago. He was never particularly engaged in the process, and for a long time made no specific demands in return for his vote. When he did finally make some demands, it was a long, kitchen-sink type laundry list that could not be met on such short notice. Few, if any, of those demands were met (at least somewhat because Feingold did not engage the process), and as such he is likely still a "no." So, we stay at 60.
Scott Brown: When Russ Feingold did not engage the process, it gave Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown enough leverage to force an egregious carve-out for hedge funds on the Volcker rule. Despite voting for the bill in May, and despite winning that huge concession during the conference committee, Brown is now talking about voting against the bill anyway because of a $19 billion levy on banks. It looks like Scott Brown has learned quickly about how to play Lucy to the Senate Democrats Charlie Brown.
Chuck Grassley: Even if Feingold and Brown are no votes, and even if no successor to Robert Byrd is made this week, the bill could still pass with one more Republican vote. Enter Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley, who voted against cloture in May but did vote for final passage.
Richard Lugar: The only other possibility of a "no to yes" vote is from Indiana Republican Richard Lugar. It's a longshot, but not impossible.
At this time, no one is in favor of opening up the bill again, and giving into Brown's demands to win his vote. That would create a procedural nightmare, likely delay passage the bill past the fourth of July, would give Wall Street lobbyists another shot to gut everything that has already been won.
However, the count is clearly extremely close right now, and very much in doubt. Nothing is guaranteed. As such, while this was supposed to be the week when we turned our attention to the Kagen confirmation hearings in the Senate, and the Afghanistan funding fight in the House, it looks like we still have a lot of drama on Wall Street reform in the Senate.
As I wrote in the thread below, Administration deal or not, we are still several votes short in committee. Two updates this morning- Bill Nelson's office just announced he will support the amendment that implements the deal and, presumably, the full bill. Scott Brown announced he is a no. Full whip count below. Democrats hold a 16-12 majority on the committee and, if all members show up, need 15 votes to enact the bill.
Yes Carl Levin
Joseph I. Lieberman (Connecticut)
Jack Reed (Rhode Island)
Daniel K. Akaka (Hawaii)
Bill Nelson (Florida)
Claire McCaskill (Missouri)
Mark Udall (Colorado)
Kay R. Hagan (North Carolina)
Mark Begich (Alaska)
Roland W. Burris (Illinois)
Jeff Bingaman (New Mexico)
Edward E. Kaufman (Delaware)
Susan Collins (Maine)
No John McCain (Arizona)
James M. Inhofe (Oklahoma)
Jeff Sessions (Alabama)
Saxby Chambliss (Georgia)
Lindsey Graham (South Carolina)
John Thune (South Dakota)
Roger F. Wicker (Mississippi)
George S. LeMieux (Florida)
Scott Brown (Massachusetts)
Richard Burr (North Carolina)
David Vitter (Louisiana)
Undecided Robert C. Byrd (West Virginia)
Ben Nelson (Nebraska)
Evan Bayh (Indiana)
Jim Webb (Virginia)
Ben Nelson announced last week he prefers to wait for the Pentagon review to be completed, but there has been no new statement since last night's news, so I'm leaving him as undecided. We would need 2 of the four remaining undecided. I'm told there is a slight chance Robert Byrd may not come for health reasons, which would lower the threshold for passage to 14 votes, but no one should assume that.
Hit your family/friends/colleagues up who are constituents. 202-224-3121 is the Congressional switchboard.
It's been a bit since the Massachusetts election, in which unknown Republican Scott Brown emerged to upset the favored Democrat Martha Coakley in one of union's deepest-blue states. Since then, Democrats have been recalibrating their strategy.
In a previous post, I outlined the results of how a tied election might look like. Let's take a look at the prediction:
Earlier this year in an article titled "Back to the Future in Massachusetts"(1/24/10), I made the following observations among others: "No analysis of the 2010 Massachusetts election can be complete without acknowledging that the Tea Party Movement has moved, at least for the time being, from the fringe into the mainstream of American politics.... But the real question for the G.O.P. is has it made a deal with the Devil in jumping onboard the Tea Party tiger? It is one thing to embrace the Tea Party Movement when the opposition is a Democrat, but what about the prospect of intra-party challenges during the upcoming 2010 Republican primary process... When you combine the Tea Party Movement's penchant for ideological purity with the likes of it's leading personalities: Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Jim DeMint, you have a formula for driving independent voters into the hills and thereby affecting a drain off of support for any type of centrist Republican agenda."
Well, as it so happens, it didn't take long before the chickens came home to roost around the Bay State. According to the Monday Edition of the Boston Herald, it appears that newly elected Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown wants to be a U.S. Senator for more than one abbreviated term. Why else would the politically savvy Brown chose not to appear with Sarah Palin who is scheduled to appear at a Tea Party rally in Boston this Wednesday? Quoting the Boston Herald: "U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, whose stunning victory in January was fueled in part by Tea Party anger, has snubbed the fiery grassroots group and declined its invitation to join Sarah Palin Wednesday at a massive rally on Boston Common, the Herald has learned. Brown's decision to skip the first big rally in Boston by the group whose members are credited with helping him win election has some experts saying he's tossed the Tea Party overboard, as he prepares for re-election in 2012. He wants to mainstream himself before the election," said Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist"
Political analyst Lou DiNatale put it even more bluntly saying: "To win re-election, Scott Brown floating to the right is a serious problem. And showing up at a Sarah Palin, Tea Party event is not the way to the middle." So much for the great surge to the right in Massachusetts. As I said in my original article: "The one thing that is abundantly clear is that Brown rode to victory on a wave of independent voter support and not because large numbers of Massachusetts voters have suddenly embraced the principles of the G.O.P. and switched their party affiliation." Scott Brown knows that his political bread is buttered at the table of moderate politics and not on the far right and certainly not by affiliating with the Tea Party Movement or its current claque of cheerleaders. Likewise Brown has declined the invitation by the Greater Lowell Tea Party to appear at a rally being held in this old New England mill city. The Lowell Tea Party organization has downplayed Brown's unwillingness to appear because he has to stay in Washington and "do his job", a view that veteran political analyst Larry Sabato suggested: "was willfully naive."
So there you have it, the first major political figure to ride to victory partly on the back of the Tea Party Movement has decided to quickly distance himself from it rather than risk having it torpedo his hopes for reelection two years from now. Scott Brown wants to continue to be seen as a mainstream moderate New England Republican, anyone surprised by that? Afterall moderate Republicans are the only variety that can presently survive in the harsh climate of 21st Century New England. I guess in the final anlysis remaining electable trumps ideological purity, even on the political right.
If you are someone who regularly makes your views known by participating in petition campaigns, and are also someone who tweets, chances are you have heard of Act.ly. It is a brilliant use of twitter to allow people to not only tweet to sign petitions, but also to allow the person they are petitioning to respond.
Case in point: The new Senator from Massachusetts, @ScottBrownMA
43 tweets tweeted Scott P. Brown : Stand with Mass. and pass the climate bill #Brown2Green
In addition to a letter campaign, the NRDC Action Fund has launched the act.ly petition urging Scott Brown to stand up for clean energy legislation currently pending in the Senate.
Fact is, when he was in the Massachusetts legislature, Brown was a part of Republicans for Environmental Protection, and he voted for Massachusetts to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a pact among Northeastern states requiring power plants to reduce emissions or to buy credits from cleaner industries.
"Reducing carbon dioxide emissions in Massachusetts has long been a priority of mine. Passing this legislation is an important step...towards improving our environment."
However - his recent comments are cause for some concern:
"It's interesting. I think the globe is always heating and cooling, It's a natural way of ebb and flow. The thing that concerns me lately is some of the information I've heard about potential tampering with some of the information."
"I just want to make sure if in fact ... the Earth is heating up, that we have accurate information, and it's unbiased by scientists with no agenda. . . Once that's done, then I think we can really move forward with a good plan."
So is Brown green? At the time of writing, scores of his constituents and several large national environmental advocacy organzations await his response on Act.ly. If you haven't yet, join in posting on the Senator's facebook wall, and pile onto the Act.ly petition.
TPMDC makes a notable catch--Marco Rubio, darling of insurgent conservative candidates everywhere, has not actually been embraced by the Florida tea parties:
In the midst of Sunday's heated Florida Republican Senate primary debate on Fox News Sunday, moderator Chris Wallace asked Marco Rubio a question that surprised many viewers up early on a Sunday to watch the festivities.
Wallace read Rubio a viewer email. "'Ask Marco Rubio why he refuses to be vetted by the Florida Tea Parties. I want to hear from Rubio or I will not vote for him,'" Wallace said. "We got this from a bunch of Tea Parties all over the state."
Behind the question is an interesting discovery: Despite carrying the torch for insurgent conservatives everywhere, Rubio actually has a problem connecting with the tea parties in his home state, according to several tea partiers I spoke with yesterday.
Wait-so tea parties actually have nothing to do with Rubio's success? But, at least they elected a guy from Massachusetts who stopped health care, and who has stayed true to tea party principles while in office! Oh wait...
Monday night, Brown announced that he would join four other Republicans in voting to block a GOP filibuster and move forward with a $15-billion jobs bill designed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
Almost immediately, the political blogosphere exploded.
Cries of "letdown," "betrayal," "sellout," and "RINO" -- "Republican in name only" -- flew around Twitter. By late Tuesday afternoon, more than 4,200 people had left comments on Brown's Facebook page, most harshly negative. (And liberals engaged in some cyber-schadenfreude at the same time.)
Even the supposed tea-party success in the NY-23 special election, where conservative party candidate Doug Hoffman managed to push Republican nominee Dede Scozzafava out of the race, was actually engineered more by well-established groups like The Club for Growth than any new grassroots movement. The Club endorsed Hoffman early in the campaign (September 28th), and spent over $300,000 in support of Hoffman. This is several orders of magnitude beyond any material support offered by the tea-parties.
It is also worth noting that unlike the tea-parties, the Club for Growth has a long record of making huge impacts, including several big victories, in Republican primaries. Compared to the established success of the Republican primary-challenge machine, the tea parties are a new, and laughably ineffective addition.
OK, so elections where the Club for Growth isn't pulling the strings in the background haven't gone well for the tea partiers. But, at least they made a big impact, independent of existing right-wing infrastructure, on the health care debate with their town halls, right?
Despite conventional wisdom, polling indicates that the health reform plan actually increased in popularity last August during the tea-party assault on town halls. They were entirely ineffective at swaying popular opinion against the bill.
Even all of the protests, rallies and other grassroots enthusiasm around the tea-parties was clearly evident in 2008, after Sarah Palin's nomination, long before the term tea party was even coined. The anti-Obama rhetoric, and cries of socialism, was there too. About all tea parties have done is provide a long-standing right-wing political machine with a new image. This is actually a useful development for conservatives, since portraying their movement as based in grassroots energy, rather in than large corporate donations to the Club For Growth, plays better in the media. The new branding is undeniably a positive for the conservative movement, but really it is about all the tea parties have actually accomplished that existing right-wing infrastructure would not have achieved on its own.
Today, President Barack Obama will deliver a speech to Congress outlining his plan to move forward on health care reform. The president is expected to advocate the use of budget reconciliation.
Art Levine of Working In These Times warns that some centrist Democrats are already getting cold feet on reconciliation. Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), chair of the Senate Budget Committee, went on TV to declare reconciliation impossible. These guys just don't get it. It's reconciliation or defeat. There is no other way. Without reconciliation, the bill dies. Without a bill, the Democrats get massacred in the mid-term elections.
Health care reform to date
Quick recap: The House and the Senate have both passed health care reform bills. The original plan was to merge those two bills in a conference committee and send the final version back to both houses of Congress for a vote. However, the Democrats lost their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate when Republican Scott Brown defeated Martha Coakley in the special election in Massachusetts.
Once they recovered from their shell shock, Democrats reluctantly converged around Plan B: Let the House re-pass the Senate version of the bill, thereby skipping the step where the Senate votes on the conference report. However, the Senate bill could not pass the House in its current form. So, the Senate needs to tweak the bill to make it acceptable to the House-either before or after the House re-passes the Senate bill. In order to make those changes without getting filibustered, the Senate Democrats will have to insert the modifications through budget reconciliation, where measures pass by a simple majority. Whew!
Of course, the Republicans trying to paint Democrats as tyrants for using reconciliation. Nevermind that 16 of the 22 reconciliation bills passed since reconciliation was invented in 1974 were passed by Republican majorities.
Whither the Public Option?
Reconciliation would appear to give the public health insurance option a new lease on life. The House bill has a public option, but the Senate bill doesn't. The public option was traded away on the Senate side to forge the original filibuster-proof majority. As a procedural matter, the public option could easily be reinserted during reconciliation because it has such a direct impact on the federal budget, i.e., it would save the taxpayer a lot of money. The White House claims to support a public option. Yet Obama didn't propose one in his health care plan last week.
Some observers take that as a sign that the White House doesn't think the votes are there. (Cynics say it's proof the White House never cared about the public option in the first place.) Even Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) told radio host Ed Schultz that he can't support a public option for fear of killing the health care bill, according to Jason Hancock of the Iowa Independent. Harkin has been taking a lot of heat from progressives for refusing to join with other senators in signing a letter calling for a public option.
Abortion Storm Clouds
Speaker Nancy Pelosi had little to say about how she plans to overcome resistance within her own caucus on abortion and immigration issues within health reform, as Brian Beutler reports for TPMDC. Pelosi needs 216 votes to pass a bill. The original House bill only passed by 5 votes. Rabid anti-choice Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) claims to have assembled a coalition of like-minded Dems who consider the Senate's slightly less restrictive rules for abortion funding "unacceptable." There is no reliable public vote count on how many of these representatives, if any, would vote to kill health care over abortion. If they do, it would be purely out of spite. Abortion language can't be tweaked in reconciliation because it doesn't directly affect the budget.
Stupak and the myth of federal funding for abortions
In The Nation, Jessica Arons takes a closer look at Stupak's radical and misleading anti-choice rhetoric. The federal government is already legally barred from funding elective abortions, and nothing in the Senate bill would change that. Arons explains that the Senate bill would allow plans that participate in the federally-subsidized exchanges to offer abortion coverage provided that customers buy that coverage with their own money, not with subsidized federal dollars. If the government pays 30% of the cost of the policy and the consumer pays 60%, the money for abortion coverage comes out of the consumer's end.
There's a long tradition of segregating government money. Both Planned Parenthood and Catholic hospitals get federal funds. By law, Planned Parenthood can't use that money to perform abortions, but it can use it to do pap smears and offer other health care. By the same token, a Catholic hospital can take federal money to provide medical care, but not to proselytize to patients. Arons ably satirizes Stupak's extreme position:
If everyone thought like Bart Stupak, a woman seeking an abortion:
(1) would not be able to take a public bus or commuter train to an abortion clinic, even if she paid her own fare;
(2) would not be able to drive on public roads to a clinic, even if she drove her own car and paid for her own gas;
(3) would not be able to walk on public sidewalks to the clinic, even though she paid property taxes;
(4) would not be able to put her child in childcare while she was at the clinic if she received a tax credit that offset the cost of childcare;
(5) would not be able to take medicine at the clinic that was researched or developed by the government, even if she paid for the medicine herself.
Bunning backs down
In other health care news, AlterNet reports that yesterday Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) ended his one-man filibuster of the extension of a bill that would have prevented a 21% cut in Medicare reimbursement rates and extended unemployment benefits while the Senate finalizes the jobs bill. Bunning caved under pressure from his own party. Even Republicans realized that there was no political percentage in stiffing doctors and the unemployed.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
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