Senate Democrats in the Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) finally squelched Republican boycotts and passed a version of the climate bill yesterday morning. Last week, Republican Senators refused to show up to committee hearings in an attempt to stall the bill. Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo notes that EPW has now set "the stage for other panels to amend the legislation."
Last week, Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid introduced a merged health care bill including an opt-out public option. The next day, Senator Joe Lieberman threatened to vote against cloture on any health care bill with a public option. The same day, Reid promptly brushed off the threat, saying that "Joe Lieberman is the least of Harry Reid's problems."
Now, sources claim the two Senators have reached a "private understanding" to let the bill go forward:
Sen. Joe Lieberman has reached a private understanding with Majority Leader Harry Reid that he will not block a final vote on healthcare reform, according to two sources briefed on the matter.
Um, OK I guess. There are good reasons to be wary, but I'll take it for now.
Anyone want to guess what the "private understanding" is?
Update: Now, both Reid and Lieberman are denying this to multiple sources. Of course they are. Either there is a private understanding, and saying so in public would make them sound ridiculous, or there is no private understanding, and saying there is would make them sound ridiculous.
In short, stating publicly that you have a private understanding sounds bad.
Before today, sources had told me that Lieberman was not considered to be one of the top threats to vote against cloture on a health care bill with a public option. Now, even despite Lieberman's threat to vote against cloture today, from the way Harry Reid is talking, it seems like the Senate leadership still doesn't consider Lieberman to be one of the main problems:
"Joe Lieberman is the least of Harry Reid's problems," Reid told reporters at his weekly press conference.
During a Q&A session with reporters, Reid offered a fairly spirited defense of Lieberman, signaling perhaps that he doesn't believe Lieberman will ultimately be an obstacle--or at least that he doesn't want to tip his hat: "I don't have anyone that I've worked harder with, have more respect for, in the Senate than Joe Lieberman. As you know, he's my friend. There are a lot of senators--Democrat and Republicans--who don't like [parts of this bill]... Sen. Lieberman will let us get on the bill, and he'll be involved in the amendment process."(...)
"We'll get it on the floor, we'll have an amendment process, and that's what we do," Reid said. "We haven't been doing a lot of it because we've had 81 objections so far this year by the Republicans."
I can think of three possibilities here:
There is a deal with Reid and Lieberman to change the bill via amendments that is already in place.
Reid is disappointed, but believes he can get Lieberman to fall in line by the time of the final cloture vote.
Reid has been blindsided by Lieberman, but he is sticking to talking points that reflect the earlier estimate that Lieberman was not one of the main problems.
This is all very speculative, of course. One thing that is not speculative is that we are going to have to find a way to pressure Lieberman hard as a result of this statement. Any suggestions?
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said Tuesday that he'd back a GOP filibuster of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's health care reform bill.(...)
Lieberman did say he's "strongly inclined" to vote to proceed to the debate, but that he'll ultimately vote to block a floor vote on the bill if it isn't changed first.
"I've told Sen. Reid that if the bill stays as it is now I will vote against cloture," he said.
"I can't see a way in which I could vote for cloture on any bill that contained a creation of a government-operated-run insurance company," Lieberman added. "It's just asking for trouble - in the end, the taxpayers are going to pay and probably all people will have health insurance are going to see their premiums go up because there's going to be cost shifting as there has been for Medicare and Medicaid."
One of the main criticisms progressives had of Lieberman leading up to the 2006 primary was that he often joined with Republicans on prominent issues (Clinton impeachment, Iraq war) in order to garner huge media attention for himself. Again, that pattern holds.
Lieberman works to undermine Democrats on major issues in order to increase his personal media profile. It is a good thing we did whatever it takes to keep someone like that in the Democratic caucus.
Update: I completely agree with the commenters who say that Reid should call this bluff. Let's see Lieberman actually casts a vote against sending this bill to conference committee, or against final passage afterward. And then, if he does, let's see what happens back in Connecticut.
Update 2: To clarify, it appears Lieberman is threatening to vote for cloture on the motion to proceed with the floor debate, but against the vote for cloture on final passage. TPMDC:
"I told Senator Reid that I'm strongly inclined--i haven't totally decided, but I'm strongly inclined--to vote to proceed to the health care debate, even though I don't support the bill that he's bringing together because it's important that we start the debate on health care reform because I want to vote for health care reform this year. But I also told him that if the bill remains what it is now, I will not be able to support a cloture motion before final passage. Therefore I will try to stop the passage of the bill."
Looks like Lieberman is making one final push to become President.
Update 3: Lieberman pledged support for universal health care back in 2006 debate:
Senator Dick Durbin, who was in charge of counting votes on the health care merger in the Senate, is now saying that the public option was included in the Senate bill because of a Progressive Block of Senators who refused to support a health care bill otherwise. From The Huffington Post:
Democratic leaders were forced to include a national public health insurance option as part of health care reform by progressive Democratic senators who refused to support anything less, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said on Monday.
Durbin's assessment was made to a handful of reporters following the announcement by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) that after weeks of talks with his colleagues he had determined that including a public option that states could opt out of was the best way to go.(...)
"It's a zero-sum situation," said Durbin, who is in charge of counting votes in the Senate. "If we thought that just putting the trigger in meant that we'd end with 61 votes," he explained, then that's what leadership would have done.
"But there were some [senators] that felt that that just didn't go far enough moving toward a public option," said Durbin, who is himself a backer.
Quite a few Democrats did not like it that Congressional Progressives were threatening to defeat a health care bill without a public option. However, without that threat, there is simply no way that the public option would still be alive, much less near victory. Making that sort of threat on a piece of must-pass legislation was necessary both in order to make the legislation better, and also to finally make Congressional Progressives as relevant to the legislative process as Blue Dogs and Conservadems.
Darcy Burner summed this up pretty well today in an article from The Hill. (More in the extended entry)
Now that the opt-out public option is in the merged Senate health care bill, and now that the House is debating not whether or not to have a public option but what sort of public option to include in their bill, the chances of having a public option in the final health care bill signed by President Obama have skyrocketed. Defying the forecasts of numerous pundits, Conservative Democratic Senators and Blue Dogs, it now seems very likely that there will be a public option in health care reform. Wow!
Still, the campaign is not over yet. There are still at least five major questions / hurdles to answer / clear before we can celebrate (More in the extended entry):
Given this news, it certainly seems as though Reid has managed to acquire 60 votes for cloture on a health care bill with the opt-out public option. This assessment is supported by recent statements from Democratic Senators, all of whom have left the door open to cloture on a health care bill with an opt-out public option.
53 and 54: Neither Senator Max Baucus nor Senator Kent Conrad have ever threatened to filibuster health care legislation. Given that both are committee chairs, and that both had such a large hand in writing the health care legislation, it is extremely unlikely that either will filibuster any health care bill.
59: Shockingly, I now hear that Evan Bayh is a solid vote for cloture on the health care bill.
60: This leaves Blanche Lincoln as perhaps the final vote needed. Currently, Lincoln is non-committal.
Given all of this, it now seems entirely possible that Reid has 60 votes for cloture on a health care bill with an opt-out public option. We will find out more in a few minutes, but he may very well have pulled this off.
This is an open thread fore Reid's press conference.
Update: Reid just announced that the opt-out will be in the bill. Claims there is consensus within the Democratic caucus on this matter.
Now, the campaign is no longer about whether or not there will be a public option, but what type of public option there will be. A big step forward.
Update 2: Reid claims that once the bill is scored by the CBO, he believes there will be 60 votes for cloture. While there are many dueling claims on that front right now, this post at least provides one plausible supporting justification for that claim.
Update 3: Press conference is over. The bill will apparently have both a public option and a co-op. Not sure what to make of that. Will investigate.
-Including Optout PO with support of the WH, and Baucus, which eliminates him as a no vote, much less a filibuster threat (which was far fetched to begin with)
-States will able to optout in 2014, although from his wording it could be they have UNTIL 2014 to Optout, at which time the Optout would presumably no longer be available to states
-Not getting the trigger scored by CBO, which probably means Reid is not seriously looking at it
-Says he hasn't asked the WH to pressure any Dems because it hasn't been necessary, and that 60 votes allows them a certain comfort level to pursue this strategy.
-Says Snowe doesn't like ANY PO, so they'll just have to move forward and hope that she'll join in later in the process. Basically they're getting ready to go without her.
-There will be a Coop in the bill, they're just preserving what was already in the Finance, which is fine since many of us are OK with Coops alongside the PO.
This certainly seems like a very, very big victory.
The merger process is nearly complete. We should know by Wednesday, and possibly as early as tomorrow, what sort of health care reform bills both the House and Senate Democratic leaderships will send to the floors of their respective chambers. Of course, we will also know what sort of public option will, or will not, be included in those bills. Here is the run of play on the merger process in each chamber:
Where the Senate stands The big news today is in the Senate. Reportedly, Harry Reid is ready to send a merged bill to the Congressional Budget Office. Last week, Reid indicated that when he finally sent a bill to the CBO, it would mean he had made a decision on the public option:
"I've had a number of meetings in my office, dealing with Democrats and Republicans on the public option aspect of it...when the decision's made to send this on to the CBO, I will have made a decision as to what we're going to do with the public option.
Senate leaders plan to submit the bill to the Congressional Budget Office for a cost estimate as soon as Monday, and make the legislation public as soon as Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.(...)
The bill to be brought to the Senate floor would create a new public health-insurance plan, but would give states the choice of opting out of participating in it, a proposal that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada backed last week.
It is highly likely that the opt-out will be on Senator Schumer's "level playing field" public option. Even before the opt-out, this makes it weaker than even the worst-case scenario for the public option in the House (which I describe below). Still, it would be a trigger-less public option, and change the debate from whether or not there will be a public option, to what sort of public option there will be.
Reportedly, as of Friday, Reid was only one or two votes from reaching 60 on this public option. If he really is sending the opt-out public option to the floor, then he must have either rounded up the remaining votes, or bet that no Democrat would publicly vote against a motion to proceed to a floor debate for the health care bill.
Either way, Reid appears to be making these decisions without any particular assistance from the White House. No matter which of the two main rumors you believe--that the White House is staying neutral or that the White House is pushing the trigger--the White House does not appear to be pushing Reid toward the opt-out. This is a decision he is making on his own.
Harry Reid is holding a press conference at 3:15 p.m., eastern, to discuss the Senate merger process. We will be covering it.
Where the House stands can be found in the extended entry.
Multiple anonymous sources (quite a day for anonymous sources, eh?), are telling the Huffington Post that Harry Reid is only one or two votes shy of reaching cloture on health care bill with some sort of opt-out public option:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is just one or two Senate votes shy of having a filibuster-proof majority in favor of a public option for health insurance coverage with a provision allowing states to opt-out, multiple sources tell the Huffington Post.
The first thing to keep in mind is that whip counts don't exactly work on a vote by vote basis. It is true that the leadership keeps a hard count, but many of the members who are considered solid "yes" votes can switch to undecided at times like these. When they sense the leadership really wants something, switching to "undecided" gives members a chance to negotiate something for their district.
Second, for what it is worth, my best guess based on information I have seen is that Evan Bayh is the "one" vote Reid is short (I feel good about that guess), and Ben Nelson is the "or two" vote that Reid is short (although I feel less sure about that guess). Here is why (more in the extended entry):
Democratic Senate leaders and representatives from the White House are meeting on the public option today at 5pm. I feel dirty linking them, but according is Politico, they are leaning toward including the opt-out in the merged Senate health care bill:
Two Democratic senators said Thursday that they have been told negotiators are zeroing in on creating a national government health plan, but allowing states to drop out of it or choose a different competitor to private insurance.
"I keep hearing there is a lot of leaning toward some sort of national public option, unfortunately, from my standpoint," said Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), a key swing vote on health reform. "I still believe a state-based approach is the way in which to go. So I'm not being shy about making that point."
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said he has been told the same regarding the direction of the talks, but was assured the government plan would not be tied to Medicare rates.
If this is true, then the fight is no longer over whether or not there will be a public option, but what kind of public option there will be. Given how many times we were told the public option was dead, that would be a truly remarkable victory for progressives.
Then again, this so-called public option might just be a co-op. Tom Carper:
"I think at the end of the day there will be a national plan probably put together not by the federal government but by a non-profit board with some seed money from the federal government that states would initially participate in because of lack of affordability. The question is should there be an opportunity for states to opt out later on and if so, within a year, within two years, within three years?"
Either way, here is a quick look at the state of play for the public option in the Senate:
This means that the number of obstacles to including a public option in the Senate bill, and thus the bill overall, is down to two or three, depending on Blanche Lincoln.
We are on the brink of victory in the public option campaign. We only need two or three more Senate votes on cloture, and we have it. Very, very close now.
House Democratic leaders "sounded bullish" after launching "an all-hands-on-deck effort to win support for a 'robust' public insurance option in their health care bill," Roll Call reports.
Said Caucus Chairman John Larson (D-CT): "We think we have the votes now. We have the votes to pass a robust public option."
I have also received word from source on Capitol Hill that "the whip is done," and they have the votes. At this point, the effort will be to increase the vote total as much as possible.
Legislation ending the antitrust exemption for health insurance companies will be included in the House healthcare bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday.
"It will include the Leahy amendment which is eliminating the exemption of health insurance companies ... from antitrust law," Pelosi said, referring to a Senate provision authored by Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.).
This is a big win, and now it is back to the Senate. On that front, Olympia Snowe is now saying that she does not support the opt-out compromise on the public option, and would likely vote against cloture on any bill containing a public option of any sort.
I just read this news piece at Huffington Post saying that Colorado's senators and governor are circulating a letter to senators asking them not to filibuster a public option. I signed the petition, but let's just say I'm not a fan of an ask that has no leverage behind it. However, I thought of a strategy that might generate a little leverage.
As Chris has detailed elsewhere, the crucial battefield right now is the closed-door negotiation among Reid, Dodd, Baucus and the White House over whether a public option will be included in the bill reported out to the Senate floor. If a public option is not included in the bill, those who want to add one would have to overcome a filibuster. If one is included, then a filibuster would be required to remove it.
I don't know which way that negotiation is leaning, but here's a way we might be able to change the equation and influence the negotiators to include a public option in the bill: what if public option supporters like Udall and Bennet publicly promised not to filibuster an amendment that simply tried to strip the public option from the bill, as long as the option was included when the bill was reported? Essentially, they'd be saying, "include a strong public option in the bill, and we promise to allow an up-or-down vote on it, rather than relying on a filibuster to protect it." If the public option could get 50 votes, it would be preserved.
Our whip count says the public option has at least 50 votes (Harkin says 52), so unless someone is lying, we'll win the vote, right? And publicly setting aside the filibuster to go "all-in" on a majority vote on the public option would make it that much harder for opponents of the health care measure to justify supporting a later filibuster on the whole bill, wouldn't it?
Does this seem like a promising idea, or am I missing something?
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.
Lost in all the hubbub over the potential threat of using budget reconciliation for health care, which would void the need for 60 votes in the Senate to pass health care, is that the budget passed back in April also included the possibility of reconciliation for education reform.No really, its true:
It appears that House and Senate Democrats have agreed to include "budget reconciliation instructions" aimed at reforming federal student loan programs in the fiscal year 2010 budget resolution. The House and Senate each adopted their own versions of the 2010 budget resolution several weeks ago and will bring a final compromise version up for a vote this week. The most important piece of the budget resolution for education programs is the reconciliation instruction.
In fact, not only was the possibility of using budget reconciliation for education reform included in the budget this past spring, but it appears that Senate Democrats are actually going to use reconciliation for education reform. Again, this is really happening:
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) is risking an intra-party battle by fast-tracking legislation that seeks to cut off federal subsidies to student loan companies.
Harkin said he will attempt to use special budget rules that only require a simple majority vote to advance a bill that would end the Federal Family Education Loan program, which would free up money for other education programs.(...)
Harkin, when asked this week about centrists' worries, said he plans to go ahead with the special procedure because the budget resolution, approved by Democrats in April, tells him he can.
"We've already been instructed by the Budget Committee to do this, so we're going to do it," said Harkin, the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.
Senate Democratic leaders have also signaled openness to force the majority vote.
The eventual fate of the planned education reforms is unclear. Five Democratic Senators--Begich, Bingaman, Lincoln, Ben Nelson, and Tom Udall--are currently opposed. Seven others are on the fence. Assuming that all Republicans are opposed, the reform has between 48 an 55 votes in the Senate. This means that education reform has to be passed through reconciliation, or else it currently does not have enough votes to reach cloture.
The bill won't move in the Senate until lawmakers make more progress on healthcare legislation, Harkin said. If Democratic leaders decide to use reconciliation rules for the healthcare bill, they would have to package it with the education reforms, since Senate rules allow for consideration of only one reconciliation bill each year.
This significantly improves the argument for using reconciliation to pass a public option. According to our whip count, there are enough votes to pass health care reform with a public option through reconciliation. If important education reform can only be passed through reconciliation, then reconciliation should be used for education reform. Further, if reconciliation is used for education reform, then why not use it for a public option, too?
We need these important pieces of legislation--student loan reform and a public option. We have a procedural path to pass both. Abandoning one, or both, for the sake of Senate manners is simply not the kind of governing we need. It is time to put principle over politics, and take the procedural steps necessary to pass important legislation.
Today, Iowa Senator Tom Harkin said the Senate was down to three options on what sort of health care bill to send to the floor:
During a conference call hosted by the liberal activist group Families USA, Harkin indicated that Senate Democrats had narrowed their choices to a full public option, a proposal that would allow states to opt out of the program and Sen. Olympia Snowe's (R-Maine) idea of creating a "trigger" that would launch a public option in any state where insurers fail to meet residents' needs.
Harkin also offered an internal whip count:
The full Senate Democratic Conference met Thursday to discuss healthcare. Harkin counted 52 senators who support the public option and about five who do not.
"The vast majority of the Democratic caucus is for the public option that is in the HELP bill," Harkin said. "Should the 52 give in to the five, or should the five come along with the majority?"
Harkin's count is odd, as it only adds up to 57. There are 60 members of the Democratic Senate caucus. Still, it is very close to the count we have been running:
52 supporters sounds right: Our latest count was only at 51, but it is highly unlikely that Alaska freshman Mark Begich would oppose the public option. He is probably the 52nd.
Up to 7 opponents: Senators Evan Bayh, Max Baucus, Kent Conrad, Mary Landrieu, Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln, and Ben Nelson have all done one of the following: voted against all forms of the public option in committee, stated their opposition to the public option in the press, or told Harry Reid they are actively contemplating filibustering a health care bill with a public option. That makes seven opponents, not five.
Lieberman won't filibuster? If I had to guess, Harkin probably isn't counting Lieberman, who has said he will probably not filibuster:
U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, I-Conn., whose vote could be crucial to breaking an expected GOP filibuster on health care legislation, Thursday said he would consider voting to move the bill forward, even if he ultimately casts his ballot against the reform package.
Lieberman said he was "inclined to let the motion to proceed" (or cloture) go forward, but "I haven't decided yet."
Lieberman is shooting off his mouth to both get some attention and water down the bill before it reaches the floor, but in the end I will be stunned if he breaks ranks on cloture votes.
Baucus definitely won't filibuster. I would also bet that Harkin is not counting Baucus among the opponents. Baucus has stated he supports a public option, proposed a public option, and simply is not going to filibuster legislation that he had such a large hand in writing.
With three options on the table, one dynamic to keep in mind is that all of the center-right Democratic Senators listed here often attempt to be "moderate for the sake of moderate." That is, they will reject the more left-leaning (full public option) and more right-leaning (trigger) proposals for no other reason than because those are the right-leaning and left-leaning options. That means the opt-out might be what the Senate brings to the conference committee. If the House can bring the Medicare +5% public option to the conference committee at the same time, then the public option campaign should be in a pretty good position for the final bill.
House Democrats are taking necessary precautions to jam a contentious health care reform bill through the Senate, should party moderates turn their backs on the legislation.
The House Ways and Means Committee agreed Thursday to send a letter to the Budget panel setting the ground rules for the reconciliation process, should Democrats need to employ a "just in case" fallback. Reconciliation allows the party in power to approve legislation with a simple majority, not the 60 votes leaders often need to initiate a vote on contentious bills.
The vote doesn't mark a change in strategy; Democrats just needed to meet an Oct. 15 deadline included in the annual budget blueprint for the initiation of the reconciliation process. So far, only the Education and Labor Committee included reconciliation instructions in its draft of the health care bill.
Democrats have the votes to pass health care reform with a public option in any number of ways. Taking the House as a given, let's count the ways in the Senate:
If that fails, then Democrats could still pass health care reform with a public option by securing a cloture vote by keeping all 60 Senate Democrats together.
So, Democrats have the votes to pass health care reform with a public option through both branches of Congress. The only thing stopping them is that they might not hold together on procedural maneuvers.
In other words, the only threat to not passing health care reform without a public option is that some Senate Democrats might value Senate procedure over legislative policy they ostensibly support. Which is simply a bogus process excuse.
Democratic leaders have too often used shadowy Senate process as an excuse to not pass Democratic legislation. However, with the grassroots learning more about Senate process, and keeping detailed whip counts of where members of Congress stand, that simply won't fly anymore.
So because of your donations, Open Left and CREDO Action are running ads in The Hill and Roll Call to tell Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Obama to pass the public option, rather than giving us process excuses that we know are bogus. Starting tomorrow, we will doing the same thing with geo-targeted ads for Washington, D.C. in the Washington Post, focused on people who read about health care news. We are going to reach the insiders working on health care, and let them know that we are well-informed, and that we expect leadership, not process excuses.
In the extended entry, I have placed screenshots of our ads in The Hill and Roll Call today. Thanks again for your donations--you are making a difference in this fight!
The latest poll of Nevada residents by MasonDixon/Las Vegas Journal-Review shows Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to be very unpopular:
Favorable/Unfavorable:
Harry Reid: 38/50
Sue Lowden (R): 31/15
D.Tarkanian (R): 30/11
General Election:
Reid: 39; Lowden: 49
Reid: 43; Tarkanian: 48
When an incumbent is around 50-54% in a poll a year away they are considered vulnerable. Reid isn't even close to 50% in this poll or in this poll from Rasmussen in September. Reid is going to lose without a game-changing event.
Part of Reid's problem, aside from his own lack of leadership ability, is the state of Nevada's economy. It's very bad. Perhaps Reid thinks the game-changing event will be an improving economy is 2010. But it's not likely that citizens will notice much improvement in the next 12 months and, even if they do, they may have soured on Reid too much for him to recover. When progressives in Congress are trying to pass measures to help average citizens it doesn't look good to keep saying "We can't do that, we don't have the votes."
Reid has one chance to reinvigorate his chances which I discuss inside.
Update for Andrew Davey (see comments): You say the polls are lying and you also say Harry Reid always polls badly before ultimately winning. Can you back that up with some data? Here is what I found. First, the two polls I linked to are by MasonDixon (for Las Vegas Journal-Review) and Rasmussen. According to Nate Silver's analysis of 30+ polling companies, they are both in the top 7 for accuracy. I don't think the polls are lying. Second, a poll commissioned by the Journal-Review 8 months prior to the 2004 election found that Reid would easily beat his GOP opponent with 61% support in the poll. Guess what? Reid ultimately won with 61% of the vote. That result would seem to refute both your claim that the paper's polls are always biased for the GOP and that Reid is always polling badly before ultimately winning on election day.
The Senate merger process ramps up today. At 2:30 pm eastern, Senators Reid, Dodd, and Baucus will meet with five representatives from the White House to discuss combining the Senate HELP bill with the Senate Finance bill. The combined bill will be sent to the floor for debate, amendments, and passage through to conference committee.
The message of the ad is simple: We have the votes. No excuses. Make it happen.
There are at least 51 Senators who would vote for Senator Schumer's "level playing field" public option in an up-or-down vote. (Source)
There are enough Senators in favor of health care reform with a public option for it to pass through the Senate reconciliation process: (Source)
There are now 60 active, voting members of the Democratic Senate caucus, which means no Republicans are required for cloture motions to pass. ((Source)
The House of Representatives is not debating whether or not to pass a public option, but whether to pass one tied to Medicare rates plus 5% or one with negotiated rates. As such, there will be a public option that reaches conference committee. ((Source)
It will be more difficult to include a public option in health care reform if one is not in the merged of Senate Finance and Senate HELP committee bill that is sent to the floor of the Senate. If a public option is in the bill sent to the floor, it will require 60 votes only for the entire bill to pass cloture. However, if a public option is not in the bill, the public option itself needs 60 votes. (Source)
It actually only requires 51 votes to break a filibuster, since we all remember the "nuclear option" fight that took place four years ago. (Source)
Senate process is often used as a weapon against the progressive grassroots. Not wanting to say they disagree with us or for our contributions to stop flowing, Democrats leaders through up their hands and say they didn't have the votes, without saying which votes they don't have or telling the truth about Senate process.
That isn't going to fly this time. The grassroots are learning about Senate process, and we know we have the votes. What we need is leadership from President Obama and Senator Harry Reid to make sure that a public option is included in the final bill, and that no Democrats join with the Republican filibuster of that bill.
Yesterday, the Senate Finance Committee finally passed its health care bill. John Nichols of the Nationreacts:
If every kid in class finishes their homework except for one, guess which kid will get the most attention. That's right, the slacker.
And, when the slacker finally does turn in the assignment, it is invariably a slapdash job that fails to meet minimum standards.
So it is in the U.S. Senate, where the Finance Committee finally got around to finishing its health care reform assignment.
The bill passed by a vote of 14-9. All the Democrats, plus Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) voted in favor. As we know, it doesn't include a public option.
Robert Scheer, also of the Nation, sums up the bill as written:
The main thrust of the proposal is to forcibly submit even more customers to the tender mercies of the insurance industry while doing nothing significant to cut costs. Insurers will now pretend that the burdens on them are onerous and will demand concessions to make this an even bigger boondoggle for the medical profiteers than George W. Bush's prescription drug coverage initiative.
Sheer sees the Finance Committee bill as a sop to the health insurers. If it were to pass in its present form, it would deliver millions of new customers to private insurers by requiring everyone to carry insurance. The free market keeps costs down when companies compete to give the best value for the lowest price. But most health insurers operate as monopolies on their home turf. If insurers had to compete for customers, they'd have an incentive to lower their prices. That's why progressives want to introduce competition in the form of a public option.
An all-private insurance system gives power to an industry that it is indifferent to the needs of the people it claims to serve.
Before we go any further, our warmest congratulations to Robin Marty, who is expecting her second child. In a piece for RH Reality check, Marty details how the private insurance industry toys with people's lives in pursuit of profit. For Marty and her husband, joy is mixed with apprehension because their maximum out-of-pocket insurance cost just doubled. By the time the baby arrives, Marty's husband expects to pay 10% of his pre-tax income just to keep his family insured. And they'd better hope that bundle of joy is of an actuarially-approved size. An insurance company in Colorado refused to cover a 4-month-old baby because he was "too fat," according to the boy's father. The company relented after media pressure, but there's no indication that they plan to drop their general rule that babies whose weight is above the 95th percentile don't get covered.
Earlier this week, the insurance industry broadsided the Obama administration by releasing a "report" warning that health care reform would cause premiums to skyrocket.
As economist Robert Reich explains in TAPPED, the industry was upset that the Senate Finance Committee was considering more lenient punishments for young healthy people who don't buy health insurance. (They would still be fined, just not as much.) The industry report claimed that if the government spares the rod, only old sick people will sign up, and premiums will be higher for everyone. Reich argues that the report inadvertently makes the case for the public option:
But the bomb went off under the insurers. The only reason these costs can be passed on to consumers in the form of higher premiums is because there's not enough competition among private insurers to force them to absorb the costs by becoming more efficient. Get it? Health insurers have just made the best argument yet about why a public insurance option is necessary.
Steve Benen of the Washington Independent notes that former Democrat Joe Lieberman (I-Conn) went on Don Imus's syndicated shock jock radio show to echo the insurance industry's talking points. "I'm afraid that in the end, the Baucus bill is actually going to raise the price of insurance for most of the people in the country," Lieberman said.
With all this hypothesizing and posturing, it's easy to forget that neither Lieberman-nor anyone else-is going to vote on the Baucus bill as written. The Finance Committee bill is just one of several proposals to have passed their respective committees. In the Senate, the more liberal Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP) passed a bill with a public option this summer. All the House health reform bills also include a public option.
As Mike Lillis of the Washington Independent explains, the tone of the debate is expected to shift dramatically: Now that the various bills have cleared their bipartisan committees, power shifts to the Democratic leaders in the House and the Senate who are in charge of shaping the final legislation.
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Now that the committee phase of the health care process is over, it is time for the merger phase of the process. The merger phase is murky, mainly taking place behind closed doors under the direction of the Congressional leadership and White House. Here are the details:
Senate merger process: Before a health care bill goes to the Senate floor, the Senate Finance Committee and Senate HELP health care reform bills must be merged into a single bill. While those efforts are already under way, tomorrow they ramp up quite a bit:
Starting tomorrow, Harry Reid, Max Baucus, Chris Dodd and one or two representatives from the White House will meet in Reid's office to hammer out the details of merging the two bills. There will be a press conference with the principals tomorrow at 2pm ET. A Senate leadership aide tells me they hope that process will take a week, and the bill will reach the floor by the week of October 26th. That provides some built-in pad in case the merging process takes longer than that.
It is wroth noting that this group of negotiators can re-write the bill in pretty much whatever way they like, as long as the rest of the Democratic caucus is still good with it.
House merger process. Just like the Senate, the House must merge its various health care reform bills (there are three), into a single bill before it can be sent to the floor. The two major debates in that merger process.
The first is over Democrat Bart Stupak's attempt to prevent any health insurance plans from covering abortions. If he were successful, health care reform would lose so many pro-choice votes that the entire bill will die. Fortunately, Stupak's plan seems likely to fail.
The second debate is over whether to include a public option tied to Medicare +5% rates, or one with negotiated rates. There are a lot of dueling reports on how many members of the House support a public option with Medicare +5% rates. The most believable numbers put the total about 20 short of passage, with 30-40 undecided. The House leadership will decide whether it is worth whipping members on behalf of the Medicare +5% public option, or to just go with the negotiated rates public option instead.
In the House, bills are merged, and amendments for floor votes are approved, in the Rules Committee chaired by Representative Louise Slaughter. It will be easy moving a bill through that committee.
Senate cloture vote: For a bill to reach the Senate floor for debate and amendments, usually all that is required is unanimous consent for a motion to proceed. However, if even one Senator objects, then a bill requires a cloture vote, with the 60-vote threshold, to reach the floor. Given the intensity of the health care fight, the safe money is unanimous consent will not be granted, and that a cloture vote will be required. So, we should know pretty early in the process whether the bill actually has 60 votes or not.
As I have noted before, failure to reach the 60 vote cloture threshold can actually be overcome with only 51 votes via the nuclear option, but that isn't going to happen for this bill.
The merger phase of the process is actually more important than the next phase of the process--floor debate. That phase will feature a lot of amendments to each health care bill, but those amendments won't change the bills sent to the floor all that much. Also, it is unlikely that the leadership in either the House or the Senate will send a bill to the floor without prior knowledge that they have the votes to pass it. So really, floor debate is pretty much just kabuki theater.
The next big step after the merger process will be the conference committee, where the House and the Senate merge their two bills. That will be anything but kabuki theater. Also, like the merger process it will largely take place behind closed doors. Hopefully, we can get a public option included in the Senate bill before the conference committee, but if the Senate merger process also fails us, then the conference will be the final showdown.
