Whilst lefty attention is concentrated on the public option question, each version of the health care bill has been assiduously stuffed with coporate welfare on an epic scale.
Allows insurers in the individual and small group markets to offer a qualified health plan nationwide, which is subject to only the State benefit mandate laws of the State in which the plans are issued; but requires such plans to provide the essential benefits package.
So - the insurers shop for the state with the flimsiest regs and issue the plans from there; and those regs govern the plan in all the other 49. (States can opt out - but the insurers' lobbyists will have a word to say on that.)
There is a pattern - which way in the distant past (coupla years ago) I did some pieces on - in which Federal laws are enacted which pre-empt state regulations on things like (from memory) predatory lending.
It's really effective, and is very hard to drag from below the radar where it mostly goes on.
Of course, shedloads of moolah are going to be laid at the feet of insurers, pharma, hospitals, etc, by any health care bill that passes (money press-ganged from the average Joe); but the bill will also be making whole load of gifts in kind like Eshoo-Barton and the nationwide plans provision the value of which I suspect has not even been quantified.
Clearly, an abortion amendment fight in the Senate makes an already complex situation much worse.
We've been assuming that there is a large risk that a Stupak-style amendment would garner a level of support greater than a simple majority but less than a cloture majority; and, as a result, the Senate would be unable either to kill it or pass it.
But is that correct?
If a Stupak amendment does not have simple majority support, the rules give a quick and easy out: kill it using a motion to table.
The motion to table is nondebatable (ie, no need for cloture), and passes on a simple majority.
We need to have a handle on how many Dem senators would vote FOR a motion to table a Stupak amendment.
Not that this is not the same question as whether they support the substance of the amendment.
What we'd hope is that enough antiabortionist-friendly Dems would put the imperative of passing health care ahead of brownie points with the bishops.
Could someone organize such a count?
The form of question, as discussed, is vital:
If any amendment is offered which would have the effect of restricting the availability of abortion, will you vote for a motion to table that amendment?
Quoting myself from a Quick Hits comment (those don't seem to get linked from my page, and I want to have it for future reference!), in reply to another comment:
If the public option was not in the base bill, and an amendment to insert it was moved, the motion to table would be in order against the amendment, and, if passed on a simple majority, would kill the amendment.
If the public option is in the base bill, it could only be removed by an amendment to strike.
That amendment itself could be killed by a motion to table (if a simple majority opposed) or forced to a vote with a 3/5 cloture majority.
The problem comes where there is majority support for an amendment, but too small a majority to pass cloture on it - what you might call the 'limbo zone'.
Similarly, Stupak will require an amendment to insert, which we're also supposing has numbers in the limbo zone.
The takeaway, however, is correct - this problem on both counts is much more complicated than Bowers and many others are letting on.
There have been a number of bills floor action on which has been governed by a unanimous consent agreement stipulating that all or some specified amendments will be need a 3/5 majority to pass.
The purpose of such a UCA is to expedite a bill that both parties want to see passed within a given period.
The Senate GOP want as a matter of partisan imperative to kill the health care bill. The slower the bill's progress, the more chance it will bog down completely.
So the suggestion that the Senate bill is safe from Stupak (as made here) makes no sense: there probably aren't 60 votes for Stupak, but there probably are 51 (or whatever simple majority is required - no doubt a number of senators will conveniently have other priorities on the day).
Of course, Harry could always try to organise a filibuster against his own bill. Though his record with GOP bills in times past suggest rather casts doubt on his chances of success...
Read it and weep: from just a month ago, the big, bold words of the Prog Caucus honcho on his own site:
Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) told the Huffington Post that he and fellow liberals within the House would not be "rolled" over in a key debate regarding the reimbursement rates rewarded under a public option.
Oh yeah! Medicare plus 5 or bust. No flipping. Remember the Alamo. ¡No pasarán!
Because, as the lede has it,
A key liberal lawmaker pledged on Wednesday that the progressive caucus in the House was not going to compromise on health care reform, emphasizing that it was acutely aware of its reputation for buckling under pressure.
By calling for a robust public option, the four Caucuses are saying that a public plan should:
• Be universal and include mental and dental health services.
• Utilize the existing infrastructure of successful public programs like Medicare in order to maintain transparency and consumer protections for administering processes including payment systems, claims and appeals.
• Receive at least the same consumer subsidies as private plans and pay competitive provider rates that ensure equal access to affordable, quality care.
• Reflect an overall commitment to the elimination of racial and ethnic health disparities.
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.
October 12: see above
November 7...
Whereas, as we know, the Stupaks, flying underneath Bowers' radar, at least, won big boasting half the numbers in the CPC.
Stupak claimed the Prog's problem was too much crying wolf. And clearly there's a element of that.
There's also the fact that the Progs' views are generally to the left of the leaderships'; and therefore any action they take usually would involve voting against legislation that gives them some, though not all, of what they want.
And that the Prog line (when there is one) is inevitably less corporate-friendly than the leaderships' - and Progs have to eat too.
Not to mention that the Progs (still more the Quad Caucus) have too many members with too great a diversity of hot buttons to direct in an insurgency - the Stupaks were strictly single-issue.
And - be it said - Medicare plus 5 is a much less potent cause to those who support it than no taxpayer-funded abortions is to its supporters.
And - looking more directly at the Stupak case itself - what he proposed was voting to defeat the rule. The great thing about that vote is that reps voting against a rule aren't tying themselves to any particular element, or any alternative content.
Thus, if the CHC had found unacceptable text on illegals in the bill, there would have been no political reason why they couldn't have join the Stupaks in voting against the rule.
And the Stupaks were essentially a mob - Stupak could say with credibility that he had no control over them, and had no idea what they might do if the leadership didn't give them a vote on their amendment. The CPC - not so much.
Perhaps, if the Progs want to make an impact, they need to study the Stupak insurgency: identify a disrete hot button issue in some legislation, organise a guerilla band separate from the Caucuses with enough votes to defeat the bill, give the leadership a hard time - and then follow through.
One key strategic point : there is no such thing as a one-shot, now-or-never deal. Legislation can be revoted; a lot a legislation takes several Congresses to pass (eg the notorious bankruptcy bill under Bush).
And another: there's a big difference between important and embarrassing. Progs might want to look for opportunities to hurt the leadership's pride without hurting voters.
But insurgency is not an end in itself: the object would be to reach a state where threats from coalitions of Progs could be effective whilst remaining unspoken - at least in public - thereby minimising intra-party strife.
Of course, this might mean legislators scribing fewer stemwinder diaries at DKos...
It's true that the lefty sphere has only been around in force since (I reckon) the runup to the Iraq war; it's first big election was 2004.
And that period has been one of a complete switcheroo in the control of the elected branches: better, because, during the GOP trifecta under Bush, their majorities were paper-thin in comparison with the Dem's current ones.
In this time, the size of the sphere has grown and many have been able to follow the twists and turns of the Washington game more easily and with more engagement than ever before. And demos skew well toward the well-educated.
However, with all that experience of viewing legislative politics in real time, it seems to me, returning to this field after 18 months away, that not much learning seems to have happened.
One large area on which few spherical resources are expended is a knowledge of the rules of the game and the way they can be used to achieve legislative results: for instance, it's clear that, at the time that certain spheroids (one or two not a million miles from here) were baying for reconciliation for health care, no one had sought to bottom the intricacies of the rules, and how they would play out in practice.
Similarly, at a time when floor action on the House health care bill is imminent, I've seen no evidence that impact of the various procedural gizmos relevant to the process has been properly analysed.
However, most worrying of all is the persistent failure amongst some spheroids to inform future expectations by the way past expectations turned out.
Thus the most absurd element of the health care reconciliation drive was the evident belief - against all the evidence of the last few Congresses - that the same go-along, corporatist Senate Dem party (under the same Grand Old Duke of Nevada) which could unite only on those occasions necessary to give Bush most of what he wanted would suddenly coalesce into the well-oiled fighting machine needed to pull off the reconciliation trick.
And what to make of this gem from one of the sphere's point persons on the health care bill:
There are always powerful forces against the forces of good, but I have to believe that good eventually triumphs. It just requires hard work and constant vigilance from us :-)
Sounds like a Bush homily to me - perhaps that's what the smiley means!
A final point: in one of his characteristically - shall we say, upbeat? - pieces (from last Monday), Mike Lux says of health care
This is a history-making fight, one of those huge moments in American history, and if we win, this progressive movement will be written about in the history books the way the big change movements of the 1960s, 1930s, 1900s, and 1860s are.
Let's review:
1860s: 'big change' required a civil war
1900s: decades of unchecked capitalism, recurrent depressions, rampant corruption [not too bad so far...] confronted by a newly motivated middle class [uh oh...]
1930s: Great Depression (hasn't happened yet, despite Bush's best efforts)
1960s: decade of racial turmoil
Of course, corporate control of the elected branches is both more comprehensive and more entrenched than in any of those decades, because of the billions needed per election cycle; the Founding Fathers' hatred of democracy ensures that that control is locked in for good.
I made the point in a comment yesterday that, while Stupak's attempt at an 'abortion caucus' in the House had been known for some time, there had (so far as I knew) been no indication of a similar movement in the Senate.
On further thought, a reason for this omission might be that potential members of a Senate abortion caucus have persuaded the anti-abortion folks to lay off for the moment: until recently, the public option looked like a doubtful starter in the Senate, and even the antiabortionists might buy the argument that their pressure hurts Dems, and so should be avoided it possible.
Now things are looking more hopeful for the PO in the Senate, the AAs would have a reason to start putting pressure on their go-to Dem senators to pledge to vote against cloture (on the motion to proceed, on passage or both) to ensure that a PO bill doesn't pass.
Who will be top of their list?
In the vote on the Wicker Amendment, on the UN Population Fund, Bayh, Casey and Ben Nelson voted for; Conrad and Landrieu didn't vote.
In that on the Allard Amendment in 2008 ('rights of the unborn' in SCHIP bill), it was just Casey and Ben Nelson voting for, Byrd not voting.
Going back to 2003, there were 12 Dem senators voting for the conference report of the partial birth abortion bill who are still in the Senate:
Bayh (D-IN)
Byrd (D-WV)
Carper (D-DE)
Conrad (D-ND)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Johnson (D-SD)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Leahy (D-VT)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR)
Reid (D-NV)
The 'doc fix' bill (S 1776) failed to achieve cloture this afternoon. The bill removes a particular piece of legislative nonsense at the cost to the deficit of $250bn or so: under current legislation, Medicare payments to doctors should be much lower than they are; each year, a one-year fix is passed to stop this reduction taking effect.
The point is that, so long as the one-year fix arrangement continues, the $250bn is kept out of the deficit stats - Enron accounting.
The plan was to take the pain this year - and not seek to offset any of it with revenue increases. And keeping it out of the health care reform bills avoids any confusion about the effect of reform on the size of the deficit.
In the event, 12 Dems - including Feingold - plus Lieberman joined all 40 GOP to vote against cloture.
All pretty much business as usual so far. The piquant detail is a quote from Harry:
Reid said he had been reassured that GOP support would be considerable. "I was told by various people we have 27 Republican votes," Reid told reporters Wednesday morning.
On health care legislation, there's a bucket of truthiness to every drop of cool, reality-based analysis to be found in the short head of the lefty sphere.
A lack of knowledge of the rules of the legislative game doesn't help; nor does superficial, white hat/black hat thinking about political words and deeds; nor yet the tribal imperative that almost invariably outweighs reason in places like DKos and Firedoglake; nor the hurricane-force wishful thinking born of having seen nearly five decades pass without any program of landmark liberal legislation.
All the more need, therefore, to salute exceptions to this dismal rule, like a couple of comments (this and this).
The question was how many votes there would be for cloture on a bill which included a robust public option.
The piece started with Chris's piece (one of his more measured efforts) which estimated 57.
The nub of the DKos comments:
Until you get to 60 votes, promises to vote for cloture are cheap and meaningless.
It's like all the support for EFCA when we had a president who was bound to veto it.
There may be 57 votes, but I'd guess that five or six of those are very, very soft.
And
promises to be the 52nd, 53rd, 54th 55th, 56th, and 57th vote for cloture are cheap as can be. These Senators and their staffs can count, too. Until they get to 59 or 60, a lot of Democrats who will do what ever it takes to kill real reform will be happy to have the opportunity to make a cheap and meaningless vote for cloture. It's like votes for EFCA when Dubya was president.
My guess: we'll have 58 or 59 votes for cloture at the end of the day.
I'm not saying that this is a thunderclap of divine revelation worthy of awe and wonder.
But it is based on observable legislative behavior, analysed with reason and not dependent on the sort of Bushian for us or against us logic which dominates the fierier end of lefty blogger discourse.
And - I'm pretty sure I've made much the same point with other bills here and at MyDD back in the day, so...
Having taken a lengthy vacation from politics (for pressing engagements on other fronts), I've been freed up just in time for some good old Congressional hijinks as the health care bill approaches its Waterloo.
After two or three weeks lurking (most particularly here), I'm impressed with what seems to be a general understanding that, while a bill with a public option (of some kind) might secure 51 votes in the Senate, it would stand no chance of winning the necessary 3/5 vote on cloture.
With this in mind, Chris has canvassed as 51% solutions both reconciliation and the nuclear option.
Whilst either would be red meat to any connoisseur of Congressional shenanigans, the most vital question to ask before anyone got carried away was (and is): how on earth will you find the 51 votes?
The so-called whip count on the public option - which I seem to recall stands at around 45 senators expressing themselves in favor - is worse than useless for this purpose: because those 45 senators were not asked whether they favored a 51% solution, which is the only way in the which the public option can pass the Senate.
Of course, few, if any, would have answered so incendiary a question. Why should they, given that lefties seem content with the worthless assurance they'd already given?
Either reconciliation or the nuclear option would surely raise a media firestorm, not only among those outlets targeting the 'death panel' crazies but also across establishment media. The messagemeisters on the right will have honed their strategy over months to meet such a challenge and the Wurlitzer will be ready to wurl.
And we know from bitter experience how bad the Dems and their friends are at responding at such attacks.
If the right can produce 'death panels' out of thin air, a 51% solution will be more than adequate to fuel fantasies about Obama sweeping aside the Constitution to take over the government; pshopped photos of Obama as an African dictator, fly-whisk in hand. And much worse.
And the senators who lefties are fondly supposing will follow through with their support of the public option are (mostly) the folks who talked a good rebellion in earlier Congresses, but somehow never quite made the play!
On the basis of cool, hard political calculation, most senators will see absolutely no percentage in a 51% solution - especially given that the public option which could garner 51 votes would probably be a pretty feeble article.
And this is before any consideration of the hit that senators might take to their campaign finances from being tagged as bomb-throwers.
Or what would happen if, on the key 51% vote, the Dems somehow came up short.
For selfish reasons, I'd love to see the Senate Dems go to the mat on the public option - which inevitably means going 51%.
So I'd love to be shown credible evidence that Senate Dems (or enough of them) are indeed ready, willing and able to go through with it.
The least that can be said about the shenanigans on Wednesday in and around HR 5349, the 21 day S 1927 extension bill, and H Res 976, the special rule under which it came to the floor, is that they need some pretty close and savvy parsing.
While Mike says The House Stands Tall, I'm inclined to reach for a tape-measure, and check for trick mirrors.
When last I opined on FISA matters (on Wednesday afternoon), the curtains were just opening on the pantomime.
I flagged various elements: the upcoming pivotal role of the Dogs (who mostly voted for the no-immunity HR 3773), 21 of whom were supporting the Senate bill text (S2248); the opening offered to the GOP of the motion to recommit (which H Res 974 could have closed, but didn't); the fact that HR 5349 would be DOA in the Senate if it passed the House.
My takeaway:
If the MTR passes, it'll be the most striking example of GOP exploitation of the device this Congress. Almost certainly, their biggest win of any kind in the 110th House so far.
After yesterday's circus on the Senate floor, this is how we stand:
Our old friend S 2248 no sooner passed than it was gutted, and its innards inserted into the similarly gutted body of HR 3773, the bill without the telco immunity.
There's no mention on THOMAS of HR 3773 being returned to whence it came - but that's the next stage.
Meanwhile, the FISA floor action today is on the House floor on HR 5349, which would extend S 1927 by another 21 days from when the HR 5104 extension expires (this Saturday).
Needless to say, the GOP is not overly keen; Bush says
Congress has had over six months to discuss and deliberate. The time for debate is over. I will not accept any temporary extension. They have already been given a two-week extension.
He's right thus far: the Dem leaderships have left things to the last minute; and an extra 21 days will make no difference to the chance of a substantive bill passing the Congress.
The House GOP have their old warhorse, the motion to recommit to deploy, though.
Bizarrely, knowing that this is precisely the sort of case in which the MTR comes into its own, the rule under which HR 5349 is being dealt with (H Res 976) allows for a MTR.
Because 21 conservative Blue Dog Democrats have endorsed the Senate-passed bill, Republicans might be able to win approval of the Senate bill through a motion to recommit the extension with instructions to amend it with the text of the Senate bill.
The bill is being debated now. If the MTR passes, it'll be the most striking example of GOP exploitation of the device this Congress. Almost certainly, their biggest win of any kind in the 110th House so far.
Why Nancy should have chosen to prolong the agony with a bill she knows won't pass the Senate, I don't quite know.
We start with the Californicated burg of Berkeley whose Council, with or without chemical assistance, decided last month to tell the Marine Corps that they were
uninvited and unwelcome intruders.
CA hippies dis the military, SC throwbacks wave the Confederate flag. It happens.
This being election year and all, GOP senators decide they want to make a little hay out of Berkeley's walk on the weird side, and secure a vote on a bill (in the terms of HR 5222 - I can't find the equivalent Senate bill on THOMAS) to put their Dem colleagues on the spot. (The bill would eliminate a $2m earmark.)
This, you might have thought, would be an A1 chance for Dem senators to Sister Souljah Berkeley and its weirdness.
But not, of course, as part of a bipartisan exercise. (If Harry had been on the ball, he'd have take the initiative in bringing his own version of the bill to the floor. But - to come in as a cock-boat behind a GOP bill: unthinkable!)
The Hill piece linked fingers the shenanigans. Essentially, they went like this: by default, a bill after introduction gets referred to committee. If, however, objection is raised (even if by the guy introducing the bill), it is held for a couple of legislative days, and then placed on the Calendar - whence it can be called off by any senator (but see below!).
Harry's wheeze was to arrange that, instead of the Senate being adjourned after business on days last week, it was recessed.
The difference: adjournment triggers a new legislative day. After a recess, the previous legislative day continues.
Apparently, the good councillors of Berkeley have had a spell in rehab, and are about to tone down their diatribe against the Marines.
By the time the GOP bill comes up for a vote, supposedly, the Berkeley rant will be closer to a whine, thus taking the air out of the whole GOP circus.
I've not got out Riddick's to check out what the piece says against the rules: for instance, while it's true that the wheeze referred to can get a bill onto the Calendar, it's a different matter calling it off.
Because the Maj Leader has the (unwritten) prerogative of being called by the prez in priority to any other senators, he should be able to stop measures on the Calendar which he wants to stay there from being called off by other senators.
So, even if the GOP bill had got onto the Calendar, that would have been of no avail had Harry not acquiesced in the bill getting floor action.
However: a nice little vignette of Senate life, I thought, and scope for further research if it becomes relevant in future.
Under the Unanimous Consent framework agreed to by all Senators (including Dodd), there will be a 60-vote requirement to invoke cloture on the FISA bill and for ultimate passage, followed by an allotted 4 hours of post-cloture "debate," but there will not be any real filibuster to prevent cloture.
That UCA - in particular, the 4 hour postcloture debate limit - is not mentioned in Friday's Daily Digest, so I assume it was agreed today.
(Apparently Leahy has put round an email saying he
will do everything in [his] power -- including joining [his] colleague Chris Dodd in a filibuster against this legislation -- to fix it.
Greenwald tartly draws attention to the sawed-off nature of the debate time, and, hence, of Leahy's pledge!)
Of course, if the mythical real filibuster was going to be forthcoming from any of the clay-footed spheroid faves, they wouldn't have agreed this UCA (or any of its predecessors on S 2248).
Action then moves to the House. Which is currently sitting on its (no-immunity) HR 3773, passed with Blue Dog support.
A Nationpiece mentions that Dingell, Markey and Stupak have got together to try and hold the line on immunity.
If Nancy goes along with this, it would signal an epoch-making change of strategy. It's amply within her power to run out the clock (HR 5104, the 15 day extension to S 1927, sunsets on Saturday).
But - rather more likely - she will bring S 2248 to the floor, and let it pass with Blue Dog support, while voting against it herself.
That was her MO with S 1927, certainly.
That way, everyone wins - Nancy, and Dingell and his friends, get to burnish their voting records, and the Dems avoid a confrontation with Bush, the aim of their current FISA strategy.
if the regular count is close-ish, and the performance of the candidate with most regulars has given rise to second thoughts in the runup to the convention, why should the party be stuck with a choice made without up-to-date info?
Especially given that each Dem candidate has novel features (gender and race respectively) about them which, over a distance of ground, may prove an unexpectedly large handicap.
Actually, you'd need to be a real civilian (if not barely out of the womb) not to realize that the five day work week in the Congress is as mythical as a fair election or honest politician.
In the Congress, as elsewhere, Time Is Money. But indirectly: by controlling the flow of output (ladies, think Kegel), a maj leadership in either house controls which expectations are met, and at what a rate.
And, savvy management of expectations leads to maximising the take from potential beneficiaries of the legislative product.
(Of course, lots of such potential beneficiaries can't pay the freight. Losers like the unemployed or food stamp recipients, say. But then, their potential remains largely unrealized, don't it?)
Thus (schedule), just as soon as the Senate returns from its Christmas vacation (Jan 22), it's looking at its next (for Presidents' Day, Feb 16).
Rosenberg scribes a thought-provoking piece earlier today under hed Bipartisanship Vs. Reality: The Stimulus Package.
The Stimulus Package Circus has (so far as I can see) been vastly undercovered in the lefty sphere (I, like many others, have been seduced by the gaudier delights of the FISA Show) - so, a timely entry, all things considered.
The line on the substance of the package (which seems all too believable) is that Dems and GOP, Capitol and WH, have eschewed the methods that would actually delivered a stimulus (eg boosting food stamps and unemployed insurance) in favor of other measures, perhaps more rewarding when it comes to taking the hat round the moneybags.
The kicker, I have to disagree with, though:
Bushism is no longer the enemy. Republicanism is no longer the enemy. Both of them are history-or would be, at any rate, if it were not for the real enemy, and the real enemy is bipartisanism.
The implication is that something is now going on which wasn't going on earlier in the Bush regime. Or before that.
The essential error of many in the lefty sphere, I think, in their appreciation of the performance of Dem MCs is a failure to look at the world from the MCs's point of view.
