Joe Lieberman's favorability rating has dropped quite a bit in the month of December, according to CNN polling:
Joe Lieberman, national favorable rating, CNN polls, December 2009
Poll Date
Favorable
Unfavorable
Dec 16-20
31%
34%
Dec 02-03
40%
28%
That's a 15-point net swing in favorability rating in just two weeks. The Hill is mystified as to why this might have happened:
It is difficult to pinpoint when or why Lieberman has taken a hit: In the past two weeks, he not only crucial in helping remove the healthcare bill's public option and Medicare buy-in provisions, but also subsequently announced that he would join with Democrats to support the bill after those provisions were removed.
Yes-truly, difficult to pinpoint this one. After all, successfully gutted the central provision of the bill that an entire wing of the Democratic Party had been fighting for during the past year, and lied about supporting the Medicare buy-in compromise.
Pretty difficult to pinpoint. People usually love politicians who publically flip their positions on important issues in order to gain personal power. Also, partisans usually love politicians who support legislation only after the central demand of those partisans has been removed from that legislation.
Hard to figure this one out. Why could Lieberman possibly have taken such a quick hit in popularity? Doesn't make any sense at all.
As Adam noted in a post earlier today, Lieberman has confirmed that he opposed the Medicare buy-in compromise because Jacob Hacker and Rep. Anthony Weiner supported it.
That isn't surprising. Defeating liberals, in as public a way as possible, has long been a central pillar of "moderate" Democratic strategy. Blue Dogs, Conservadems, the DLC and others believe that they must do everything possible to distance themselves from liberal Democrats in order to be successful. If they are viewed as regular old Democrats, and not as a new wave of bi-partisan, moderate Democrat, then they honestly believe they are screwed. Lieberman is just an especially spiteful version of this.
Given this right-wing Democratic need to defeat liberals as publically as possible, aren't the calls from progressive organizations to defeat the bill actually the action progressives can take that is most likely to help pass the bill? And I am only being a little snarky. As Atrios wrote:
Since all the dirty hippies decided that the public option was what mattered, it was probably inevitable that it would go (I don't know this, I'm hopefully mostly kidding). Pissing off the hippies is what "moderates" do, and as most of them don't have a clue about policy anyway, if the hippies are for it then they know it must be bad.
Along those lines, dirty fucking hippies like digby shouldn't they think lowering the Medicare age is a good idea, because if so it won't happen.
That kind of honesty sure feels like a mistake now. Lieberman might have backstabbed everyone even if we didn't say we liked the compromise, but publically stating our support does not appear to have helped.
Don't you seriously wonder if publically opposing this bill is actually the best way for progressives to pass the bill? Or that supporting the bill now is the best way to defeat it? When one of your roles in the party ecosystem is to be publically humiliated, this sort of frustrated paranoia seems warranted. At all costs, the party must protect the wise, reasoned, bi-partisan, non-ideological centrists who helped bring on every clusterfuck we face as a nation, even if that means opposing the policies that would have prevented those clusterfucks just because those policies are supported by progressives. That certainly seems to be how Rahm Emanuel runs things, and really only marginally different than the way Emanuel's boss has been talking for years now.
But in the interview, Mr. Lieberman said that he grew apprehensive when a formal proposal began to take shape. He said he worried that the program would lead to financial trouble and contribute to the instability of the existing Medicare program.
And he said he was particularly troubled by the overly enthusiastic reaction to the proposal by some liberals, including Representative Anthony Weiner, Democrat of New York, who champions a fully government-run health care system.
"Congressman Weiner made a comment that Medicare-buy in is better than a public option, it's the beginning of a road to single-payer," Mr. Lieberman said. "Jacob Hacker, who's a Yale professor who is actually the man who created the public option, said, 'This is a dream. This is better than a public option. This is a giant step.'"
What pisses me off most about this is that other Senators, like Ben Nelson, do their shtick just so they can go home and say I got the best deal I could, I really stuck it to those liberals. Lieberman, who I have heard many rumors about him not running again in 2012, and wouldn't even be in electoral trouble if he did support the buy-in, and who has supported Medicare buy-in for years, does this because liberals like it too much. Perhaps Howard Fineman is right that he is doing this just to stick it to Markos and Firedoglake and the rest of us out here.
As an organizing discussion I'm sure this will start an interesting conversation over whether, when dealing with Joementum in the future, the Weiners and Hackers of the world should be lying in public and saying the compromise sucks just so he is tricked into being satisfied. On the other hand, the rest of us will then think it sucks too when it doesn't. Sigh.
I am a team player. I believe in compromise and negotiation, and have always been okay with taking half a loaf or even a quarter at times. I have never believed in making the perfect the enemy of the good. And as an aging diabetic, a small businessman with skyrocketing health care costs, and a veteran of the Clinton health care war room and 30 years of other health care fights, I have wanted a health care reform bill badly, worse than I have ever wanted any piece of legislation in my life.
But there does sometimes come a bridge too far.
When Joe Lieberman turned his back on a compromise that he has been strongly and publicly supporting for at least 9 years, and one that he signed off on in private last week, and added that he would not negotiate on anything, period, this Senate health care bill got too heavy to carry. When the entire progressive core of Senators folded up like a cheap suit in response, insult was piled on to injury.
I understand all the reasons the White House and Harry Reid don't want to go to reconciliation at this late date, and have been inclined to support them on that up until now. But at this point I think House progressives simply need to say hell no to this deal.If Lieberman was willing to negotiate at all, I would be inclined to try to negotiate in good faith, but with him saying taking it or leave it, I say progressives should leave it.
You know, Olympia Snowe has been saying we should just wait for another month or two, give ourselves all a little time to keep thinking and talking about this bill. It is an absurd position, since she has been thinking and talking about this bill for a year now. But I'm starting to agree with her. Maybe we need to take some extra time, slow the process down until the White House and the Senate are willing to take progressives' points of view into consideration. Along with getting rolled on the public option, this Senate bill is worse than the House bill on the Medicaid numbers, affordability, the anti-trust exemption for insurers, the financing (taxing middle class health care benefits rather than the wealthy), and the structure and rate of eligibility expansion for the exchanges. Perhaps if all or most of that were fixed, maybe then this bill would be more acceptable. But as it is, it is a very heavy load for progressives to stomach.
Look, as disappointing as this, there is still quite of good in the bill, too. It expands Medicaid coverage for people above the poverty line, expands S-CHIP coverage dramatically, still has some good tough insurance regulation and investments in other important health related programs. But progressives need to push back right now, and demand something better. There are two Houses of Congress and the House needs to assert itself right now. And I certainly hope that when all this gets done, Lieberman gets stripped of his committee assignments, and a hold is placed on every single thing he wants for the rest of his tenure in the Senate.
On the eve of what was thought to be, perhaps, a sign of progress in the six-decade long health care reform debate, joblessness mounts. Depression increases. The intensity of illness is on the rise. Few if any can afford to visit a doctor. People are unemployed, under-employed, and if an individual has an income, hours are reduced. There is barely enough to pay the most basic bills. let alone insurance premiums. Yet, staffers have been asked, no told, by business owners, workers must pay a larger portion of their health care coverage. Bosses bellow in unison; with profits down, certainly the corporations cannot continue to offer perks. Medical indemnities are a privilege, not a guarantee. If you feel ill, if you are injured, take two pills and call no one in the morning.
Do not dare telephone the Democrats. They have made their peace with the health care crisis. Republicans will not respond to the cries of a public, and Independents are, as you know independent! The decree; health care reform was dead on arrival.
The Huffington Post originally reported that Rahm Emanuel told Harry Reid to cave into Joe Lieberman's demands. TPMDC backed up the story, and went even further:
Then the aide provided more detail.
Emanuel didn't just leave it to Reid to find a solution. Emanuel specifically suggested Reid give Lieberman the concessions he seeks on issues like the Medicare buy-in and triggers.
"It was all about 'do what you've got to do to get it done. Drop whatever you've got to drop to get it done," the aide said. All of Emanuel's prescriptions, the source said, were aimed at appeasing Lieberman--not twisting his arm.
I contacted a Senate aide to further confirm the story. When I asked the aide if the Huffington Post and TPMDC stories were true, the aide responded "absolutely."
Further, the aide confirmed that Joe Lieberman is lying (I'm not exaggerating the language). Immediately after the Gang of Ten struck a deal on the public option, Harry Reid contacted Lieberman to hear his thoughts. Lieberman indicated that he was liking what he was seeing, and just wanted to wait for the CBO score. For him to change without the CBO score is mendacity, pure and simple.
Finally, the aide also said that this is still about saving lives. We keep talking about cost, but this bill still saves lives. For all of its tremendous disappointments, the aide kept emphasizing that the bill saves lives. This shows, if nothing else, that Alan Grayson's messaging appears to have won the day for Democrats.
I don't really know what to think right now. Too angry to think straight. After a very long campaign, we had appeared to secure a deal that I thought was acceptable. We promptly get stabbed in the back by none other than Joe Lieberman (and the CBO, btw), and then just as promptly told by the White House to accept it all.
The cloture motion on health care reform will be filed either tomorrow or Thursday, setting up a vote two days later. With a very crowded legislative schedule, and demands from the White Hosue to pass the bill in 2009, there really isn't any other option. My bet is that Olympia Snowe will probably vote for the bill now, as will Roland Burris. All of this makes even the unlikely prospect of a no vote from Bernie Sanders on the cloture motion irrelevant. Barring further mendacity, this bill now has sixty votes.
The next step will be the conference committee, unless the White House demands that also gets thrown in the trash to appease Lieberman, or Nelson, or whoever.
A new report from the Huffington Post claims that Rahm Emanuel told Harry Reid to cave to Lieberman's double-cross, and just pass anything:
Rahm Emanuel visited Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in his Capitol office on Sunday evening and personally urged him to cut a deal with recalcitrant Sen. Joe Lieberman, two Democratic sources familiar with the situation said.
Some readers may not accept reports from anonymous sources. However, consider that if any Senate aide put their name to a report about Rahm s/he would be fired instantly and faced an immediate end to his or her career. The White House deny the report anyway, the vast majority of die-hard Obama administrations believe the White House anyway, and the aide would have been reviled by huge numbers of rank and file Dems. In short, if an aide had been willing to attach his or her name to the report, it wouldn't have changed anything, except ruining the aide's life.
Further, it fits into a broader pattern of Rahm Emanuel protecting conservative Democrats in Congress at all costs. For example, it was Rahm Emanuel who argued against more strident tactics on ending the Iraq war, because he thought it would hurt conservative Dems. It was Rahm Emanuel who organized freshmen Dems to vote against their own caucus on motions to recommit, to try and protect conservative Dems from Republican attack ads. It was Rahm Emanuel that conservative Democrats worried about leaving the House, as they publicly whined about a more progressive House leadership. It was Rahm Emanuel who castigated progressive groups for attacking conservative Democrats. It is Rahm Emanuel that conservative Democrats still long for, whenever they complain about Nancy Pelosi. Above all else, Emanuel has always been about defending conservative Democrats no matter the consequences to the rest of the party. Unsurprisingly, the conservative Dems in congress love him for that.
Last year, The White House told Democratic Senators to cave and allow Lieberman to keep his chairmanship. They dutifully complied. Now, the White House is again telling the entire caucus to cave to Lieberman, and once again it looks like they are going to comply:
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) just walked walked into the Democrats all-important caucus meeting tonight sounding defeatest about the chance that a Medicare buy-in or public option trigger will survive Sen. Joe Lieberman's (I-CT) decision to block the compromises this weekend.
Asked by a reporter if the Medicare buy-in will be pulled out, Harkin said "looks that way," before praising a Democratic health care bill without the two public option compromises.
Earlier today, Matthew Yglesias argued that Matt Taibbi's criticism of the Obama administration on financial policy is off because Congress largely has purview over that policy. Instead, the Obama administration should be criticized for those areas of policy over which it has more direct control:
If you want to complain about the Obama administration, you should complain about their conduct of issues they actually have control over. Foreign policy and the war in Afghanistan, for example.
However, these two Lieberman incidents show that the Obama administration does, in fact, have a lot of influence over many Democrats in Congress on virtually all issues.
By picking Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff, President Obama immediately signaled that the White House was not going to use this influence against conservative Democrats in Congress who sought to water down the Democratic agenda. Then again, as I pointed out last night, Democrats in Congress also don't seem interested in putting pressure on the more conservative members of their caucus who seek to water down the Democratic agenda. At the highest levels of the Democratic Party, no pressure ever seems to be applied to conservative Democrats who seek to water down the Democratic agenda.
Whatever pressure is applied is going to have to come from the grassroots. However, there are limits to what pressure we can apply on our own, as Matt Stoller articled in his farewell post on Open Left. Clearly, one year later, we still have a long way to go on solving the Rootsgap. Despite everything that has happened, we are still in a very difficult environment for passing progressive legislation.
Here is a video of Lieberman supporting a Medicare-buy in only three months ago:
Greg Sargent has a transcript:
"My proposals were to basically expand the existing successful public health insurance programs Medicare and Medicaid...
"When it came to Medicare I was very focused on a group - post 50, maybe more like post 55. People who have retired early, or unfortunately have been laid off early, who lose their health insurance and they're too young to qualify for Medicare.
"What I was proposing was that they have an option to buy into Medicare early and again on the premise that that would be less expensive than the enormous cost. If you're 55 or 60 and you're without health insurance and you go in to try to buy it, because you're older ... you're rated as a risk so you pay a lot of money."
For Lieberman's part, he is calling people who claim he has flip-flopped on this issue cowards:
"Contrary to the claims of anonymous aides, Senator Lieberman told Reid on Friday that he had problems with the Medicare provision," Lieberman spokesman Marshall Wittman said in a statement.
"This position was also told to negotiators earlier in the week. Consequently, Senator Lieberman's position came as no surprise to the Democratic leadership. Any contrary charge by aides who cowardly seek to hide under the cloak of anonymity is false and self-serving," he added.
This Lieberman statement was specifically in response to anonymous Senate aides who had claimed Lieberman told Harry Reid that he was supportive of a Medicare buy-in. Given that Lieberman told the public that he was supportive of the Medicare buy-in only three months ago, it is pretty easy to see who is lying on this one.
Meanwhile, Politico reports that the White House is telling Reid to cave to Lieberman. However, the White House is telling Greg Sargent that is not true.
There is rightly a lot of focus on how Joe Lieberman is acting in bad faith on the health care bill. He apparently had told Reid he was open to the deal, and he supported a Medicare buy-in only three months ago. However, it is wroth noting that he isn't the only one. Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, and Ben Nelson haven't exactly been consistent and forthcoming in their dealings on the public option, either.
Mary Landrieu. Landrieu has said she is a no vote on the public option for for quite some time, instead demanding a trigger:
Count Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) as a "no" vote on the public insurance option.
"I am not open to a public option, however I will remain open to a compromise - a full compromise," Landrieu told reporters Tuesday. "A public option is not something I support i don't think its the right way to go."
However, not long before she said that she opposed the public option, she said that she supported it. Landrieu signed a statement with Health Care for America Now, celaring the following:
Our government's responsibility is to guarantee quality affordable health care for everyone in America and it must play a central role in regulating, financing, and providing health coverage by establishing...
A choice of a private insurance plan, including keeping the insurance you have if you like it, or a public insurance plan without a private insurer middleman that guarantees affordable coverage.
But hey, what do promises like that mean to Mary Landrieu, given that she is not up for re-election again until 2014?
Blanche Lincoln. On November 21st, Blanche Lincoln declared on the floor of the Senate that she would filibuster any bill with a public option:
I have already alerted the Leader, and I am promising my colleagues that I am prepared to vote against moving to the next stage of consideration as long as a government-run public option is included.
Another with Landrieu, Lincoln also signed the HCAN statement supporting a public option.
Ben Nelson: Last week, Ben Nelson was one of the ten Senate Democrats tasked by Harry Reid with developing a compromise solution on the public option. Their eventual deal included a Medicare buy-in.
And yet, as Greg Sargent notes, Ben Nelson is still raising red flags about the Medicare buy-in on national television:
"I am concerned that it's the forerunner of single payer, the ultimate single-payer plan, maybe even more directly than the public option," he said.
This is even though Nelson himself was one of a very small group of Senators who actually developed the Medicare buy-in compromise. Nice. If you are going to strike a deal, then defend that deal.
All four of these Senators have acted on bad faith in the public option. If they were consistent, at the very least we should have 60 votes for a Medicare buy-in for the Senate bill. They all recently supported such a buy-in.
The health care debate has officially arrived at its most critical juncture. Joe Lieberman’s “I will never compromise in any way whatsoever that could hurt Aetna” tantrum, which proves definitively once and for all that he needs to be stripped of his committee chairmanship and targeted for defeat by Democrats in 2012, has brought progressive groups, activists, and members of congress to the brink of a decision we fervently hoped we could avoid making. Absent some miracle of policy creativity or leg breaking persuasion, progressives are going to have to make a choice: do we give in on the public option but then use our leverage to demand the most progressive possible legislation on everything else in this bill, or do we say no to the whole bill, forcing Democrats to start over or give up entirely on passing the health bill? (Reconciliation in my mind is a form of starting over given how complicated it is procedurally, and given that the bill would probably have to broken up into at least two different pieces of legislation to pass it.)
First though, other than thoroughly denouncing Lieberman for the arrogant, insurance flack that he is, I think progressives should hold our powder and wait to see the next maneuver by Reid and the other Democrats. There is still a chance that a creative new approach on the policy side, combined with extreme pressure on Lieberman from the political side, might resolve this situation in some manner progressives could possibly live with. I think we should save our flamethrowers and grenades for a day or two to see what happens next, because I know Reid and others inside are continuing to work this thing internally. And with the news this weekend catching everyone by surprise (Lieberman had actually signed off on the compromise before he decided to oppose it), I honestly don’t think we have enough information to make a decision yet anyway. Given that we literally don’t know what bill Reid is intending to introduce yet, it’s hard to know whether to oppose it or support it.
So I’m holding my powder for the moment. Reid came through on putting the public option in the original merged bill, and he came through in delivering 60 votes for the motion to proceed with debate, so I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for a while longer. But I go back to what I have written before, and what those of us at Openleft have demanded in our petition to Reid: one way or another, you have to deliver. Get it done, whatever it takes, Senator: breaking Lieberman’s legs (metaphorically, at least), reconciliation, the nuclear option, they all work for me. Whatever it takes. In terms of that ultimate decision I discussed at the beginning, while I’m not ready to make that decision, I know what my inclination is: stand up to Lieberman. One man’s tantrum should not determine the fate of the entire Democratic party’s policy decisions. While I have been more understanding than many progressives of why Reid doesn’t want to go the reconciliation route, for example, I think we should be ready to do it if that is what it comes down to. It would be problematic on many different levels, but whatever we have to do to get a good bill should be done. Whatever it takes.
"All politics is local," Tip O'Neill used to say. This is another way to say that politics is about people, first and foremost.
By now, you know that Joe Lieberman has torpedoed the latest health care compromise in the Senate. There should be no surprise or shock about this development. Nate Silver has a typically good post about this, which I'm excerpting here:
So what do Lieberman and Nelson want? I think they've actually made this rather clear. They want liberals to give up the public option and not get anything for it. If liberals do, they'll probably get a health care bill. If they don't, they probably won't.
...But of course, politics isn't purely objective: it's a people business, and now you have some people (liberals) who are going to lose a lot more face than they would have by making the same capitulation a week ago, and moreover will have to lose it to Joe Lieberman, a person whom they singularly detest. (emphasis in the original)
To no one's surprise (but certainly to my disappointment), Joe Lieberman has now told Harry Reid that he will filibuster any health care bill with a Medicare buy-in or a public option (emphasis mine):
Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) informed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in a face-to-face meeting on Sunday that he will vote against a health care bill that includes a public option or a provision that would expand Medicare, a Democrat Senate aide tells the Huffington Post.
The two Senators had a discussion in Reid's office shortly after Lieberman appeared on CBS's Face the Nation Sunday morning. The Connecticut Independent discussed with Reid some of his concerns about the legislation, elaborating on issues he had raised during the show. According to the source, who was briefed on the exchange, Lieberman punctuated the discussion by telling the majority leader directly that he would vote against the bill if the Medicare buy-in and public option provisions remained in it. Roll Call reports that Lieberman said he would also support a Republican filibuster of legislation that included these provisions.
This is a reversal of Lieberman's position when the deal was struck:
A Senate Democratic aide, flummoxed by Mr. Lieberman's stance, said, "It was a total flip-flop and leaves us in a predicament as to what to do."
Lieberman flip-flipped because he can. No matter what Lieberman does, the majority of the Democratic Senate caucus won't do anything about it. Here is a quick review:
When Lieberman blows up a hard-fought deal on health care legislation, the Senate Democratic leadership immediately declares that circumventing Lieberman through reconciliation is still not on the table:
The final path would be to try the reconciliation, the parliamentary procedure that would allow Democrats to pass chunks of health care reform by a simple up or down vote. There are a host of hurdles that come with going down this route, including questions over what, exactly, could be passed. And at this point both the White House and Reid's office seem hesitant to use the procedural tool, even after Lieberman's latest round of opposition.
"It is not on the table at this point," the source said. "We are still trying to go through regular order."
If it is not on the table at this point, it is hard to imagine when it ever will be.
Nothing Lieberman is doing would be possible without the ongoing support of the majority of the Democratic caucus. If Democratic Senators wanted to punish Lieberman for his consistent transgressions against the party, they could. If Democrats wanted to use reconciliation, and just circumvent him altogether, they could do that to. But they are not going to do either.
As such, Lieberman is simply taking the power that is being handed to him by the rest of the caucus. Since he knows that Senate Democrats won't ever punish him, and won't ever circumvent him, he now has free reign to dictate whatever legislation he wants, get tons of face time with the White House and Senate leadership, regularly be the top story on news outlets around the country, receive millions in campaign contributions, and appease his Republican base (at this point, most of Lieberman's supporters are Republicans). It is a great deal for Lieberman, and it would not be possible without the ongoing consent of the majority of the Democratic Senate caucus.
Since we have already defeated Lieberman in a Democratic primary, there is nothing more severe we can do as progressive activists to directly threaten Lieberman. What we need to start doing is taking action against the Democrats who enable Lieberman and his ilk. If other Senate Democrats are not going to do anything about Lieberman taking control of the entire caucus, then really, what is the difference between those other Senators and Joe Lieberman?
Never thought I would echo George W. Bush, but we have reached the point where it is time to stop differentiating between problematic Senators like Joseph Lieberman and the other Senate Democrats who enable them.
When thinking about how to make the health care bill better, at this point there are two main questions:
What can be done to make either Lieberman or Snowe support better legislation? At this point, it appears we only need either Lieberman or Snowe to achieve a health care deal with vast Medicaid expansion, smallish Medicare buy-in, moderate subsidies, and a new regulatory regime. Keeping in mind that there are many fights left to be had, and Mike's warning that no deal is final until it lands on the President's desk, for all intents and purposes only one more vote is needed to pass this bill. That vote, unfortunately, needs to come from either Lieberman or Snowe.
OR, if that fails
What can be done to circumvent the need for 60 votes altogether? If the current framework of the Senate compromise is not good enough for you, and you would only be willing to support something better, then you need to figure out a way to circumvent the need for 60 votes altogether. A 51-vote Senate would produce a bill comparable, and perhaps even better, than the one produced by the House. Achieving a 51-vote Senate requires either reconciliation or nuking the filibuster entirely.
Of all the critics of the various campaigns for better health legislation, they don't advance the campaign unless they offer solutions for the current predicament we face. We can save the broader post-mortems on how the fight could have been waged differently from the beginning for later. Right now, we need to deal with the problem at hand, rather than look into the past.
I personally don't have particularly comprehensive answers to either of those two questions. In the extended entry, I describe what strategies I can think of for getting to 51 votes, and for pressuring Lieberman and Snowe. Hopefully, the discussion that ensues can lead to something more comprehensive.
Much of the debate on health-care reform has concerned the creation of the "public option," which is limited in scope and would not take effect until 2013, and the amendment demanded by Catholic bishops that would expand the prohibition on federal funds paying for abortions to also prohibit subsidized private insurance coverage for abortions. But HR 3962 (the Affordable Health Care for America Act), as it emerged from the House on Nov. 7, would provide important help for middle-income families immediately. Effective Jan. 1, it would stop insurance companies from arbitrarily rescinding coverage when patients file claims. It strips the health insurance industry of its exemption from antitrust laws covering market allocation, price fixing and bid rigging. And the bill would end lifetime caps on how much insurers will cover, which is a leading cause of family bankruptcy
Of all the various blocs and gangs that have been formed in Congress this year, Senators Bayh, Conrad, Feinstein, Lieberman and Warner have managed to form the most regressive one yet. Currently, these five Democrats are demanding that Speaker Pelosi hand over all relevant Congressional power to an independent commission that will be allowed to slash and partially privatize Social Security and Medicare, or else they will allow the United States to default on its debt.
I am not kidding:
Senators from both parties on Tuesday put new pressure on Speaker Nancy Pelosi to turn the power to trim entitlement benefits over to an independent commission.
Seven members of the Senate Budget Committee threatened during a Tuesday hearing to withhold their support for critical legislation to raise the debt ceiling if the bill calling for the creation of a bipartisan fiscal reform commission were not attached. (...)
(...) Congress is under pressure to raise the cap on what the federal government can borrow by mid-December. If the debt ceiling is not raised above its current $12.1 trillion mark by then, the government will exceed its borrowing limits and will be forced to default on the debt. Economists have warned that the inevitable result would be a lowering of the U.S. credit rating, triggering substantial increases in the interest rates the government is already paying.
But before Tuesday's hearing was over, Sens. Conrad, Gregg, Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), George Voinovich (R-Ohio) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) publicly vowed to vote against raising the debt ceiling if a budget reform commission bill doesn't come along with it.
The Republican threats don't matter, since only Democrats are needed to pass the bill.
Let's review the threat that these five Democrats are making:
They will allow the United States to default on its debt, which will vastly increase the overall amount we have to pay on our debt
UNLESS
Speaker Nancy Pelosi turns over Congressional power on Social Security and Medicare to an unelected commission that will almost certainly propose deep cuts in Social Security and Medicare entitlements. Keep in mind that if deep cuts to Social Security and Medicare pass under a Democratic trifecta, the party would be doomed at the ballot box for years to come.
This is completely insane, and there is no choice but to call this bluff.
Let's see these five Democratic Senators explain to the entire nation why they allowed the country to default on its debt. No matter how safe their seats appear to be, no Senator is going to win reelection after making the entire country default on its debt Their rationale does not matter. Being blamed for making the country default on its debt-especially after all five of these Democrats voted in favor of the Wall Street bailout and are demanding that Social Security and Medicare be cut-will be the effective end of their political careers.
Go for it, guys. Form your national suicide pact. Tell the country that you are demanding deep cuts in Social Security and Medicare, or else you will personally cause the United States debt to double. Let's see how well that message plays on the air.
To chime in on Chris' ambitious proposal to kill the filibuster, I'd like to add some context, and a possible starting list for the 7 Democratic Senators that Chris argues would be needed to effect its demise.
When Lieberman announced he would filibuster the public option, it soon emerged that Lieberman had once crusaded against the filibuster, even going so far as to make an effort to significantly limit it in 1995.
Lieberman (and Harkin) introduced a measure that would effectively end the ability of minority to indefinitely delay action, by providing for a series of decreasing thresholds needed to invoke cloture, until eventually a majority (of Senators "chosen and sworn", not present) could invoke cloture. While it was not total destruction of the filibuster, it was the end of the ability of 41 Senators to kill major legislative priorities of the majority.
The amendment was introduced at the start of the 104th Senate, just after Gingrich and Lott swept into power in the 1994 blowout. His timing suggests he agreed with Chris' theory that a Republican Senate majority may be necessary to do this. After all, the Republicans had just taken over the Senate for the first time since 1986, and might be tempted to collude with a few Democrats in giving themselves the power to rule by simple majority. As it turned out, in 1995 they were not prepared to do so. A few days later the amendment was "tabled" (killed) in a roll call vote of 76-19. The 19 who voted "nay" on this motion are the most likely candidates for Senators who would be most open to eliminating the filibuster. Of them, the following Senators are still in office:
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Feingold (D-WI)
Harkin (D-IA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Lautenburg (D-NJ)
Lieberman (I-CT)
Pryor (D-AR)Update: This was the father of the current Sen. Pryor.
Additionally, Leahy (D-VT) and Rockefeller (D-WV) didn't vote on the measure and are listed as "not present."
Ruling out Lieberman of course, that leaves 7 living Democratic Senators who have actually voted to significantly damage the power of the filibuster. Pryor, as a member of the "Gang of 14" (along with Lieberman) in 2005 is probably not going to go along, but if Leahy or Rockefeller joins, and the other 6 still feel the same, Chris may already have his Gang of 7.
Inside, the text of the Lieberman/Harkin amendment, and Lieberman's complete speech that day. I rather hope if Chris' plan comes to pass, another Senator rises to support it and reads it verbatim just to spite Holy Joe.
The House released a final version of the health reform bill. It has a public option all right, but not the robust version progressives were hoping for. The public plan would only cover 2% of Americans and premiums will cost more than anticipated.
Meanwhile, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) continued to threaten to join a Republican filibuster of a health care bill with a public option. A lot of people still think he's bluffing. Realistically, the public option probably faces more serious threats from inside the Democratic caucus. It's been whittled down at an alarming rate.
Nick Baumann of Mother Jones asks "What now for the public option?"
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that public option premiums will actually be higher than the premiums for private plans on the health insurance exchanges. That doesn't mean it's going to cost the government more money-the public option is paid for by premiums, not taxes; it actually cuts the deficit. But it will be more expensive than some private plans. Wasn't part of the point of the public option to prove that a government-run program could compete successfully with privately-run plans? Well, yes, but here's the problem: that was all based on the idea that the public option would pay health care providers at Medicare rates.
Baumann predicts that insurers will do everything they can to drive the sick people off private insurance onto the public plan, a phenomenon known as "adverse selection." Hopefully some of the proposed insurance reforms will curb their worst excesses, like kicking people off the rolls for misspelling their preexisting conditions on their application forms.
Mike Lillis of the Washington Independent reports that the House health care bill would eliminate the popular and cost-effective Child Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and shift its low-income beneficiaries onto private health insurance exchanges.
This looks like a stealthy preemptive strike on the prospect of single-payer health care. CHIP is a single-payer program that progressive health policy types envisioned as a prototype for a future single-payer system for all kids, or even eventually for everyone.
As Lillis points out, abolishing CHIP is also a gimme to insurance companies. Generally speaking, kids are cheap to insure because they're healthy. Private insurers would love to stock their risk pools with kids on federal subsidies. It's like getting paid to stock your pond with delicious trout. We worry about adverse selection making the public plan more expensive. Well, CHIP is the reverse of that because this public program is keeping the good risks for itself.
Suzy Khimm argues at TAPPED that killing CHIP could be a good thing, provided the kids continue to enjoy the same legal protections that they get under the public plan. Khimm suggests that moving low-risk kids into insurance exchanges could help keep costs down for everyone by making the risk pool healthier on average:
That being said, if CHIP's dismantling ended up moving more folks into the health-insurance exchange, it wouldn't simply be a boon for "the insurance lobby and moderate Democrats." It could strengthen one of the most fundamental parts of the Democratic reform package -- a robust insurance exchange with a pool of participants that's large enough to drive down costs precisely because insurance companies have an incentive to jump in and compete for customers. Moreover, folding CHIP into the exchange would add a younger, healthier pool of participants to the exchange, offsetting its potential of becoming a dumping ground for the sick and elderly. Finally, CHIP has always suffered from under enrollment -- about 6 million children aren't insured in the program who should be -- and by bringing whole families in under the same plan, more children will be covered.
That's a nice idea, but it seems foolish to scrap one a popular and successful social program in favor of an untested insurance exchange system.
The frustrating thing about so-called health care reform is that legislators don't really want to change the system. They want to make the system work better while catering to all the established interests that made it suck in the first place.
Politicians aren't the only ones to balk at fundamental change. The Real News Network interviews Sam Gindin (video below), a former assistant to the Canadian Auto Workers Union, now a professor at York University. Gindin says that, over the years, labor conceded too much on health care and thereby failed to reestablish itself as a leading force for progressive change in the United States. Helping elect Barack Obama was a step in the right direction for labor, he maintains, but it's not nearly enough.
As John Nichols of the Nation put it, when the House finally wrote the bill, the compromise was even more compromised than expected.
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.
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.
Progressives rejoiced when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced this week that the final Senate health care bill would include a public option. The announcement was a major victory for left-wing Democrats.
Better yet, it would be a public option without a trigger. Earlier proposals called for a triggered public option which would only take effect if private insurers failed to bring down costs on their own. Under the opt-out compromise, the public option would come on line automatically (albeit not until 2013), but states would later have the option of quitting.
The jubilation was short-lived. Alex Koppelman of Salon explains:
Progressives didn't even get 24 hours to celebrate the victory they won in getting Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to include a version of the public option in his health care reform bill. The celebration was cut off Tuesday afternoon with the news that Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., will vote with Senate Republicans to filibuster the legislation.
The Democrats have 60 Senate votes. If they all vote for cloture, a procedural motion to stop debate, the Republicans can't filibuster the bill. The Senators who vote for cloture can still vote against the bill. Reid's strategy for passing the bill was to get all Democrats to vote for cloture and let them vote their conscience on the actual bill. Even without Lieberman, Democrats have the votes to pass the bill by majority vote if they can avoid a filibuster.
Health care is the most important domestic policy initiative of the Obama administration. Would Joe Lieberman really torpedo reform? The Senate leadership thinks Reid is bluffing, according to Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly.
I understand the argument. Lieberman loves attention and power. By threatening to join the Republican filibuster, he gets both-Democrats have to scramble to make him happy, since there's no margin for error in putting together 60 votes. Lieberman gets to feel very important for the next several weeks by making this threat less than 24 hours after Harry Reid stated his intentions, but that doesn't necessarily mean he wants to be known forever as The Senator Who Killed Health Care Reform.
I find it very easy to believe, however, that Lieberman is capable of doing just that. He left himself some wiggle room, but not when it comes to the public option-he's against it, no matter what, even with all of the compromises thrown in.
In other words, if this is all a ploy for leverage, why would Lieberman open by swearing that he won't support a bill with a public option? You'd think he'd just say he was keeping his options open and force Reid to make him a counter-offer. Reid has already decided that the public option is politically non-negotiable. He's afraid that the base won't come out for the 2012 elections if they don't get what they want. Benen speculates that Lieberman wants to be the Senator Who Killed Health Care because he wants to drum up massive Republican support for his 2012 reelection bid. On this theory, Lieberman is joining Rep. Joe "You Lie!" Wilson (R-SC) and Balloon Dad in the quest to make bank on ridiculous publicity stunts.
Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) says that she will side with the Republicans to filibuster the bill "if she has to," as Evan McMorris-Santoro reports for TPM. Snowe was the only Republican to vote for the Finance Committee's health care bill.
Reid must walk a fine line. The administration really can't afford to alienate organized labor before the 2012 elections. Newly elected AFL-CIO President Ricahrd Trumka continues to push for his three core demands for health care reform: a public option, a mechanism to make employers pay their fair share, and no taxes on health care benefits. Last week, AFSCME President Gerald McEntee said that his union would oppose legislation that taxed benefits, but Trumka hasn't gone that far, as David Moberg reports at Working In These Times.
Finally, in other health-related news, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the division of the Labor Department that oversees workplace safety, has issued a sweeping new report condemning Nevada's state-level OSHA program. As I report for Working in These Times, the investigators found that NOSHA inspectors were being pressured by their superiors to write up employers on lesser charges, even when their repeat offenses killed workers.
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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