E. J. Dionne has an interesting piece on how the dynamics of the Senate may doom health care reform:
I’m told that Grassley, under immense pressure from Republican colleagues not to deal at all, has informed Baucus that he cannot sign on to a bill if it is supported by only one other Republican, the sensible Olympia Snowe of Maine. Grassley needs more cover from more conservative colleagues.
This creates a terrible dynamic in which Baucus is pushed toward one concession after another. It’s a setup for a sellout. And the compromise Baucus is likely to produce cannot be the final word.
This makes it sound like Democrats only need one more vote to get a bill through. Here’s my question: how would the seating of Franken affect this? Does anyone have a reasonable headcount for how many votes a reasonable bill might get? Is it the entire Democratic caucus save Nelson and Lincoln? And how far gone are Nelson and Lincoln?
And another question: are private insurers especially opposed to combining a public option with a tax on employer-provided health care subsidies? It seems logical that they would be, but I haven’t heard this, only that they are opposed to the public option.
Derelict
Sad to say, but I think we’ll have to get to the point where 60% or more of the population has no health insurance before our “leaders” start to consider actually doing something.
Meanwhile, I’m sure that they can all put their heads together and, under the inspired leadership of Republicans and centrist Democrats, figure out a method to funnel untold trillions of dollars to the health-insurance industry. After all, profit growth of less than 20% per year is simply unacceptable!
Englischlehrer
The democrats keep trying to negotiate in good faith with repubelickcunts because they know they have to co-exist in Congress and each time so far it appears they have negotiated and then gotten no votes.
What about an amendment that says that if you add an amendment or pork project onto a bill and then vote AGAINST it, your amendment or pork project is automatically rejected from the final product?
The Repubes can keep on whittling down this legislation and vote no for it, then have a press conference and say how bad this bill is, then have a smaller press conference saying how he has worked to bring some projects to his districts and then another press conference reminding people how things are crappy because of Democrats’ spending.
This whole process is so demoralizing because the democrats look weak and are unable to pass their legislation because of the other side of the aisle and 3-5 Democrats who preen for attention.
Not a good way to spend my monday afternoon, pissed off about this.
KCinDC
I don’t understand why Grassley is important. If Snowe is voting with us, can’t we get Collins as well? Or failing that, maybe Lugar or Voinovich? Grassley is somewhat more conservative than all those in his voting record, so why try to get him?
TR
OT, but Morning Joe is discussing whether or not politicians should resign when they have affairs, and they’ve invited on Rudy Guiliani to pass judgment on the issue. No mention of his own extensive experience with infidelities — just his perspective as “America’s Mayor™.”
Fucking morons.
geg6
Well, Doug, surely you must see that senators must, must, must get along at all times. There must never be any sort adversarial actions becuase the entirety of the public good rests on the collegiality of those serving in the Senate. No one must stand up and separate themselves from the crowd or the nation will fall to our enemies. All those with no health insurance or those who go bankrupt or who die because of the decisions of insurance companies are simply not important when the real issue facing the nation is whether or not Chuck Grassley’s ass is covered.
garyb50
This shit is making me sick & I don’t have health insurance.
Napoleon
Baucus doesn’t need another vote. This is pure Broderism at work. Baucus is a complete knob and needs to get the f— out of the way of actual reform.
4tehlulz
@KCinDC: Isn’t this is about getting out of committee? with Lincoln and Nelson likely voting against, Grassley’s the only other Republican (other than Snowe) that might vote for a health care bill.
burnspbesq
@KCinDC:
Grassley is the ranking Republican on Senate Finance, the committee with jurisdiction over tax legislation. Since paying for a public option is a matter of some importance, Grassley’s influence on the shape of any Senate bill goes beyond his one vote.
DougJ
Thanks.
Napoleon
@4tehlulz:
I think it is.
burnspbesq
IMHO, this is where the Dems should draw the line in the sand. Rather than caving in to the mere threat of a filibuster, force the Republicans to actually do it. Then the whole country (at least the parts of it that have access to C-SPAN) can see just how silly the Republicans’ arguments are.
If Ted Kennedy weren’t sick, there would be a good bill on Obama’s desk already. Like him or not, Ted knew how to make the process go.
Jennifer
Blanche Lincoln is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Arkansas Blue Cross, which in our “private market-based” healthcare system insures 75% of those insured in the state of Arkansas (keep in mind that it’s one of the poorest states with one of the highest rates of uninsured). As such, she fully understands the importance of protecting CEO salaries and shareholder profits.
The Moar You Know
Franken’s not going to be seated this year. Pawlenty and Coleman are both getting a lot of money to insure that “the fight goes on”.
Also, the Minnesota Supremes are running out the clock to ensure that when it goes to the US Supreme Court, Souter won’t be there and either:
A. the case waits for the next Supreme Court session, next year, or,
B. the case goes to an emergency session which leads to a 4-4 tie, and a tie is a win for the Republicans
Then there’s Harry “no balls” Reid, the one man who could end this charade right now, and he won’t do it. Hell, I think Reid would refuse to do it even if he had a 70-seat majority.
No Franken until 2010. If I’m wrong about this I will eat one of my own hats.
Zach
Reinforcing something said earlier — health care is being done in budget reconciliation (mostly) – getting 50 votes won’t be as hard as getting a good bill out of committees some of whose members are both vulnerable and heavily funded by the industry.
The solution, to me, is for Obama to withhold the Obama for America voter file from Nelson and Lincoln (and Bayh, possibly) if they don’t play ball. That’s probably worth more than all of their health care donations combined.
Little Dreamer
What I want to know is why any bills are even being discussed and voted on when Minnesota has been missing a senator for months now? The Constitution states that Minnesota will have two senators in Congress. Why is Congress sitting without two senators for Minnesota?
MikeJ
Not if the MN Supremes rule against Coleman. I would assume a 4-4 tie at the USSC would uphold the lower court rather than overturning.
kay
@The Moar You Know:
You really think that? That the state supreme court is “running out the clock” ?
Christ. I hadn’t even considered that. They’re all crooks.
Zach
@The Moar You Know: I’m totally confident the USSC won’t stick their neck out on this at all. If Pawlenty doesn’t certify immediately after the MN Supreme decision, they’ll immediately order him to do so and the USSC will likely refuse to intervene. Coleman and Pawlenty might be pulling down some cash now, but it’s likely not enough to be worth being in contempt of the MN Supreme Court.
ronin122
@The Moar You Know: Actually, Pawlenty apparently came out and said that he’ll sign the stupid election certificate or whatever it is when the MN SC makes their ruling. Whether he keeps to that promise is anyone’s guess but presuming that holding out beyond that point would mean he hurts his future electoral opportunities in the state he probably wouldn’t be that much of a dick. After all, why take the heat when Coleman is likely more than happy to be king penis for everyone?
Woody
Baucus: (Tar-baby-style) “Oh, PLEASE, PLEASE Pretty PLEASE!
DON’T make me sell-out a plan I detest and want to scuttle for the benefit of my huge contributors but can’t appear to too deeply desire to fail abjectly in order to fool the proles.
O, PLEASE????
molly
According to the Constitution (Article 1, section 7), it takes a simple majority in both houses to pass a bill. That is still 51, regardless of how many cling to the recent “amending without any public vote” in the Senate which now somehow “requires” 60 votes to do anything. If we follow the Constitution, Al Franken isn’t necessary at all. At some point, someone has to take a stand and get back to the way things worked in the Senate for over 200 years or the Senate will become completely unable to do anything.
Davis X. Machina
No. She’s running in 2012. Seriously. She needs to fade right on this or she’s got no shot.
75% of the health insurance in ME is written by a single company. Collins is going to preserve that monopoly.
dmsilev
@The Moar You Know:
That won’t happen. Souter’s resignation is effective on the date at which his successor is sworn in. If the GOP Senate roadblockers somehow manage to delay Sotomayor’s confirmation beyond the start of the next court session (October, I think), Souter will just stay on a bit longer.
-dms
Tsulagi
There’s that. Also the question of how would the Democrats testicles descending affect it.
gex
@ronin122: Pawlenty’s statement had a hedge in it though – he won’t disobey the Court’s orders. I’m not sure what this means if the MNSC doesn’t specifically order him to sign the certificate.
gex
@molly: Indeed. Force them to actually filibuster. So much Republican obstructionism gets obscured by not actually making them filibuster. Even the Villagers would have to acknowledge the GOP filibustering the health care bill. But when Dems just take stuff off the table because they don’t have 60 votes it gets reported as the Democrats failing to take action on an important issue.
No one can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory like Democrats.
b-psycho
Waitaminute…so Grassley WANTS to vote for it, but he can’t if it ends up with him & Snowe being the only GOP supporters?
Regardless of the +/- on the bill itself, doesn’t that kinda collapse the point of electing Senators at all? I mean damn, their job is to represent their state, if their state leans in favor of something then unless the sheer weight of their convictions makes it impossible for them to approve, they should vote Yea. This sounds more like he’s angling for approval from people outside his state.
To add my two cents: in principle, I’d rather that the existing medical cartels just be broken up. That’s not going to happen though, I know that. The accepted “solution” has gravitated towards this government-option thing, and whatever. Medicaid covers the poor, Medicare covers the old, if there’s going to be something covering everyone else then making it an option makes sense, fine, I don’t care. But this idea of taxing employer plans is the kind of thing that bumps up against a wall of precedent. The entire employer based system was a byproduct of a loophole within wage controls from forever ago, but people are so used to that not being taxed that it strikes me as dirty to do so now. Besides, health insurance isn’t really convertible to disposable income, since people are willing to accept less money to take a job that comes with the benefit vs one without it.
Now, if it were that employer benefits would be taxed, but group plans OUTSIDE of employment were allowed & not taxed, that I could get behind. Anything to break the encouraged corporate dependency crap that led to this in the first place.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
We are going to get the health care we deserve, count on it. If you supported the recent passage of SCHIP, taxing health benefits and using the money to insure the uninsured is just an extension of that. Unlike SCHIP, taxing everyone who has health care to provide coverage to those who don’t have it sounds a bit more fair than only taxing smokers to pay for health care for uninsured kids.
Eh? :)
Let the howling commence. ;)
gex
@b-psycho: You know the Republican motto:
CountryParty First!gex
@b-psycho: By the way, I get taxed on my girlfriend’s health insurance. No need to pretend like this is something that just isn’t done and goes against precedent.
owenz
Karl rove is a terrible human being. That said, the man knew how to handle the senate. He proposed the bill he wanted, looked democrats in the eye, and said, “go ahead, vote against it.”
No bill at all is better than a bad bill, but obama is terrified of “losing” a fight in the senate. I don’t know why. Even ben nelson is too scared to be the lone democrat voting with republicans against the president’s bill.
You can’t win if you’re scared to lose. Its a game of chicken…and obama and the dems keep veering off the road hundreds of feet before the collision.
b-psycho
@DougL : I didn’t have a view either way on SCHIP. The pro- side to me begged the question of why people that didn’t qualify at the time still couldn’t afford it (in terms of the larger financial point), while the anti- side was obviously based on nonsense.
If you want to know where my head is at on these kinds of things: I refer to the proposal above as government-option because my definition of “public-option healthcare” would be more like this.
b-psycho
@gex: I’m not pretending. I genuinely didn’t know anybody was taxed on their health insurance, that’s actually a shock.
When did that happen? Why are you taxed on something that’s hers (you did say she’s your girlfriend, not your wife)?
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@b-psycho:
I have always been a strong proponent of open source but that is a whole new level…lol!
Interesting though, thanks for the link.
Davis X. Machina
I genuinely didn’t know anybody was taxed on their health insurance, that’s actually a shock.
Your employer is provided with a tax exclusion for the portion of your premiums they pay. Elimination of the exclusion would be a de facto increase in the tax they pay.
But health-care premiums that the employee pays are not taxed, as many other forms of non-wage compensation (perks) are, and in fact are tax-deductable if you itemize.
If you’re self-employed, YMMV.
neff
You can see some of Obama/Axelrod’s electoral strategy here too, pushing things off on Democratic senators (while having Obama’s proxies such as Daschle and Zeke Emmanuel holding their hands the whole way) so Obama can blame Congress if it fails and take the credit himself if it succeeds. He pulled off the same trick with the banking legislation earlier this year.
gex
@b-psycho: She’s not *just* my girlfriend by choice. I am disallowed from promoting her to the title of wife by state and federal law.
Edit: I should note that she gets her coverage through my employer.
b-psycho
@Davis X. Machina: I thought he was talking about employees being taxed for having health insurance through their employer.
For the record, I’ve never had health insurance through my employer. Can’t seem to get a decent enough job, & from what I hear the premiums are too much anyway, I’d rather just have more money at this stage in my life.
Dr. Squid
Actually it makes it sound like Baucus wants two GOP votes to make it “bipartisan” and therefore acceptable to the cocktail party drunks (like Broder) of Georgetown.
Davis X. Machina
@Davis X. Machina: I thought he was talking about employees being taxed for having health insurance through their employer.
Doesn’t happen. Not for the employee him or herself. (There is some hinkiness when benefits are extended out to an employee’s domestic partner/spouse/same-sex-spouse. Massachusetts’ website — nach — has this covered.)
Zach
@dmsilev: I doubt anyone’s reading this thread anymore, but this is wrong — Souter’s resignation is effective immediately. This is different from Renquist and O’Connor, who specified that a successor must be confirmed first.
oh really
At least three, since a reasonable bill would be single-payer. After all, wouldn’t a reasonable bill have a reasonable chance of solving our current health care problems?
b-psycho
So they’re talking about taxing the employer for the benefits, not the employees?
Wow, that’s not the impression I got of it from all the discussion about this stuff up to this point. Here I was thinking they were proposing making individuals value their health insurance on their tax forms…
It’d obviously discourage employers from providing further benefits. But it’s not like they like having to deal with it anyway. I’ve always suspected that if universal health care came about it’d be sold as a corporate cost dump.
jcricket
This is an issue where Democrats can either gain 10% points of the population (minimum) or lose our ability to say “we’re different from the other guys”.
The public supports the public option like 3-to-1 – that’s unheard of on all the other options. Sure, if you frame it like the GOP does (government will take away all your options and you’ll be seeing Dr. Nick from the Simpsons) support plummets, but explain it a different way (GOP sides with greedy insurance fat cats to deny you insurance and line the pockets of billionaires) and I bet you support would be 4-to-1. Who cares if literally the entire GOP is gonna vote against it – this doesn’t matter at all, or better yet, benefits us.
Just like FDR’s reforms, this isn’t easy, but it’s a generational opportunity for us to do the right thing and cement Democratic majorities for a long time.
Or we can act like mealy-mouth apologists and weasels. Up to us.
Wile E. Quixote
I’m thinking of creating a first person shooter video game where the objective is to kill each and every member of Congress. You get more points for killing the more evil members of Congress, that is to say the ones who have been there forever and are covered with pocket lint from lobbyists (Murtha, Grassley, Feinstein, Murray, Hoyer, etc). The game will be updated after each election so that the faces of new members of the House and Senate will be available.
I think my game will be very popular.