Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

šŸŽ¶ Those boots were made for mockinā€™ šŸŽµ

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

if you canā€™t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

We still have time to mess this up!

Bark louder, little dog.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Weā€™ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / HCR Update

HCR Update

by | 77 Comments

This post is in: 

A lot of pieces moving around the board at once. Here is what I can glean:

* House Democrats remain in a holding pattern. The Senate bill will probably never pass on its own. However, votes most likely already exist to pass HCR as long as the Senate can fix the excise tax and those special deals for Nebraska and Louisiana. Nobody seems to know whether Bart Stupak’s secret abortion army can gum up the works or not; you might as well call conservadems to find out where they stand.

* For better or worse, most action is happening in the Senate. Does Harry Reid have enough votes to pass a modest reconciliation fix? Who knows. The public option has clawed its way out of the grave and is presently stumbling around, slowly gathering co-sponsors. Ezra Klein thinks that might be either a good thing or a bad thing.

* Obama will apparently unveil its own plan (strategy?). Nobody else was consulted, so nobody has any idea what’s in it. We can hope that he finally has a bold strategy to overcome Republican roadblocks. History suggests that Obama will yet again pre-compromise his own agenda to earn bipartisan cred by punching hippies. There’s nothing that we can do about that but drink heavily wait and see.

* Republicans got nothing. Surprise.

Democrats seem to be working up the nerve to set some sort of plan in motion, probably right after the health care summit on the 25th. I suggest calling before they announce their plan rather than after.

Tell Senators to get behind reconciliation to fix Medicare reimbursement, the excise tax and whatever else the House demands. Might as well ask for a public option if it pleases you. Tell your Congressperson to Pass. The. Damn. Bill. whether or not the Senate eventually reciprocates.

Switchboard: (202) 224-3121.

Guide for first-timers here.

Reader Interactions

77Comments

  1. 1.

    slag

    Here’s the thing. I’ve called a few times and gone down in person once. At what point could my HCR advocacy be construed as stalking?

    Just curious.

    Correction: I’ve gone down in person twice–once for OFA during the summer. Damn! This thing has been going on forever!

  2. 2.

    Chyron HR

    @slag:

    At what point could my HCR advocacy be construed as stalking?

    Obviously it was stalking the moment you decided to exert pressure on your elected officials from the left. Were you to exert pressure from the right it would be patriot freedomism.

  3. 3.

    Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan

    “History suggests that Obama will yet again pre-compromise his own agenda to earn bipartisan cred by punching hippies.”

    Y’know, if Tom Hayden & Abbie Hoffmann knew the long term effects of their antics by creating the political sport of hippie-punching, I wonder if they’d have done what they did. The Hippies & Yippies were short-lived, but punching liberals and progressives as UnAmerican (TM: Estates of R.Nixon & R.Reagan) lives on.

    Fuck the sixties, and this sterile culture war that gets in the way of good policy. The Villagers do their hippie-punching kabuki theater based on scripts written back before most of us were born, and before Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the moon.

  5. 5.

    demo woman

    OT.. NBC news has breaking news. Guy flies into building, no breaking news, guy cheats on wife and they interrupt regular broadcasting. GEE
    ABC and CBS are covering also.

  6. 6.

    Captain Goto

    Oh bullshit ā€“ when has obama ā€œpunched a hippieā€??

    Well, of course! This is fucking retarded(TM).

  7. 7.

    Rick Taylor

    Oh bullshit ā€“ when has obama ā€œpunched a hippieā€??

    __
    Quite often actually. One of the themes of his campaign was he would go beyond the failed divisive strategies of the old left; it bugged me at the time. And I say that as someone who believes he was the best of all the candidates who were running.

  10. 10.

    DanF

    Speaking of “punching hippies”, I just finished reading a book called “Framing the Sixties” (full disclosure – the author is a friend of mine). The author interviewed hundreds of politicians and pundits from the 60’s through today and shows how the right was able to frame the sixties to their advantage, and why punching hippies continues to be popular activity:

    http://www.amazon.com/Framing-Sixties-Decade-Ronald-Reagan/dp/1558497323/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266595231&sr=1-1

  11. 11.

    cat48

    What else was Obama supposed to do but write his own plan??? He said he would have a plan posted on the internet BEFORE the health care summit.

    Of course the BABIES in Congress just can’t compromise on a plan until AFTER the summit. Why let these JERK-OFFS embarrass him again????????? Both chambers are absolutely USELESS. If he punches hippies in his plan, (your interpertation), perhaps they friggin deserve to be punched.

    He’s been f’n with these people since last May. Screw all of them!

    /RANT

  12. 12.

    NobodySpecial

    You know, the sad part is that both of my Senators are for reconciliation and my Congresscreature is a deep red villain in a bright blue state. So my phone calls to all three are the equivalent of dumping salt in the ocean.

  13. 13.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan:

    Yā€™know, if Tom Hayden & Abbie Hoffmann knew the long term effects of their antics by creating the political sport of hippie-punching

    The pale drunken ghost of Sen. Joseph McCarthy would like to have a word with you…

    Also, google the Palmer Raids for grins & giggles sometime.

    Hippie punching is so wonderful that it existed before hippies.

  16. 16.

    rootless_e

    obama punched hippies
    and made us all cry
    he never gave ponies
    noone knows why
    if he only would lead
    or even just try
    all the hippies would cheer
    and tinkerbell wouldn’t die

    but obama punched hippies
    and rahm kicked their shins
    the bus ran ’em over
    just for some cheap wins

    it’s a terrible shame
    and sham and a farce
    obama punched hippies
    and broke our poor hearts

  17. 17.

    slag

    I know I’m going to get in trouble here, but I don’t care. This, from Paul Waldman, is pretty accurate:

    For progressives, the first year of the Obama presidency has been defined by the health-care battle, and not in a good way. Progressives came in with enormous hopes, and found that again and again, the things they wanted were bargaining chips to be traded away, and that conservative Democrats seemed to care more about sticking it to them than about fixing a broken system. They got screwed by Bart Stupak, then by Ben Nelson, then by Joe Lieberman, all while the White House seemed to care more about getting Olympia Snowe’s approval than about standing up for progressive principles on the issue. The process was an endless series of disappointments, and it ground those progressives down. You can argue that they should be feeling better than they do, but their feelings are undeniable.

    That last line is especially pertinent, in my opinion.

  19. 19.

    rootless_e

    “You can argue that they should be feeling better than they do, but their feelings are undeniable.”

    I, for one, am sick to death of the tender feelings of “progressive” narcissists.

  20. 20.

    Corner Stone

    @cat48:

    What else was Obama supposed to do but write his own plan?

    If this becomes the new default at BJ I can not tell you how much sheer wanking glee I am going to have.

  22. 22.

    slag

    @rootless_e: Well, then, you must be really sick of looking in the mirror then. Because your hippie-punching poetry is just as counterproductive and narcissistic as any of the progressive HCR bitching I’ve seen.

  23. 23.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @rootless_e:

    ā€œYou can argue that they should be feeling better than they do, but their feelings are undeniable.ā€

    My sister-in-law has been heard to say, “Sometimes you just need a good cry.”

  24. 24.

    Chyron HR

    @slag:

    all while the White House seemed to care more about getting Olympia Snoweā€™s approval

    HURR HURR PRESIDENT SNOWE

    We’ll have to leave it to historians to decide whether Ole Snowe would have negotiated in better faith than Joe “My sole motivation is to fuck over the Democrat party” Lieberman, but I can’t help but think we’d have gotten a better bill if the two of them were bidding for the right to be the 60th vote on HCR.

  27. 27.

    Mike Kay

    @slag:

    Bullshit. What drivel. It’s no better than the hackery coming out of WaPo’s editorial page.

    He doesn’t give a single example of the WH bargaining anything away.

    Conservadems could care less about punching hippies, they’re all about catering to their massive contributors (that includes loserman).

    The WH wanted Snowe’s vote because they knew they couldn’t depend on ALL 60 dems to vote for the bill, not with Nelson and Loserman doing everything they can to sabotage the bill. And guess what, they were right.

    DFH have a serious victim complex — they love to wallow in despair. For Waldman’s information, if national healthcare is so easy, why did FDR, Truman, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Carter, Ted Kennedy, and the Clintons fail. Hell, LBJ had 68 freakin Democratic senators in congress, 8 more than obama had, not to mention the death of president kennedy galvanizing the nation, and he still couldn’t get it through.

  30. 30.

    Xecky Gilchrist

    @rootless_e: ā€œYou can argue that they should be feeling better than they do, but their feelings are undeniable.ā€

    Agree w/your sentiment – however the progressives’ fee-fees may be pouting and weeping, the Obama admin is better than the alternative.

    Which is a weak argument, to be sure, but it has the happy feature of being true. Butthurt progressives need to keep working, not drop out.

  36. 36.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @slag: I don’t know. Poetry is fine. A good cry seems a bit self-indulgent for me and the rest of my rather WASPy, vaguely Calvinist family. My wife actually suggested that my s-i-l “man up” at X-mas. Good times.

  38. 38.

    BTD

    @Mike Kay:

    Also LBJ passed Medicare and Medicaid. Two public insurance options.

    Ronald Reagan called them a threat to the Nation.

    So LBJ did pass health care reform. Not complete, but there was passage.

  41. 41.

    cat48

    “standing up for progressive principles on the issue”

    Boo-friggin-hoo! Sorry, Obama did not campaign as an anti-corporatist “standing up for progressive principles” which would have made McCain president. Just because they assumed he was a progressive does not make him one.

    The progressives will not be happy until banks and health insurance companies and any other corporation that they dislike are nationalized or destroyed. Sorry folks, but this is a capitalist system as poor as it may be. They should be working to make it better, not destroy it. I’ve read so much on line that is so out of touch with reality it is pathetic.

    The first black president had to be just center-left or center most of the time. Blackety, black, black, was a huge change to many and a lot of folks will never accept him. Just primary his ass and get yourself some white guy to represent you all.

  42. 42.

    ellaesther

    I will make the calls, and I have posted on my own blog urging people to do the same.

    May I suggest two things?

    1) Call the White House, too. If Obama is preparing his own version, it will be good if they hear from a bunch of people who really want to see workable health care passed. White House switchboard (202) 456-1111

    2) If you have your own blog, or do Facebook, or have a Twitter account, please either re-post Tim F.’s post, or write your own version of the information — the point being: Please spread the word! (Phone calls and emails, too!)

    Thanks, Tim F.!

  44. 44.

    Mike Kay

    @GregB:

    in a related matter, don’t you find it interesting that Fixxed News doesnt cover CPAC?

    What does that say when even they are afraid to pull back the current on THAT freak show.

  45. 45.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    @slag:

    the White House seemed to care more about getting Olympia Snoweā€™s approval than about standing up for progressive principles on the issue.

    Cause we all know standing up for principle will get a bill passed. I’m sure Nelson would love for Obama to stand on progressive principles so he can tell Nebraskans how he stood up to the president.

    Edit: Though I do think it is time for Obama to start ignoring the Republicans, after they don’t show up at the summit.

  47. 47.

    Nick

    @Chyron HR:

    I canā€™t help but think weā€™d have gotten a better bill if the two of them were bidding for the right to be the 60th vote on HCR.

    Olympia Snowe’s vote would have passified Lieberman and Nelson…no way would they vote for a bill that got even one Republican vote. The fact that it was unanimously opposed by the other party gave them carte blanche to play the “partisanship”card.

  49. 49.

    El Cid

    @cat48:

    The progressives will not be happy until banks and health insurance companies and any other corporation that they dislike are nationalized or destroyed. Sorry folks, but this is a capitalist system as poor as it may be.

    Right. Anyone who believed in the regulation that we had for the prior 70 years or might prefer some sort of European, more efficient health system is obviously a revolutionary communist dedicated to smashing private enterprise in the name of the proletariat. D-bag.

  53. 53.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @BTD:

    So LBJ did pass health care reform. Not complete, but there was passage.

    Nice to see that you are getting touch with your inner incrementalist.

    Elkins Act, Hepburn Act. Pass the word.

  55. 55.

    BTD

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ:

    Incrementalism in the right way is good.

    I’d take some Medicare/Medicaid like incrementalism right now.

    Take the Senate Medicaid expansion and add a Medicare Buy In for 55 and older and I would declare victory on the health issue right now.

  56. 56.

    slag

    @Xecky Gilchrist:

    Butthurt progressives need to keep working, not drop out.

    I couldn’t agree with this statement more. But I also think Iraqis should lay down arms and embrace Jeffersonian Democracy. However, one of the things being a narcissistic, victimology-addicted, whiny progressive has taught me is that people don’t always do what I think they should do. That’s how I know that telling people to “suck on this” just after they felt like they got their asses kicked is not an effective method of persuasion.

  57. 57.

    Corner Stone

    @cat48:

    Blackety, black, black, was a huge change to many and a lot of folks will never accept him. Just primary his ass and get yourself some white guy to represent you all.

    I’m all for a good wanking every now and then but this is fucking ridiculuous.

  58. 58.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @BTD:

    Take the Senate Medicaid expansion and add a Medicare Buy In for 55 and older and I would declare victory on the health issue right now.

    I’d be willing to settle for that, but I think we can do better. I still think that if we can just get the House and Senate to split the difference between their respective bills now, it will work out much like railroad regulation did 100 years ago. Once the health insurance co’s are put in the position of a semi-regulated monopoly, price controls will follow as sure as day follows night.

  61. 61.

    cat48

    @El Cid:

    No, I would love to have Glass-Stegall reinstated and derivatives put on an OPEN exchange. I want my bank separated from the casinos. Clinton repealed both of these things. Phil Gramm wrote the bill.

    Maybe you haven’t read some of the stuff I have online, but the reason to me to have a public option would be to save money; not to “bring insurance companies to their knees or hurt them in some way.” Yes I have seen that as a reason for the public option. It’s always progressives (their identification, not mine) that want to “cripple” or “destroy” banks & ins. companies. Maybe it is because I have worked for a bank and an insurance company that I don’t think they or all their employees are evil. The CEOs are a totally different subject. I’m very liberal and an old DFH.

  67. 67.

    WereBear

    @DanF: Thanks! I have added it to my wish list (and asked for it to be on Kindle.) It sounds like a great read.

    I was in the single digits of age during the sixties, so it wasn’t until later that I realized what a ginormous traumatic event this decade was for so many people. Riots, mayhem, premarital sex, cats and dogs, living together, mass hysteria!

    And, ya know, it was. Leave it to Nixon to take that spiky, poisoned ball, and run with it.

  68. 68.

    Pam C./femlaw

    Look, the politics of healthcare are as deadly as they come. Threading this needle was always going to be painful, especially when the dominant strategy to get a more liberal bill relied on building up a veto point rather than a coalition-based framework. That doesn’t mean I blame anyone – folks wanted to get the best bill possible and they fought for it and hats off to that.

    The Republicans being completely AWOL left the conservative Dems with no point of comparison. It made them the right side of the debate and we know what happened there.

    But the interaction of those two dynamics, along with the totally rabid right-wing attacks on the whole idea, did have an effect on how the larger process unfolded. I remain convinced that a strategy focused on raising the public popularity of healthcare reform in general rather than just one or two pieces of the bill, might have created a bigger liberal policy space and more pressure on the conservatives to not drag their feet on reform, but that’s something we will never know the answer to. And obviously keeping core liberal priorities visible and on the table is valuable.

    All of this just I think reinforces my point that this is the hardest domestic policy issue we have and there is no clean, pretty, easy way to do this – hence the 19.5 years problem.

    However we can get this thing across the finish line, and keep improving it, we must do it.

  69. 69.

    Blue Raven

    @BTD:

    So LBJ did pass health care reform. Not complete, but there was passage.

    The DFHs are reminded that Nixon would’ve gotten more than the Medicare system done if their predecessors in Congress hadn’t insisted on single-payer or nothing.

  70. 70.

    bob h

    After the Republicans blow off the WH summit meeting, why not just finish the House-Senate reconciliation, with or without the PO, and submit it to the Senate first? Have a real, Strom Thurmond-style filibuster, for a couple of months? The ball will then be entirely in the Republican court, and the Democratic base will be appeased, however it comes out.

  71. 71.

    low-tech cyclist

    Scorecard:

    Called Sen. Cardin’s office last Friday, and was pleasantly surprised to find that he’s come out for reconciliation. (I know that some people had him down as pro-reconciliation from the beginning, but I could never get anyone answering his phones to claim that he favored reconciliation before last Friday. And I was a frequent caller.)

    Sen. Mikulski has come out for reconciliation for the Public Option.

    Rep. Hoyer’s saying all the right things on HCR these days.

  72. 72.

    The Raven

    BTW, Eskow has added one more piece to his analysis of the excise tax, which looks worse and worse the more analysis is done.

    Now a new study from UC Berkeley punctures this final Cadillac-tax myth. Research conducted by Ken Jacobs and his colleagues at the Center for Labor Research and Education suggests that the vast majority of employees affected by the tax (at least 80%) would not be in a union.

    Read the rest.

  73. 73.

    Dr. Morpheus

    @rootless_e:

    rootless_e
    obama punched hippies
    and made us all cry
    he never gave ponies
    noone knows why
    if he only would lead
    or even just try
    all the hippies would cheer
    and tinkerbell wouldnā€™t die
    but obama punched hippies
    and rahm kicked their shins
    the bus ran ā€˜em over
    just for some cheap wins
    itā€™s a terrible shame
    and sham and a farce
    obama punched hippies
    and broke our poor hearts

    I am SO stealing that!

  74. 74.

    Katharsis

    History suggests that Obama will yet again pre-compromise his own agenda to earn bipartisan cred by punching hippies.

    This is why I read this blog. It takes a million watt spotlight and points it at the truth: naked, cold and shivering for all to see.

    …plus a bit of snark is always appreciated :p

  75. 75.

    mcc

    So I don’t know what to think about this PCCC public option reconciliation letter that’s been making the rounds (it was PCCC that set this all up, right?).

    If it were up to me, what we would do is pass the health care bill, then start working on trying to pass something like a public option via reconciliation. We wouldn’t have to do this this year. To my mind there would be several advantages to doing this after the health care bill itself passes. With the public option decoupled from the health care bill, legislative players (for example, the anti-abortion crowd in the House) would no longer have the option of targeting the public option as a means of killing the larger health care bill. And if we don’t have to make compromises to get this 2000-page health care bill passed, we can push for the public option we really want, the Medicare-linked option that has the ability to drive down premium prices.

    The public option letter in circulation right now, given its timing, doesn’t seem to be pushing for a reconciliation-based public option in general. It seems to be pushing for reconciliation to go into the “sidecar” which it is expected will be used to pass health care reform, which will probably look a lot like the set of patches in the House/Senate compromise bill that was set to pass before Scott Brown got elected, and which will probably be detailed in “the Obama plan” rolled out next week. This would be… interesting, but it sounds really risky and because it’s risky doesn’t sound like something the Democratic leadership would sign on with. There’s no guarantee a sidecar with a public option in it could get to 50 votes in the Senate, and actually no guarantee it could get to 50%+1 votes in the House (because again remember the House Democrats have an anti-abortion faction). The Democrats can’t really afford any more failures on this, and so far every time they’ve tried to force the public option into the bill without really being sure the votes were there it’s set things back for both the bill itself and the public option.

    I’d like to see the idea of public option via reconciliation reintroduced into the national debate, or a show of support for it in the Senate. But if it isn’t going to actually go in the bill, and it’s being trumpeted by the blogosphere like it will, then basically all we’ve got here is that this will get to 35 signatures, it won’t go into the bill when the Democrats take it up again, and then the blogosphere will treat the puncturing of their artificially inflated hopes as another “betrayal” and use it as an excuse to fight against or fail to support or just plain ignore the actual health care bill at a time when it will really, really need all the support it can get.

  76. 76.

    HyperIon

    @Mike Kay: in a related matter, donā€™t you find it interesting that Fixxed News doesnt cover CPAC?

    And yet my beloved CSPAN does.

    Is Brian Lamb a closet liberal trying to point out what idiots these folks are? Or is he a deeply conservative guy from Indiana who loves them to distraction? I truly do not know.

  77. 77.

    retired in nc

    I just called Virginia Fox’s office again. The young man that answered said that she had already voted against the bill and would not change her vote. I just stated that our heath care system badly needed reform and that she consider changing her mind and vote for some type of reform. He said that he would give her my message.

Comments are closed.