Not to go even more emo on you, but has anyone anywhere commented on the sad joke that is the $15 billion dollar jobs bill? I mean, it makes my unmentionables all tingly that a couple of Republicans joined with the Democrats to vote for it, but $15 billion is what the rocket scientists in the Senate think will get people back to work? Less than $300 million a state?
What is fifteen billion? A couple weeks of unemployment benefits? Not to go all Everett Dirksen and everything, but we ***LOST*** almost that much in Iraq, and no one flinched. But $15 billion is going to remedy job losses of tens of thousands every month on top of millions of lost job over the past two years? Isn’t that less than California’s budget deficit? And the only way it was going to get substantially bigger was to lard it up with pointless tax cuts?
I think when history looks back on the leadership of this country for the past twenty years, it is not going to judge it kindly. Small men with small ideas. And when the Republicans win the House and make significant gains in the Senate, Democrats will have no one to blame but themselves.
demo woman
You’re preaching to the choir. What I want to know is what does Tunch say?
Nick
I thought this was one of a series of job bills?
DougJ
I think this is kind of bullshit. What did you want Reid to do to get something bigger through?
At the same time, I agree this is a sad joke.
Keith G
At least when that happens (and I assume it will quite sooner than any of us thought in Nov’08), the following over-reach of wing-nut policy will make organizing street protests a whole lot easier for the left.
mcc
What Reid said was that he’s breaking up the larger House bill into multiple pieces and that this was just the first piece.
Was he telling the truth? I don’t know. But it sounds like a reasonable strategy and if that is his strategy, it’s working so far. Piece 1 did pass. I think having that one victory (and that one vote count, and the changed media narratives) makes passing a potential piece 2 easier.
SGEW
I flinched. Well, maybe “winced” is more accurate.
sbjules
This is just part one of the jobs bill. Harry Reid broke it up to try to get it passed after Repubs dithered with the original bill. Or so I heard.
kay
@Nick:
It’s a jobs AGENDA. I have no idea what that means.
I think it’s way too small, almost ridiculously so, but I have to say, people here liked it, so if it was a blatantly obvious and cynical politicall ploy, it worked.
eastriver
What jobs bill? Wait, you mean that teensy speck over the i in Balloon Juice? That speck?
(self-satisfied chuckling)
…ahhh.
Seriously though, Obama had to pass something, no matter how trivial. He didn’t want to spend alot of time/energy on it. He said as much in the SOTU. ‘Member?
He’s adopting the posture of a deficit hawk. He’s looking ahead at ’12 and ’14. Multi-dimensional Othello and all that. (Othello, get it???)
Jules
This is the first of, I think, 3 or 4 bills. The one that came out of the finance comm was bloated and Reid thinks he can get the smaller ones passed.
From Ezra Klein:
voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/02/the_many_many_senate_jobs_bill.html
FlipYrWhig
Yeah, why didn’t they try to pass a longer, more complex bill? That was bound to be an efficient and effective process that could never be held hostage by centrists, deficit hawks, and tax-cut mavens!
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Fix’t.
Absolutely. If the weasels in both parties think that they will be looked on kindly by any survivors of this clusterfuck of a nation we have become then they’ve got another thing coming. But then again I don’t think they really care about history any more. Politics is now all about immediate rewards for the victor, much like our businesses have become. There is no long view, no look at sustainability, no looking out for those who we will leave this mess to when we depart this world.
It’s the ‘cash out now and fuck everyone and everything else’ mentality we have become infected with. Short term gains are the order of the day, no need to worry about the future. If this was a dairy farm it would be one where the farmer only milks the cows until they are dead, no feeding or caring of them is necessary. Just milk them dry.
I think they are too stupid to think beyond the idea that as long as they have lots of money then it just doesn’t matter to them. They think that money in their pockets solves everything. Never mind the people whose pockets they have emptied while filling theirs.
That’s just a small detail.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Hey, we’re in an election year now. And it’s even more important that nothing makes sense. The rubes out in wonderland only hear what they want, and that the dems are doing something untangles their nickers enough for a win.
And getting the wingnuts back in the game, even a little, puts the spotlight on the beady eyed fuckers to be responsible. Baby steps Cole, baby steps. This disappointment you have will only make baby jeevus giggle and embolden our progressive overlords to clobber us all with the idiot stick.
The fifteen bill is targeted at small bidnesses who will do most of the hiring, and is added onto a 200 bill plus roads bill that will create jobs, so it ain’t as bad as it seems. When the US mammoth of an economy repairs itself, then we are good to go. And a few more billion isn’t going to speed that up much.
demkat620
Holy Christ! Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor.
Good god that is going to be bad enough but remember this; The house has never swung without the Senate. So if the House is gone, the Senate is too.
El Tiburon
Sorry, but I can’t help but go back to the pile-on that was heaped on Jane Hamsher, et al. around these parts not too long ago. Seemed to me they were doing their goddamn best to force the leadership of this country to do the right thing.
So my question is how is history going to judge the rest of us. It’s not like we are simply observers watching the monkey show inside the cages.
Those of you who told the rest of us to STFU when pushing for real reform while you were okay with a compromise that upheld the status quo, how do you feel about your efforts?
El Cid
Well, given what appeared to be the choice between this small blip of a bill and the gigantic, estate- and gift-tax ridden monster dreamed up by the ‘centrists’ and their Republican buddies so beloved of by the so beloved Bobo, I’m glad it got cut back.
We’re net better off this way than losing way more money on upper-upper-upper-class tax giveaways than a few more kibbles on the job side.
ruemara
John, I love you. Shut up. Or take out some conservadems & republicans. My unemployed for nearly 2 years mate will take even 2 more weeks of UE because it pushes the wolf away. If it gives 1 family another week, month, year of life, I’ll take it. It’s tiny and the people who passed it mostly don’t give a flying fuck at what is going on in this America but I don’t see Americans giving a flying fuck either. It’s called protest, people don’t do it, so quit bitching about your tiny portion, it’s all you fought for.
NobodySpecial
Should be a realist about those things. Anyone who was wishing for a substantive jobs bill probably wanted a pony, too. Reid is simply doing what’s practical, and people who don’t realize that a substantive jobs bill was never going to get 60 votes are now probably going to whine that reconciliation wasn’t used or some such other pie in the sky nonsense.
Take that, hippies.
DougJ
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
This.
ajr22
Hey this got wingers attacking Scott brown, so that provides me with some entertainment. I can’t complain about that.
Rock
It’s true that the Democrats have sucked (some much more than others). But the blame for the looming Republican takeover of Congress is not only the fault of the Democrats. It’s the fault of a thoroughly callow media that prefers stories over truth and is ultimately controlled corporations and people with views distorted by wealth. It’s fault of an electorate that cannot be bothered to understand what is in its own best interest, that does not understand how its government works, and that is happy to bankrupt a country for war but will bot raise taxes a dime if the money might somehow go to the Undeserving. The Democrats will have failed as leaders, but we will have failed as a country.
James in WA
“OBEY.”
mr. whipple
Ya know, it’s easy to get down, but there was some good news today.
“CBO: Up To 2.1 Million Jobs Created Thanks To Stimulus“
John Cole
Do you all ever stop? No one that I know here has a problem with many of the goals- better HCR reform, real financial reform, pushing the general agenda to the left.
Our problem, stated repeatedly, is with the idiotic tactics. Push-polling your own party, joining in unholy alliances with Grover Norquist to weaken your party, making HCR all about the public option and otherwise it is shit, focussing only on punishing insurers rather than whether the bill does any good, attacking Joe Lieberman’s wife, going on Fox news to be the useful idiot, and my personal favorite, paying for ads attacking a chief of staff.
For fuck’s sake, no matter how much I agree with them on many issues, all of that shit is stupid, stupid, stupid. You can keep excusing it if you want to, but I’m not
Midnight Marauder
@El Tiburon:
Better than I do about the bullshit rhetoric you’re pushing here.
El Cid
It should always be remembered that although small businesses (usually <500 employees) create the most jobs, they also destroy the most, and pay generally less with fewer benefits. But they employ over half the workforce, so they are the most common type of employer.
NobodySpecial
Which is why routine hippie-punching is a common phenomenon among some of your strongest supporters on your blog. Because ‘weakening your party’ is all good when it’s hard-core lefties getting the shaft. Got any pronouncements about that one?
Nick
@El Tiburon:
Since we got healthcare further than anyone ever has, I feel great about it.
NobodySpecial
@Nick:
Yep, because seven-eights of zero is much much larger than half of zero.
mr. whipple
@El Cid: What are the stats on them surviving? Something like 50% failing w/in a year or two?
Nick
@NobodySpecial:
If hard-core lefties can get themselves elected to a majority, then they can control the agenda, until then, deal with compromising. That’s life. People do it all the time in politics.
Nick
@NobodySpecial: and a lot larger than zero, which is what you nutballs think we should strive for.
NobodySpecial
@Nick:
Ask President Gore how far you get pissing off hippies and getting elected as a Democrat.
NobodySpecial
@Nick:
Don’t see any health care around here. Do you?
Nick
@NobodySpecial: How did the Nader administration work out for your hippies?
What’s funny is that when challenged on this, you crazies always say “Oh, no, Nader didn’t cost Gore the election, it wa the Supreme Court or because he gave up on Florida”
At least now you’re admitting to your crimes.
vk
it is sad…a bunch of people that currently have jobs worrying about keeping his/her job writing bills that are supposed to create jobs. we need leaders.
NobodySpecial
@Nick:
Well, I voted write-in for McCain that election. Just like I voted for him in the primary. But ya know what? Your ends look an awful lot like what the hippie’s ends were, and I didn’t notice them using that election as an excuse to excoriate centrists or exile them from policy decisions. Unlike you. But I suspect you’re not really in that camp anyways.
Nick
@NobodySpecial: You wrote in JOHN MCCAIN’S name?!?!? And you consider yourself a “hippie”
oooooooooooooooooooooooook.
El Cid
@NobodySpecial: Gosh, if only President Palin could be pushing through better health care reform right now!
hal
Meh. I’m over this country. If the Republicans are back in power next year, then so be it. It amazes me that you can be as horrifically rotten to the core as the Republican Party is, and still end up back in power, regardless of the some of the spineless moves by the Dems. Hopefully it will be a last gasp and won’t last long enough to ruin everything, but we’ll see.
FlipYrWhig
@El Tiburon:
WTF does this even mean? By “pushing for real reform” don’t you mean wanking and bitching and trying to stop the bill from happening because at some future point there might be a better one, so killing this one simultaneously invents a time machine to the glorious future?
Whatever. It doesn’t matter. That’s the whole fucking problem. You can issue post after post “pushing” and “demanding” whatever the hell you want. It’s just complaining. What _I’m_ doing is nothing more than complaining either, but I’m not under the illusion that complaining, like, better, actually makes things happen.
NobodySpecial
@Nick:
Never said I did. But you guys are just as ridiculous as the Republicans when it comes to shitting on the left. At least they’re more honest about it.
Just Some Fuckhead
When Ex-Republicans Try To Out-Democrat One Another. Another day in Balloon Juice paradise.
Joseph Nobles
Here’s an 11-dimensional chess argument: most of the signs of the stimulus have yet to be recognized, due to the fact that most of it is finally coming online this year. This pittance of a jobs bill allows Obama to claim credit for what the stimulus is going to do this year, because for the average person, the stimulus was so last year.
Omnes Omnibus
Cole, is the shoulder hurting especially badly today? You are not a happy camper.
craptractor
Bright side: clearly this is the only jobs bill that we could’ve ever gotten. I’m just glad they were able to pass something before those crazy progressives made it all fall apart by asking for it to be better.
@NobodySpecial:
Damn, you beat me to it.
Nick
@NobodySpecial: What?
Never said you did?
Jeez, did you or didn’t you, make up your mind! Maybe we’d take the “left” more seriously if they actually made a lick of sense when they talked.
Sounds like you’re accepting the fact you can’t win shit, and using your bitter realization to just screw people. That’s the way to a progressive America!
PurpleGirl
@Nick: It will be a series now but originally it was one large bill. But it was still mostly tax cuts, there are just fewer tax cuts in this first installment.
Keith G
@Joseph Nobles: That is a sane and satisfying view of things. I have heard it from a few inside the party.
I hope it plays out.
freelancer
OMFG, this entire thread…
NobodySpecial
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Nah, JSF, I wasn’t really an ex-Rep. I voted for Ann Richards in the governor election prior, because I knew Bush was the special kind of flaming idiot no government needs. I voted McCain in the Illinois primary for the same reason. I wrote in McCain in the general because a guy who runs away from the very reason he was in office is a complete turnoff, but I couldn’t bring myself to vote for either Commander Codpiece or Ralphie Boy.
Of course, McCain didn’t get my vote in 2008, because he’d joined the Taliban by then. Palin’s a joke. But the hardly unique brand of DLC-style crapping on the left every time the DLC’s crew jumps ship and refuses to pass any Democratic legislation got old a lot of years ago.
kay
@Joseph Nobles:
I just glanced at it. The former tax lawyer who is a regular here had to explain one part to me, and I didn’t read further after that.
It just seems ridiculously small, and Harry Reid helpfully said something close to “this is a political ploy” so I wasn’t really dancing in the streets or anything.
craptractor
@John Cole: Sometimes you seem to be saying that it’s only their tactics you have a problem with and you’re all in favor of pushing for better HCR, other times you seem to be saying that it’s pointless because there were never 60 votes for a more-liberal bill and public pressure is irrelevant because the Senate is full of assholes. I’m confused.
NobodySpecial
@Nick:
Unless suddenly when no one was looking the likes of Max Baucus and Joe Lieberman became ‘the left’, it’s not the left that is torpedoing Democratic legislation. It’s the ‘centrists’ that are doing that. And your response? Punch a hippie. They trained you well.
mogden
There is really nothing useful the government can do to “create jobs” other than get out of the way, so I’m happy the package is as “small” as it is.
KG
Since at least ’06, my default position has been that one party deserves to lose and the other doesn’t deserve to win. To borrow a sports metaphor, the Democrats are playing not to lose. Generally, when you do that, you end up losing. Meanwhile, the GOP is playing dirty and being praised for it. It’s the Colts vs the Patriots, political edition. It’s really frustrating on all sides.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Yes, it’s a joke at $15 billion, when you consider that one of our private citizens (Bill Gates) can give away almost that much to charity without even blinking.
What really got me was a news story which called it “broadly bipartisan” or some such term because only 75% of the Republican caucus voted against it. Actually, it was 75% against the motion to proceed, the bill itself is another story.
Tsulagi
Yep.
freelancer
@mogden:
LOLWUT?
eastriver
@John Cole:
JC, you might think firebagger tactics were stupid/crazy/assanine (and most of them kinda were), but at least they were out there swinging. Hard. With pieces of two-by-four.
Out THERE. Real 4-D world. Not in here, jerking each other off and flinging poo balls.
The powers that be would fucking love it if the wingnuts and moonbats confined their rantings and ravings to the intertoobz. But they fucking hate it when you call them on their bullshit in public. Where the voters and media can see it.
You don’t think running an ad against Rahm had any effect? I think you’re wrong. It had some effect, and that’s all that was needed. It didn’t change Rahm’s life, but it didn’t have to. All it had to do is just nudge Rahm a little bit. Work him a tad. Push him an inch. Stop him from whispering that one thing in Barack’s ear that’s gonna make Barack do something less wise. Let Rahm know that we, the progs, are watching HIM.
The teabaggers have power and profile only because they got out there on street corners and yelled and screamed and protested and held up stoopid signs. Were their tactics moronic? Certainly. But have they had an effect on national politics? Yes. Without a doubt.
******************************************************************************
Okay, forget all that. Don’t even bother responding, JC. It’s all the same BS back-n-forth name-calling.
How about this?
Let’s start a unique Balloon Juice protest maneuver. At the next rally/speech/bullshit political event, Juicers show up with as many helium balloons as they can carry/afford to buy. (Quick, does Word Press sell custom balloons? Or we just use red white and blue.) At every mention of some bit of bullshit, a balloon is let drift away. At the end of the speech/event, the rest of the balloons are released. Or maybe the balloons aren’t released.
Is this wasted symbolism? Probably. But it’s cheap and could be fun. Who knows?
It’s all so maddening, isn’t it?
Nick
@NobodySpecial:
Sometimes hippies deserved to be punched. For example, while we’re out there trying to work AROUND the likes of Lieberman and Baucus (for example, striking a deal with Olympia Snowe), what are you doing? Bitching, complaining, and undermining the President and the leadership because they aren’t performing magic and getting them to vote your way (not that you’re doing anything to help).
For that, hippies deserve to be punched, cause guess what, you…are…not…helping.
PurpleGirl
@ruemara: They didn’t include another extension in this current bill. Supposedly they’re going to do another extension next week, but that’s March and that means there will be a gap of a week or two in coverage, and as I said in an earlier thread… that means no money for a few weeks. UI isn’t retroactive. (I’m out a little over a year now so this is near and dear to me.)
Midnight Marauder
@freelancer:
This thing unraveled very quickly. And it’s only Tuesday?
+3
r€nato
You wanna talk about sad jokes?
Arizona Legislature jumps on the birther bandwagon.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Nick: Nick, you got it all yer way. Now show us the signed bill.
Nick
@eastriver:
At the WRONG people.
Has anyone seriously gotten any indication AT ALL that this ever happened? I mean really.
danimal
I want the public option. Well, actually I want single payer. That’s why I support moving the goalposts, helping millions of people obtain health insurance, preventing hundreds of thousands of bankruptcies, stopping the pre-existing condition exclusion, creating a framework to rein in health care spending and making health care provision a federal responsibility.
If that makes me a hippy puncher, so be it. I’m damned tired of it, though.
Texas Dem
Given how feckless and disorganized the Congressional Dems have been so far, one can make a good argument that Obama is far better off if the GOP controls Congress. Once the GOP is in control of Congress, Obama’s reelection chances improve dramatically. Not only will this concentrate the minds of all those in the Dem party who are tearing him down because he has not been able to solve all of the nation’s problems in only one year, but it will eliminate the problem of mixed messaging, i.e., Obama says one thing then Pelosi, Reed, and the Committee chairs cut him off at the knees. Moreover, so long as the Dems hold onto at least 41 votes in the Senate and the WH, they will have a very strong bargaining position. And it will be fun to watch the GOP try to govern, after they’ve spent the past year telling the tea baggers that we can get the budget under control without raising taxes or cutting entitlements. My guess is that they will quickly overreach and get into trouble with indies and swing voters, because they haven’t been out of power long enough to learn anything useful from their 06 and 08 defeats. Like they said about the Bourbons, the GOP remembers everything and has learned nothing.
darryl
Ha! Somebody else understands how annoying this is.
Linda Featheringill
My, my. You guys are grumpy tonight. But you are sweet anyway.
Good night. We will try again tomorrow.
PurpleGirl
@darryl: LOL… I’m falling off my chair. Thanks for that one, it’s great.
Nick
@Just Some Fuckhead: Actually no, we didn’t, my way would’ve been to snag the Olympia Snowe trigger in fucking October and jam in through before someone changes his or her mind, focus back on the economy and then focus on keeping and expanding the Congressional majority to get rid of the trigger in the future…if we had done that, I would’ve been able to show you a signed bill four months ago.
So no, I didn’t get it my way.
danimal
@darryl: This.
;-)
freelancer
@darryl:
That.
NobodySpecial
@Nick:
When your ‘help’ relies on the likes of Olympia Snowe, a person who has never shown the inclination to be the 60th vote on any piece of Democratic legislation ever, then you’re not helping, either. Especially not when you have a tool at your disposal that only requires 51 votes and not 60.
If you don’t have 51 votes, you won’t have 60 even if you get Snowe. Basic math. ‘Centrists’ ignored that, let the process drag, and the natural result of that process was that every Senator between 51 and 60 took his piece out of the bill, and you were left with something that no one wanted, which still isn’t passed in both houses and never will be now.
Instead, they could have put the bill on the agenda, put it to an up-or-down, and got people on the record as opposing their party’s agenda. The leadership didn’t push it, the White House didn’t push the leadership to do it, and the people who are getting blamed for it by you are the same fucking hippies that you claim wouldn’t get listened to anyways and had no power to get anything passed.
28 Percent
@Nick:
I call spoof concern troll. Olympia Snowe laughs at your puny bipartisanship.
cat48
@John cole Reid wanted to try and pass small bills instead of one major one. This will not be the last jobs bill. Reid stripped out personal tax cut continuation, Medicare pmts, and the estate tax which had nothing to do with jobs. That is why it is small. They are preparing more. There is a highways bill also coming up.
Obama budgeted about $230B so there is more.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Nick: Yeah, but isn’t that something you come back to instead of start with? And didn’t she eventually decide not to play ball anyway? It isn’t clear to me it wasn’t the usual Republican yeah we’ll help ya write legislation we like that we’ll turn around and block.
Lurker
@eastriver:
Until recently, I’ve never called a Congresscritter before in my life, and I normally did not discuss politics with friends and co-workers. However, because of Balloon-Juice, I’ve called my Congressmen several times in the past month to tell them to pass the damn bill. I’ve also started casually discussing health care reform with friends and co-workers.
Out there. In the real 4D world.
Granted, I have a preexisting condition and have been rejected three times for health insurance, so I have a wee bit more at stake here than most people. However, please give Balloon-Juice credit for inspiring lurkers like me to get off the couch and actively participate in our democracy.
maye
All the “jobs” bills in the world, large or small, will not fix this economy and get people back to work. America needs new industry, not old industry on life support.
Nick
@NobodySpecial:
It’s called the stimulus, for which she was the 60th vote.
And, what? Allow the media to have a field day screaming “HEALTHCARE FAILS!” and give Joe Lieberman carte blanche to kick the party when it’s down? You see why you get punched?
Actually I blame Harry Reid. I don’t know why he did what he did, but if it was to please some irrelevant left wing fringe that barely exists in Nevada, he’s real stupid, because just like all “hippies,” they’ll inevitably find something else to get whiney about.
Nick
@Just Some Fuckhead:
After Harry Reid said “No thanks Olympia, we’re going to try this public option thing” she decided not to play ball, and then Lieberman screwed us.
Those who know the Senate know Lieberman would never oppose a bill a Republican supporters…you get Snowe, you get Joe, and you shut him up and keep him off the talk show circuit. It was that easy.
gbear
You and Micheal Steele…
NobodySpecial
@Nick:
You mean like they did after we tried it the non-hippie way?
EDIT – You’re seriously trying to blame it on Reid pleasing Nevada leftists?
oooooooooooooook.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Nick:
Now, I’m way too fucking lazy to look it up but it seems to me yer doing a gloss job here. I seem to remember Snowe playing cutesy and dragging the whole thing out to the point we had to try another route.
VincentN
@JSF:
Sigh. Even accepting the ridiculous notion that the ‘realists’ was able to somehow silence the people pushing for ‘real reform’ (with their magic powers I guess) do you honestly think we’d be any closer to a signed bill if we had gone about it your way? But I suppose at least then we’d be able to proudly brag about we didn’t allow the little things like reality and politics dirty our ‘ideals’ when HCR went down in flames.
Nick
@NobodySpecial:
We didn’t try it the non-hippie way. We tried it the “hippie” way…Reid put in the public option, which didn’t even have 50 solid votes, initially, despite the fact he was warned it wouldn’t work…
…and it didn’t.
Remember “I hope you know what you’re doing”
EDIT- No, I don’t know why Reid put the public option in the bill, but if it WAS to please the leftists, it was stupid.
PurpleGirl
@maye: Yes, we have to invent new jobs and industries. Productivity gains means they don’t as many middle level workers or secretaries/assistants and that sort of position. We need jobs too.
Citizen_X
@r€nato: Are you fucking kidding me? Proposed by the Skullfuck Valley Republican, indeed.
So you people–and I mean both hippie punchers and punchees on this thread–are really ready to just let those assholes take over again, throwing up your hands and saying, “Democrats will have no one to blame but themselves?” This is your Democratic Party: it’s pathetic, and corrupted, by its very nature. But you knew that years ago.
AFAIK, the RC Church considers despair a sin. Or at least they used to. And I pretty much agree with them: you don’t have the right to give up and die.
Read that linked post again. And get the fuck off the floor. You too, Cole.
Nick
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Nope, once the bill passed the Finance Committee, Snowe was getting beat around by Republicans. She offered to support a bill with a trigger, Obama said go for it. All hell broke loose on the blogsphere and Ed Schultz had a conniption. Reid, for some reason, decided to put a public option in the bill the week the House passed their bill, probably sensing some sort of momentum from the House bill passing, and the very next day, Lieberman came out crying. Upon realizing they didn’t have Joe, or enough votes, Reid went back to Snowe, but she said “now we need to wait until next year”
Just Some Fuckhead
@Nick:
Oh, so she must have really been down with it originally then.
On the bright side, we only have to wait one year – and not a whole ‘nother generation – for health care reform.
ETA: So how do ya get from a Snowe bill to a reconciled house and senate bill. Seems to me yer in the same spot as now with your fantasy scenario.
maye
They’re in the business of promoting suffering. Too bad they can’t provide more jobs.
El Tiburon
@John Cole:
Fact is Jane Hamsher had nothing to do with the imminent demise of the Democratic party. Fact is Hamsher’s tactics had little to nothing to do with any of the Democrats ills they face.
I argue that if more people w/ loud voices acted more like Hamsher then perhaps we’d all be better off.
Now here we sit with 23 Democratic Senators signing on for the Public Option and reconciliation. Obama comes out with his version and NO public option. Do we politely sit on our hands are do we YELL AT THE TOP OF OUR FUCKING LUNGS!?
If the Republicans regain the House, Hamsher and her tactics are not to blame. It is the lack of hardball tactics that are to blame.
Nick
@Just Some Fuckhead: Who knows if she was, weeks later when it came out that she rejected Reid’s second offer because she was pissed at him for rejecting her trigger offer first, it sure sounded like she was serious about it at first.
Nick
@El Tiburon:
.
What? Pissing off vulnerable Democrats who voted for the healthcare bill and pushing them into retirement?
Jane Hamsher doesn’t hurt the Democratic Party, Jane Hamsher hurts the progressive movement by using counterproductive tactics and pissing off the very people we need to win over.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Nick: So how do ya get from a Snowe bill to a reconciled house and senate bill. Seems to me yer in the same spot as now with your fantasy scenario.
Nick
@Just Some Fuckhead: The House would’ve voted for a bill with a public option trigger, especially since it was still fairly popular at the time, and the Cornhusker Kickback didn’t exist.
It doesn’t have to be reconciled, the House would just vote on the Senate bill…and if it did, you leave the trigger intact and change the tax structure…Snowe wasn’t opposed to the taxes in the bill.
r€nato
@Citizen_X:
They’re also working on a bill to post the 10 Commandments at the entrance to the Capitol building.
Oh, did I mention they are facing a $2.6 billion budget shortfall for next year, possibly without any stimulus funds from the evil dictator Obama to make up some of that? I guess they must have that one all figured out now.
28 Percent
@Nick: I love the way you think Snowe negotiated in good faith. It’s so cute.
Nick
@28 Percent: Look, the woman risked Scott Brown-style ridicule to vote for the bill in the Finance committee when she didn’t have to…she was definitely negotiating in good faith, more so than Joe Lieberman and perhaps Ben Nelson.
She will NEVER live that vote down in the Republican Party in Maine…EVER.
Just Some Fuckhead
@VincentN:
No, I don’t think “we” would have a signed bill. I think we’d have a killed bill, an enraged and unified Democratic party and a convenient cudgel with which to beat on Republicans and prolly less of a bloodbath going into the next election.
How “your” way is better than that is beyond my powers of comprehension. You’ve soured the general public on your notion of reform, put Democrats in disarray, made Obama look weak and out of touch, pissed on a large portion of your own side, look poised for record losses come election time and produced exactly nothing.
NobodySpecial
@Nick:
Erm, no.
Pelosi killed that one dead.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Nick: Didn’t you also tell me the House would pass the Senate version we got? Sorry, yer just wishin’ and hopin’.
mr. whipple
Could you imagine the stink if he didn’t?
Nick
@NobodySpecial: That was in September, what I’m talking about happened six weeks later.
Today, Pelosi is going to pass a bill that doesn’t have anything, you really think she would’ve held out if the Senate passed a trigger?
Don’t forget, once the Senate passes a bill, the House can sit on it for as long as it wants.
NobodySpecial
@Just Some Fuckhead:
But they got to punch hippies! Victory!
Brick Oven Bill
Perhaps we should consider tariffs.
freelancer
This is clearly an indicator that we must slow down, go back to the beginning and start this thread over.
Nick
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Nope, you told me I told you that, when I clearly said no one thought that.
Anya
@darryl: epic win.
Nick
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Ah, so it was never about passing healthcare reform, it’s all about how we can possibly, maybe, scream at Republicans more.
Of course the media would’ve have spinned it as a stunning defeat by a partisan Democratic Party who refused to negotiate with moderates and how Republicans saved us from the horrors of socialized medicine and the blogsphere would’ve been pissed that magic didn’t happen, but at least some hippies would feel relevant.
mai naem
@Just Some Fuckhead: Hate to sound crude, but Snowe was just stroking Reid and the rest of the Dems. Snowe’s also the one who cut the stimulus and made it quite a bit less effective.
I personally think Reid is actually being smart with the $15 billion dollar deal. Now, it is Reid and putting smart strategy and Reid in the same sentence generally is an oxymoronic statement. I think Reid is breaking it up so that he’s got more bargaining chips to give to the Repubs for HCR and other stuff down the road.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Nick: You said you were certain you could pressure the House to vote for the Senate version. Which you haven’t. Are you saying the House woulda just passed the Snowe bill without pressure, just caved on whatever House members actually wanted to accomplish with a health care bill because Snowe, goddammit!? I don’t think they are as taken with her as you are.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Nick:
As one cartoon personality famously said, “Meth is a hell of a drug”.
D-Chance.
Just remember… Scott Brown = the male Sarah Palin (according to all liberals just two weeks ago).
It must be true… he doesn’t even know how to push the right button on his voting machine in the Senate.
Scott Brown is the new Sally Field, gushing at all his new liberal buddies, “You like me. You REALLY like me!”
colby
Not really. It’s a lot easier to split the difference between a PO and a triggered PO than between a PO and no PO. Hell, across the board, the Senate Bill was further away from the House Bill than what Snowe was advocating (recall that she wanted more subsidies, too). Plus, Snowe would already have one “yes” vote on HCR on her record. That makes the second one much, much easier (And the converse much harder).
Ailuridae
@PurpleGirl:
Uggh. When is the last time there has been a gap in unemployment coverage because of a technical snafu? People made a ton of this here about six months ago and I made the same point. And at the end of the year when the gap was supposed to occur it didn’t. If they pass an extension there won’t be people without for a week.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Nick:
You can characterize it any way you want but you don’t have a bill and you’ve left carnage in your wake and Republicans in the catbird seat. But the media, grumble grumble.
maye
@D-Chance.:
are you one of those people who left a mean message on his facebook page? didn’t your mother ever tell you if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all? were you raised in a barn?
NobodySpecial
@Nick:
I believe she never had the votes for a trigger. They went from ‘robust public option’ to ‘exploring options’ to ‘no public option’. Now, you can speculate that she might have had 218 for a trigger, but then you’re doing the exact same thing you got on hippies for when they pushed reconciliation – counting votes that don’t exist and you can’t measure.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Just Some Ratfucker:
Yet.
If the President signs a HCR bill, will you whine louder because we could’ve had one with ponies?
Nick
@Just Some Fuckhead:
No, didn’t say that either. I said that if all else fails, the last strategy would be the pressure the House to vote for the Senate bill, which they could just as well not do, but probably would when there is no other option.
In the off the record words of a certain very liberal New Jersey Congressman whose district includes part of the Jersey Shore; “I’d kill for a trigger right about now”
Nick
@NobodySpecial:
She might not have…she barely had the votes for anything. She passed the bill she had by the skin of her teeth.
The trigger clearly would’ve pulled a few more Blue Dogs, maybe not many, and then she would’ve had to get a few members of the Progressive Caucus to agree, which, quite frankly, isn’t hard to do.
Um Yeah
@Nick:
So anyhoo, is Snowe on board now that the public option is more or less dead?
No didn’t think so.
P.s. I really do not see the big deal nor downside to calling Lieberman’s wife out for being an insurance company street walker.
kay
I think they end up passing “insurance reform”. A scaled-down bill, will be the phrase. Not cost controls, but some kind of federal regulation combined with an opportunity to purchase a subsidized “high risk” plan for those with pre-existing conditions.
It will benefit only people who currently have health insurance of some kind, because they’re the loudest.
85% of people have health insurance, and 94% of whites with a college degree have health insurance. I’m afraid that was always the relevant stat. Not the uninsured, but the insured. They count.
They vote, they write opinion columns in national newspapers, and they scream bloody murder when they’re afraid something is being taken from them, or “given” to someone else.
I do hope they succeed in killing Medicare Advantage, however, because that’s a complete taxpayer rip-off and shouldn’t continue.
On the negative side I’d really like to avoid the conservative idea of selling insurance “across state lines” (which really means deregulating health insurance) because that was an absolute fucking disaster when we tried it with credit cards, mortgage lenders and banks, but conservatives cling to it, although it always fails.
I hope I’m wrong.
Nick
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I don’t have anything, we tried it YOUR way. We pushed a public option through the House barely and we let it die a violent death in the Senate.
Maybe if we had dumped the public option in the first place and let the liberals whine for a while, or just passed incremental pieces of reform like Hillary wanted, we’d be in a better position.
This isn’t my carnage, this is your carnage. You wanted a bill with a public option, you got one.
It’s kinda like what a friend of mine said this past weekend when he suggested we should’ve went in with a small bill that just reforms regulations…”Either way, the liberals will complain”
NobodySpecial
@Nick:
If it wasn’t ‘hard to do’, then she would have had 218, given that she got 218 for a robust public option the first time.
No, the problem was that trying to strip out the public option would have taken away her majority, and she couldn’t get it back with Blue Dogs.
Don’t try arguing that it was progressives that killed health care when you claim at the same time that their votes are easy to sway. Unless, of course, your true agenda is just to punch hippies, and you’ll make any argument that lets you do that, even when it contradicts everything you’ve said before.
Nick
@Um Yeah:
Who said that was a bad idea. If I had my way, he’d be recalled.
colby
The party wouldn’t be unified; it’s just NOT unified on HCR, and killing the bill- OVER some of the divisions, no less- wouldn’t bring it together. It certainly never has before.
Nore would HCR end up being an effective cudgel in an election- it’s not like the proposal has EVER been that popular, and losing in Congress, being a bill not even every Democrat could get behind, certainly wouldn’t change that.
Anyway, it should be about passing the best policy we can, not maximizing our chances in the next election. Landrieu, Nelson, etc. are playing that game (and it’s not even going very well for them).
Nick
@NobodySpecial:
Oh, so, the House bill’s public option is robust now? Funny, cause I remember her dropping the robust public option in favor of a weaker one because she didn’t have the votes.
Funny how history changes in hindsight.
PurpleGirl
@Ailuridae: The House passed an extension in early November, the Senate didn’t pass it until late December 2009 and it started in January 2010. It ends this Sunday on the 28th.
No, there was a gap. I lost two weeks at least. I don’t understand exactly how the state calculates it, but I should have had something like another 14 weeks but by the money in my “account”, it was only 8 weeks.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@kay:
If they pass anything Kay, it will essentially be the Senate bill with some fairly minor changes, mostly delaying the excise tax and scaling it back some, maybe. There not going to overhaul, or start over, I don’t think.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Nick: Yer saying the presence of a public option in the House bill is what killed this thing?? I thought that was the only bill that could pass the house. As it was, they watered the PO down significantly.
Hey, ya know what really killed it? Democrats participating! If we woulda let Republicans write it, we coulda passed it with Republicans and a handful of blue dogs and Obama, who claims to have no idealogy, coulda signed it into law.
Brian J
Man, do I hate arriving late to a thread like this.
Anyway, as I said on Sunday, this is a good thing, but hardly sufficient. We simply need to be doing more of it, or something similar.
You know, as I wrote in an e-mail to Steve Benen, there are a couple of Republican governors who have said the stimulus funds have made a difference in their states. There are almost certainly even more Democrats who would say the same. So why aren’t these guys joining together and taking out massive newspaper ads and similar measures pleading with the federal government to give them various forms of aid? Whether it’s direct infrastructure spending, replacing sales tax revenue, insuring their debt in some way, or something else, there looks to be a lot that can be done from state to state. And while there’s no guarantee it’d work, by screaming from the roof tops that there’s more than can be done, you’d be forcing a lot of Republicans to answer for why they aren’t doing more, if done right.
Just Some Fuckhead
@colby:
That’s just not true. Real health care reform is very popular.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
You think you fooled us fuckhead. But I see your plan. Plaster your pig ignorant drool onto every thread till we just give up and go home. Fairly clever, might work, if you eat your spinach and keep that dunce cap on tight.
Ailuridae
I love threads like this. Where people say that Reid didn’t cave to pressure from the left to include the public option in the merged Senate bill. Because at the time a whole lot of us in these threads were worried (from the Open Left whipping that had a very clear “no” from Lieberman) that a bill with a public option couldn’t pass the Senate. I was really hoping I was wrong and that the Just Some Fuckhead’s of the world would, for once, be right.
Now of course its months later and those same posters are trying to pretend that the left didn’t push for a massive public expansion of health insurance. How incredibly dishonest these firebagger douchebags are. Its fucking sad.
tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/10/progressive-group-unveils-public-option-ad-aimed-at-harry-reid.p…
I can keep providing links. Just let me know.
Are the rest of us honestly supposed to forget that this happened?
Nick
@Just Some Fuckhead:
No, the presence of the public option IN THE SENATE BILL killed the thing.
If the bill was never introduced in the first place, and all that was introduced was small pieces of reform incrementally, this would never have been an issue
Wait, Nobody says it was robust! Who to believe?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Nick:
Huh?
Dood, I don’t care who you believe. I ain’t here to win ya to Jesus.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Nick:
Don’t mind fuckhead. He’s in the process of self immolating himself again to go supernova and quit us till Cole puts up another “please come home special fuckhead threadpost” maybe even with pictures again.
Then the slippery pea brain will slither back and we will do it all over again, till next time. Ain”t that right JSF?
colby
But the actual proposal before Congress is NOT. And it would be even less so after Congress rejects it, the Democrats themselves splinter over it, and several Dems start calling it either an “overreach” or a “sell out”, depending on which Dem is talking.
Of course, sometimes a cudgel and an albatross are hard to tell apart from a distance (Witness Republicans’ demonization of immigration reform).
Just Some Fuckhead
@colby:
Umm. I know the Senate version of the bill isn’t popular. (Although the koolaid kidz here tell me it’s actually very popular and we’re just looking at the polling results upside down.) I wasn’t arguing for that. Exactly opposite. I was making the case that my gloriously popular pony bill, featuring all the most popular reforms demanded by the proles and pushed in townhall after townhall night after night by President Obama would go down in flames.
Just Some Fuckhead
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: It just kills ya that John has never even acknowledged you exist, doesn’t it? And after all that toadying you do, day in and day out, refreshing non-stop, hoping to be the first commenter, hoping to revel in the sunshine of John’s affection. You poor pitiful thing.
John, please throw Stuck a bone. Get it Stuck, a bone?? Woof.
Nick
@Just Some Fuckhead:
House bill wasn’t popular either
ABC Wash Post Poll.
“Overall, given what you know about them, would you say you support or oppose the proposed changes to the health care system being developed by Congress and the Obama administration? … Do you feel that way strongly or somewhat?”
Nov 12-15, 2009 Support- 48%, Oppose-49% (this is right after the public option passed the House and was proposed in the Senate)
Those numbers now are 47%-49%, so they haven’t changed since the public option was dropped.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead: LOL. Just because Cole called you a jackass today, you think you’re sooo special. humppf!!
Just Some Fuckhead
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: No, I actually don’t like being singled out by the blog host like that, as it usually results in a bunch of nutter sycophants like you teeing off on me and making it an unpleasant place to be.
But that’s the price I pay for being a celebrity around here. Sigh.
Jrod
mcc
I disagree completely with this perception of the events.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I know. It’s hard work for you being Balloon Juice Princess. Chin up Cinderella. It’s nigh to midnight and yer still hangin’ tough.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Fix’t. ;)
colby
RadioOne
I think this might be more about a trend of Democrats moving away from getting big comprehensive omnibus bills passed, and instead getting the same thing done in smaller piecemeal packages like this one. That’s the beltway consensus, anyway.
burnspbesq
@El Tiburon:
Completely comfortable. Would do it again the same way. We have something to show for our efforts. What you got?
If you want to be in the game, get in the fucking game THE WAY IT EXISTS. Don’t bring a cricket bat to a baseball game and whinge about the absence of wickets.
Your lot are worse than useless. STFU, again.
FlipYrWhig
The stupidest part of all this shit is the notion that stacking all the super-genius tactics together in a different order would leave us someplace other than where we are. The bill is deliberately drawn up to be milquetoast and wonkish. It has been futzed with and massaged in various ways. It seems to me to be quite evident that it is this close _because_ it is this far towards technocratic fixes. We are at the leftmost limit of the political system. We have found the point after which avowed Democrats start to balk about intrusive government and excessive taxation. It’s a stupid debate to keep having. Whether we started out asking for $500,000 and ended up getting $300,000, or whether we started out asking for $320,000 and ended up getting $300,000, this is where we are, because $300,000 is the reasonable market price. And it’s right on the verge. And instead everyone has to run around screaming.
Joel
Sorry, I can’t get too charged over this. What exactly are we doing with the jobs bill? From the start it seemed like a sop to get votes. Considering the alternative, I’ll take it. As Nate Silver pointed out, most people in this country (and other countries) are more concerned about our congress getting shit done than they are with policy specifics. In other words, the PTDB issue applies to the “jobs” bill as well.
Ate my link: fivethirtyeight.com/2010/02/few-final-thoughts-on-ublicpay.html
Nylund
When you’re talking about deficits, budgets, etc. and you hear numbers like $1.5 Trillion dollars, add $15 billion to that and what do you have? $1.5 Trillion dollars.
$15 billion is a rounding error for a country of our size.
balconesfault
Yep. A rounding error.
But it’s the 8th inning. You’re down 2-1.
The opposing pitcher – granted, thanks to a very generous strike zone by the ump along with a strong breeze coming in over the left field fence – have kept you from putting any runs on the board since the first inning.
You can keep swinging for the fences, hoping for a homer … or you can work the count, try to get baserunners, bunt them ahead … littleball.
I think that’s what Reid’s finally decided to do. In a massively disfunctional Senate, move positive little things through so the Dems can take credit in the aggregate.
And personally, I’m looking forward to Republicans complaining at the same time that the deficit is too large and that the jobs bill(s?) are too small.
Plus, as this bill shows, little bills allows Reid to strip out most of the crap that Repubs and Centradems stick in, and then bitch about afterwards.
mclaren
@John Cole:
You’re still not getting it, John. Look forward a couple of more chess moves. Then the true horror of the situation will freeze the lymph in your glands.
…November 2010, the Republicans sweep the House and make big gains in the Senate. Extensive polling data with links of the regression models supporting this conclusion here.
…January 2011: the Republicans in the House immediately launch into non-stop investigations of ACORN, the 2008 Presidential election, Obama’s birth certificate, and any other far-right fantasy and delusion the crackpot Glenn Beck teabaggers can dream up.
…By July 2011, Washington is paralyzed with all the investigations and crazed charges and hysterical Republican news conferences alleging presidential high crimes and misdemeanors. The mainstream press has abandoned all coverage of anything but “the unfolding scandals of the Obama administration” (even though there won’t be any actual scandals, just baseless charges AKA the Clinton Whitewater and Travelgate and Christmas Card list investigation horsesh*t all over again). Consequently, any effort to reform anything, from America’s broken health care system to America’s broken broadband internet to America’s broken rail transpo system to America’s crumbling infrastructure to America’s ever-increasing oil dependency to America’s collapsing and broken military, will become impossible.
…By January 2012, Americans will be so disgusted with the paralysis and gridlock in Washington (even as the economy slides further into collapse — I’m guessing a double-dip recession with 18% nominal unemployment but a real unemployment rate closer to 25% including underemployed and discouraged workers who’ve stopped looking for work) that the American public will eagerly flock to Palin.
…And so the end begins.
You thought America under Nixon was bad…until you got a taste America under Reagan. And if you thought the Reagan years were ugly for America? Just think back on the living hell we went through under Dubya.
And if you thought Dubya was bad…?
Prepare yourself for President Palin teamed up with a teabagger-dominated Glenn-Beck-worshiping Republican-controlled congress.
It’s over, people. Emigrate. Save yourselves while you still can.
brantl
This is what you get when you START OUT in PTDB mode, with an entrenched obstruction (not opposition) party. How do you like it, when right out of the gate, you get shit?
brantl
And it’s time to retire the fillibuster of 60 votes, FOREVER.
mclaren
@brantl:
And a pony!
slightly_peeved
I believe most countries require immigrants to have some sort of useful skill. Judging by her work, Jane Hamsher and her ilk are shit out of luck. You ask any foreign leftist party – the type that run countries and enact actual progressive policies – what they think of activists who threaten to abandon their own party whenever they disagree over details of party policy. The language you’d hear would make Rahm Emanuel blush.
Brian J
@mclaren:
Statistical history like that should scare the Democrats enough to make them work harder, to be sure. But I have to ask, this far out, can we be sure of anything? Is there really no way of the Democrats turning things around to minimize losses? That, I find very hard to believe.
Oscar Leroy
I couldn’t agree more.
Elise
The plan is to do several smaller jobs bills in the Senate in order to force Republicans to vote for popular legislation, or force them to filibuster it – which will cause them to lose in November, or force them to work in a bipartisan fashion.
I believe the total amount of spending on the bills will eventually match what the House passed.
Tim H
They save their big ideas for those who actually count. Anything corporate.
John
@demkat620:
That’s not true. The House swung in 1930 without the Senate. Given that the house has only swung eight times since the 17th Amendment was enacted, I’m not sure how you can guarantee that the Senate will swing if the House does, just because it’s happened 7 of 8 times. That’s a tiny sample size.
mclaren
@Brian J:
The one spark of hope here is the likelihood that the teabagger wing of the Republican party will field Republican congressional candidates so absolutely batshit insane that even the hard-core full-bore far-right Glenn Beck voters in the Deep South will reject ’em.
Not much of a hope, I grant you, but it boils down to the admittedly morbid question of whether the Republicans can get crazier faster than the Democrats can get more spineless.
That’s a tough one. In a spinelessness heavyweight title bout, the Democrats are Muhamed Ali. And Frazier’s down! He’s down!