Jonathan Rauch has a thorough piece explaining why the Senate Bill deserves to pass despite its weaknesses. Newsweek says the Pelosi still lacks the votes to pass it neat.
If you feel pissed off, let someone know. Tell your Representative to pass the Senate bill. Tell your Senator to get behind reconciliation to fix the Senate bill. If you already phoned all three today (try both their district and DC offices), phone your favorite newspaper and ask why their political reporters never notice that Republicans have gone batshit crazy with the filibuster.
Reach the House and Senate switchboard at (202) 224-3121 .
First time callers should read this.
arguingwithsignposts
Would someone again explain to me why I should bother calling a rep. who voted against SCHIP expansion, is voting against the debt ceiling bill, and has voted against HCR every step of the way? drmorpheus and I share a rep., so he knows what I’m talking about.
jwb
My Rep’s office apparently isn’t answering the phones yet. Will call back in an hour.
The Grand Panjandrum
@arguingwithsignposts: The point is not to try an persuade them, but to vent. It really is quite cleansing. I let my Republican senator’s office have it with both barrels. You could say I went Full Metal TeaJacket on him.
jwb
@arguingwithsignposts: To be a gadfly and to remind your representative that he or she has constituents who think otherwise. You can be pretty darn sure that the teabaggers are calling their pols, no matter how liberal their representatives and senators are. I believe that hearing from the other side actually makes pols fairly nervous.
arguingwithsignposts
@The Grand Panjandrum:
there’s a photoshop in there somewhere.
Tim F.
@The Grand Panjandrum: Better if you don’t put it that way.
jenniebee
Pelosi has a year to find the votes before the Senate bill expires, which might explain why reps may want to leave that as a fallback position while they try to figure out whether there’s anything better they can do. I still like the idea of passing just extremely simple bans on recission and pre-existing conditions and then letting the insurance companies come after the 40+1+9 most recalcitrant Senators and bring them to the negotiating table by the ears. Put them in the position of desperately needing a deal, instead of letting them keep us over a barrel on this thing. Make them have to accept allowing anyone to buy into Medicare in order to get the individual mandate that we know they’d then need.
I really don’t get why anybody thinks this is going to get fixed in reconciliation. I just don’t see the Senate dumping the deals and compromises they made to get the bill passed immediately after passage. If they operated that way, they’d have been negotiating in bad faith – it would drive Landrieu, Nelson, Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln, and the rest of the final 10 away from negotiating to get anything passed the Senate for the rest of the session. My heart is far from bleeding for poor Joe’s hurt little feelings, but a deal’s a deal.
Michael D.
Too all the lazy bastards out there who HAVE NOT called their representatives, I called both my senators, and I CAN’T EVEN VOTE in this country!!
My Representative is John Lewis, who will get his phone call when this passes.
Get on the phone!
:-)
dr. bloor
Startlingly enough, during her NPR schtick this AM Dame Cokie actually made a passing allusion to the fact that the Republicans have been obstructing Obama at every turn, and can be expected to into the future. She didn’t seem all that upset by it, mind you, but acknowledging reality is progress for her.
The Grand Panjandrum
@Tim F.: I will concede the term is over the top. Emotions are running a bit hot now and cooler, but no less passionate heads must prevail here.
Kryptik
The Saints and N’awlins are probably the only things about Louisiana that I can stand it seems. From our “illustrious” Sen. Landrieu:
In other words…Dems should bend over and take it up the ass, because the GOP and teabaggers want to claim the 41-seat majority.
Christ, comments like these make me wonder if we ever had an actual majority, period, forget a supermajority.
Sly
A congressional caucus that saw shutting down the government as a legitimate political tactic when they were in the majority and the President was a Democrat finds new love for the filibuster now that they’re in the minority and the President is a Democrat. Hoocoodanode?
Brian J
How responsive are they to people who are outside their districts? I’d have no problem calling the few people next to my district, but I’m almost certain my Rep. is on board, so I don’t see the point in calling him.
Short of outright bribery, something needs to be done to get this bill passed. As I said a couple of days ago, he needs to threaten them with withholding reelection funds or even supporting primary challengers, unless, of course, the bill has lost so many supporters than a little work around the edges is impossible, but that makes no sense.
arguingwithsignposts
OT: Chemical Ali. Executed.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
Christ, comments like these make me wonder if we ever had an actual majority, period, forget a supermajority.
No!!!!!!!!!! Hell, the Nelson from Florida came out today(or was it yesterday) and was crapping in his pants, too. Call your Representatives and Senators. Tell them to watch the Wizard of Oz. Or grow a pair. You get the point.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Brian J: That’s what people said LBJ did. That LBJ had more control over that stuff. I ask why doesn’t Obama take more control over it. No one can give me a good answer. Unless you think he’ll leave it to Rahm. Ugh!!
Kryptik
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
Wizard of Oz?
Why, because they could all use a Brain, a Heart, and some damn Courage?
At least the Scarecrow, Tinman, and Lion in the movie only had a problem with one of the three each.
BR
@Brian J:
Once in a while I call districts that I know well that I no longer live in. That way when they ask for the zip code or city I live in, I know the zip / city I used to live in and can use that. (I sometimes *67 my call so that my phone number doesn’t show up in their caller ID.)
Ash Can
@Kryptik: Landrieu is making shit up about the MA election to suit her own crypto-Republican agenda. She’s either lying through her teeth or demonstrating profound ignorance. Or both.
Brian J
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
It’s not quite the same as wanting lots of people to like him and not wanting to be an asshole, but it’s close. The problem is, the other side is entirely composed of assholes. He could tap dance across the Hudson and cure cancer at the same time and they’d still find something to bitch about. So, to be blunt, fuck ’em. He doesn’t have to treat them like terrorists, but he needs to make them the enemies of his agenda, which is the same agenda for most of the country. He needs to ask them quite simply to choose a side and remind them that if they don’t act constructively, he’s going to destroy them.
I hope he does this in the State of the Union. A lot of people tell me I am nuts for expecting him to, but one of these days, I will be right.
Kryptik
@Ash Can:
It’s frustrating how this has become par for the course.
Has there been comment from anyone in the goddamn Senate that hasn’t been ‘Oh, this election means we need to surrender to the Republicans, oh well, that’s life’? Aside from Nelson and Lieberman pulling out the “concern” card and telegraphing abandoning the bill again? Anyone?
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
1. LBJ was Senate Majority leader for 6 years, a part of Senate leadership for 10 years, and a member of the Senate for 12 years. Obama held no significant positions in Senate leadership, and was a Senator for a little less than 4 years. LBJ was much better positioned to twist arms than Obama.
2. Like it or not, our experience under King Bush the Semi-Lucid notwithstanding, the President doesn’t have a direct role in crafting or getting legislation passed. That’s up to Senate and House leadership, who have both demonstrated a reluctance to knuckle under to Obama’s demands. The delay in the passage of the Senate HCR bill is due to the refusal of Reid to leave out the public option, thus opening the door to the defection of Blue Dog Senators.
Kryptik
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
Funny, I thought the delay was because Baucus basically held the bill hostage in the Finance committee so he could ‘bipartisanize’ it, and court Grassley (i.e. the guy who pushed the ‘death panels’ myth almost literally the day after Baucus and crew touted him as their key prospective pick-up)?
FormerSwingVoter
It’s also worth contacting, not just your Reps and Senators, but also the White House. We need the administration to take control of the situation and pressure both houses to finish this. Now.
Lolis
Anyone know how we can send messages to the unions that we don’t want them standing in our way on the Senate bill. Let’s get real, the Dems in the House are not supporting the Senate bill because it doesn’t have the union stamp of approval. I think we need to focus on the unions. The so-called cadillac tax is a tax on insurance companies and for unions to be fighting so hard against taxing insurance companies is more than ironic. Apparently unions are buying the new right wing meme that taxing corporations is the same as taxing workers.
geg6
Completely OT (and, yes, Tim, I called today), but could Harold Ford be any more stupid?
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2010/01/harold-ford-calls-for-immediate-tax-cuts-immediate-deficit-reduction.php
Tax cuts and deficit reduction are our only path to prosperity. Why is he not running on the Republican ticket?
TJ
What Jenniebee said, only I have hopes for reconciliation. What’s the rush? Most of the bill doesn’t even start until 2014.
The Grand Panjandrum
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
LBJ spent almost 25 years in the Congress and Senate prior to being elected to the VP spot in 1960. He had also been the Senate Majority Leader for the six preceding years. He had a long relationship with many of the players in both houses but more importantly he knew where all the bodies were buried. Add to that we now have a procedural filibuster in the Senate, rather than a filibuster that requires a Senator to go all Jimmy Stewart on them, coupled with an obstructionist GOP and the Senate is effectively a super-majority body now. We are all California now.
Jerry 101
Now, this is a great idea. Now that I think about it, I’m sure that wingnuts figured this out years ago, but I’ve never even thought about that.
Don’t just email reporters, call them and let them know that they are missing some really important angles/pressure them to write about things from a more balanced perspective since most of them regurgitate right-wing talking points.
Kryptik
@geg6:
Because how else can he and other ‘moderate Democrats’ undermine the idea of Dem governance?
geg6
@Lolis:
The unions have all come out and said they’d support the passage of the Senate bill if it’s fixed in reconciliation. And your comment here:
is so stunning in its ignorance of the real concerns of unions and their members have with the Senate bill that you need to go do some research. And the idea that anyone other than a union member has any sort of influence with union leaders is just another piece of that ignorance.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Kryptik: Well, that too.
BR
I don’t know why I didn’t think of this (maybe because I don’t use twitter) –
Tweet your congresscritter about passing the senate HCR bill. (Make it clear you’re a constituent.) That’s one way to get through their staff filter.
Kryptik
@BR:
Huh. That’s an idea. Forgot that Twitter seems to be the only bit of technological advance that DC pols fully endorsed, outside of Drudge and Poiltico.
cmorenc
Two HUGE reasons political reporters and the electorate at large don’t seem to be noticing that the entire Republican strategy is to be completely obstructionist and completely uncooprative toward any good-faith bargaining are:
1) Harry Reid and the dems have NEVER so far called the Republican’s bluff and required them to actually…you know, FILLIBUSTER, and put their obstructionism on display. This has allowed the GOP to pull off the astonishing jujitsu of getting at least some traction with the claim that the democrats are shutting them out and not trying to work with THEM in good faith.
2) Too many congressmen and senators in the Democratic coalition have indulged in discordant prima donna acts, using their leverage to distort, rather than work toward common objectives. The result has been such an astonishing clown show it’s made the GOP’s absurd Kabuki theatre act look serious by comparison. Harry Reid is absolutely pathetic as Senate Majority leader.
BR
@cmorenc:
Agreed on #2. #1 isn’t quite possible right now, since the filibuster rules for many years haven’t required a real stand-up-and-talk filibuster. Reid would have to have a vote on senate rules to change that first, I think. (I don’t know if that rule change in itself is filibusterable.)
ominira
I got through to a staffer in congresswoman Jane Harman’s office. The staffer says that Harman is undecided on passing the Senate bill because she feels it’s too watered down but that she’s listening to what her constituents have to say on the matter. I told her that I urge Harman to pass the bill and fix the problems with it through reconciliation and she said she’d pass along that message.
Any other Harman constituents in Southern California who care about passing health care reform should call and let her know – she’s listening.
low-tech cyclist
Tell your Representative to pass the Senate bill. Tell your Senator to get behind reconciliation to fix the Senate bill.
Did all of the above last week. This week, I’m gonna bug both Senators about climate change legislation.
Bob In Pacifica
cmorenc at #35: Absolutely.
BR, how do you have a filibuster without having a filibuster? If the Repubs gets to vote a filibuster and the Senate adjourns, then point the cameras at the empty seats. Doesn’t Senate Rule 22 allow Reid to require the Repubs have a real filibuster in place of a faux filibuster?
BR
@low-tech cyclist:
Sounds good. I don’t know how you feel about cap-and-trade vs. carbon tax-and-dividend. (The former is the Boxer-Kerry bill and the latter is the Cantwell bill.) Seems to me that the Boxer-Kerry bill is more comprehensive, but they should fold in the “dividend” part of the Cantwell bill to make it more politically popular.
BR
@Bob In Pacifica:
I remember reading all of this in detail a while back, and it seems that Reid would have to have at least one vote to change the procedure so that the “procedural filibuster” was no longer allowed.
V.O.R.
I’m getting pretty worried about my representatives. I know not all are like this, but I’m told that my input is invaluable in their decision making.
Isn’t it humiliating when they’re called on to order food in a resturant without my guidance? What do they do if they have to find a bathroom in a strange building and I can’t be there for them?
I mean, if after all these months they’re still not sure what to do about HCR when it’s their f*cking job, they’ve got staffs, a party, and entities like the CBO to help I shudder to think of the hell that their day to day lives must be.
I know they have other major resources, but frankly I think it wrong to put such a load on lobbyists. It’s unfair to the private sector.
I know I may get banged around for being a fair-weather Democrat, but next election I may jump for a third-party candidate. *Not* because I’m disillusioned or disappointed, but I think it’s cruel to send to Washington someone without decent reasoning, communication, or (I’m guessing) reading skills.
Actually, given that, maybe I’ll vote Republican.
Brian J
@TJ:
I don’t think most people are worried about not getting improvements worked into the existing legislation. I think we’re worried about not getting the legislation at all. If we fail to pass something now, and the employment situation doesn’t get any better, we run the risk of significant losses beyond what the majority party normally suffers at this point. In other words, hello President Palin.
Bill H
Um, at the risk of being jumped on as some sort of troll, the gist of the Rausch arguement seems to be that the Senate bill means that employer-provided health insurance will be eventually be fully taxed, making it cost more so that people will use less health care because the insurance costs more, and since people are using less health care because they can’t afford it the cost will go down to where they can afford it. I’m not trolling or trying to be smart, that’s about all I can get out of his discussion. Okay, go ahead and tell me I’m stupid, but I just don’t see how you make something more affordable by taxing it.
Tchambers
We have another story on calling Congress on HCR on Daily Kos here:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/1/25/829937/-Grab-your-phone,-tell-them-to-pass-the-Senate-billFix-it!
Which is now on the Recommended Diaries list…
And of course, it’s also on the top front page of the site as a whole here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/1/25/829972/-Fixing-the-Bill:-Get-the-Senate-on-Board
sgoode
Just got off the phone with a staffer in Kay Hagan’s (NC) office. Says she has not made an official statement since the MA debacle but that ‘she has supported HCR since Day 1’ and he would be happy to relay my concern. He also implied that she was sympathetic to the ‘grow a pair’ message. No use calling my rep – I’m in NC’s 5th (Foxx).
jwb
Finally got through to my Rep’s office. The aide I talked to seemed pretty clueless—though she seems to have been instructed to say that the situation was fluid and the Rep did not have a firm position on the Senate bill. She mentioned something about an important meeting on Wednesday, though she didn’t have details. I urged passage of the Senate bill and fixing the other problems through budget reconciliation.
TJ
I don’t think most people are worried about not getting improvements worked into the existing legislation. I think we’re worried about not getting the legislation at all. If we fail to pass something now, and the employment situation doesn’t get any better, we run the risk of significant losses beyond what the majority party normally suffers at this point. In other words, hello President Palin.
What are you worried about? The Senate repealing its own bill? Even the Dems wouldn’t do that (I think). Unless you want it immediately because you want the PR now. Good luck with that.
Beej
@arguingwithsignposts: You and me both. My rep is a Republican. One of my senators is a Republican, and the other is Ben Nelson. I’ll pass on the phone calls. Can’t imagine they’ll do much good.
Phaedrus
Ok, Tim, I get it. You want the current bill to pass. Can you leave the blog alone for a while now?
KDP
Called Stark’s office again, still no commitment regarding whether he will support the Senate bill as-is.
Called Boxer’s and Feinstein’s offices urging them to support reconciliation should the Senate bill pass the House. Their staffers said no current position relative to reconciliation had been given to them. Boxer’s staffer said that he knew she favored HCR; Feinstein’s had no comment.
Called Speaker Pelosi’s office urging passage of Senate bill with post-passage reconciliation. Staffer said “I’ll relay it to the speaker, thank you for your call.”
ruemara
Haven’t called today but I will call this afternoon and I’ve written a screed to try to whip up the lax progressives I know.
Brian J
@TJ:
I think it’s pretty clear what I am worried about: not getting any bill, at all.
KDP
Despite living in the high tech Bay Area, I seem to have very retro representatives. As near as I can tell, only Barbara Boxer has an official Twitter account. I’ve tweeted her re: HCR reconciliation and supporting her opposition to Bernanke reconfirmation.
Nancy B.
I just spoke to a staffer in Henry Waxman’s LA office. I asked if he intended to vote for the Senate bill or not, to which she answered Rep. Waxman hasn’t released a statement yet. She also said that he was seeking input from his constituents, so I told her I thought he should vote for it & amelioarate the less savory aspects through reconciliation. The upshot: It’s not too late to keep this thing from going down in flames, so make those calls. Peace.
Elie
@jenniebee:
I think that you are onto something jenniebee…
of course, the problem has been that team Obama and the Congress do not appear to be onto anything at all…
Its beyond disgusting
Elie
Ya know, the sense of abandonment that I feel is not that disimilar to that which I felt watching Bush abandon the Gulf Coast without a solution. NEVER thought that I would feel that about a Democratic administration and would have dropped over dead to think that I could even think such a thing about this President. What the hey happened? What the hey?????
Dr. Morpheus
@arguingwithsignposts:
For the same reason that Campaign For Better Health Care holds regular vigils in front of his Champaign office.
Timmy is going to get an earful for as long as he plays the asshole.
Now if we can only get a credible Democrat to run against him. The last one I recall was a U of I student who lost miserably and when asked after the election about it said, “Eh, I didn’t expect to win anyway.”