Health Care: The Way Forward

Have I mentioned yet today that you do excellent work.

Though your language is softer than appropriate when describing the disconnect between what Republicans are saying about reconcilliation and how they actually vote, your explanations are clear and will indeed help people understand whats actually taking place. And the “Republicans are merely adversaries; the Senate is the enemy.” line is something I didn’t know but it also helps make clearer why we haven’t finished this off months ago.

Can I ask a couple of questions? If the House passes the Senate bill on the promise of a sidecar fix, what is to stop President Obama from signing the bill into law if the Republicans manage to prevent reconciliation from happening?

Also, do you think that the progressives in the House that say they won’t vote for the bill, i.e. kucinich, grijalva etc. will really be the ones who prevent this from passing?

I thought Obama was good yesterday, clear and feisty. Let’s hope that this pushes things forward and the bill is signed at long last.

Agreed. Great piece, KT.

“Created in 1974, reconciliation has been used 21 times, mostly by Republicans, who employed it to, among other things, pass two sets of George W. Bush’s tax cuts. Reconciliation has often been the way that Congress has made major rewrites to health care policy; for instance, the COBRA program that allows people to continue buying their employers’ coverage after they leave their jobs gets its name from the acronym for the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985.”

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Are tax cuts not part of the budget? Yes. This also sunsets this year, and will no longer affect either the budget or create a major impact on the budget itself.
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Does allowing people to continue to buy COBRA insurance also apply to the budget? Yes.
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Does extending the use of SCHIP to families to provide medicaid insurance to children equally impact the budget? Yes.
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Does a fully comprehensive bill which provides for many regulations, major changes to 1/6th of the economy, or a revamping of an entire industry compare in scope to those 21 measures previously mentioned? Absolutely not.
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America’s Founders gave us a system of governance designed to limit government power and maximize liberty. The legislative branch is different from the executive, and the Senate is different from the House. No single branch has all the power. That can be frustrating for those with ambitious agendas, but everyone benefits by respecting those checks and balances even as we fight over policies.
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Using reconciliation is a major move away from over 230 years of processes which we have had in our Federal Government. Many people think that our form of government is a pure, “majority rules” Government. It is not. Our form of government is a “Republic”. The “rules” and “procedures” have been time tested, and enacted in the past for a reason. It works.
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Think of it this way, the House is set up to create legislation, debate it and allow for a majority rule to pass. A simple majority. This affords representatives more from the local level to put forth legislation to be considered and then passed onto the Senate.
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The Senate’s responsibility and task per the founders was to be a more deliberative body. To look at the proposed legislation in detail, breaking it down and debating the merits, even in the finest details. By utilizing this process in this manner the people can be confident that when a bill is passed into law, all aspects of it can be confidently assured that it meets all scrutiny. That all possible avenues have been not only discussed, but exhausted. This process is also a way for the minority to be protected from abuses by the simple majority. Again, this is not a pure Democracy, and was never intended to be.
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President Obama says “we have debated and discussed this bill for the past year”. Yes, that is true. However the miniority for the most part have been shut out of more critical debates and discussions. They have not been part of the process to refine and define the bill. This bill has not been bipartisan at all. The people of this great nation have recognized this, and they have said resoundingly, “NO”, to not only the bill but the ugly manner in which the Democrats have attempted to RAM THIS BILL THROUGH CONGRESS.
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Democrats in Congress can simply pass the Senate’s bill without change. I do not believe that is possible, and Nancy Pelosi does not have the votes. But, she may succeed. Then to satisfy, and persuade people to vote for the Senate bill, more DEALS, BRIBES, and ARM TWISTING will be the order not because this is such a great piece of legislation, but to score some sort of legislative victory. A victory I ask at what expense? Unfortuately no one knows.
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To pass this major legislative and potentially earth shaking bill into law through reconciliation is nothing short of a “nuclear option”. No one knows the impact of how this legislation will affect our people.
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Not only does it change our way of constitutional governing, it sets up the possibilty that major peices of legislation and laws currently on the books will forever be at risk to change by a simple majority.
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Are liberals and Democrats ready to take that risk? Are you ready to see abortion laws changed with a simple majority rules vote? Do you want to see further erosion of civil rights laws? Perhaps some crazed representative gets the grand idea to set up concentration camps in the Mohave Desert for people with crooked noses, or God forbid, people who simply disagree with the simple majority. Are you ready to allow those non-budget bills to be passed with reconciliation? A simple majority vote?

“Voting for health care may well end the careers of some House Democrats”
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That’s certainly the accepted wisdom.
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The charge of “They can’t get anything done!” resonates more than passage of a bill months before November.
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When the apocalyptic results don’t happen the fear mongering will lose plenty of currency.

Thanks for another good article KT. I did enjoy the shout out Bill Mahr gave you on his show. Is there any chance that you’ll make an appearance? Has he asked?

Does a fully comprehensive bill which provides for many regulations, major changes to 1/6th of the economy, or a revamping of an entire industry compare in scope to those 21 measures previously mentioned? Absolutely not.
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And is that what’s under consideration here? Absolutely not.
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The Senate bill has already been passed by a supermajority, 60-39. The House will now vote on that Senate bill, and if it gets the usual majority needed for every bill before it — as it did when the House passed its bill already. And then, reconciliation will be used as it is intended and as it has been used repeatedly in the past, to fix the small details, most of which (like the Cadillac tax and the financing of sweetheart state Medicare deals) are directly related to the budget.
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Seriously, you have no idea what you’re talking about.

To the Democrats worried about this fall’s attack ads: What are your own ads going to say if some form of HRC is not passed? “We argued a year and did nothing?” Fail.

Karen: Very good article.
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Although it is “No Feeding Thursday” today, I’d like to see a show of hands from the under-40 Swamplanders who caught Karen’s reference that the Dems

“join hands and take a political leap worthy of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

C’mon Gen-Xers,..who got it?

“Seriously, you have no idea what you’re talking about.”
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That may be the understatement of the day. NewblogwhoreRusty is ignorant regardless of what name he posts under.
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BTW, have you apologized to KT yet Rusty? Where is your integrity? Why are still here blogwhoring?

I did like the repeated posts yesterday, where he kept asking people to contact “Democrats in heavily Republican districts” like Joseph Cao, a Republican in a heavily Democratic district.

“Although it is “No Feeding Thursday” today”
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Oops. I forgot about that one. Sorry.
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As for the reference, I got it. It’s a good one from a famous yet before-my-time movie.

“under-40 Swamplanders”
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You kids get off of my lawn!

KT:
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I think you’ve produced a well-written, accurate, easily understandable piece.
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At the end of it, readers will be more informed about this point in the process than when they started.
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This is good; well done.

To be fair, Rustyblog isn’t literally blog-whoring with this post, unless you count his handle.

Sorry “kevin” and “diecash” I simply do not respond to trolls.

Well done, KT!

SZ — True. I just find it comical that he wouldn’t apologize to KT, said he was leaving and yet, here he is. I retract the blogwhore reference in this instance.

Karen, very good article.
One thing I think that is overlooked in discussion of congress losing seats, will there also be repercussions for those that found no problem voting for lobby amendments and then not for health care.

The President will definitely sign the bill, I’d predict, with or without reconciliation.
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And, yes, I would agree it would be hard for them to really vote against this bill, essentially making an argument that nothing is better than this, but who knows? As one lawmaker put it to me yesterday: “those guys went so far to the left that they ended up on the right.”

What are you talking about?

Probably not.

I was wondering if Bill Mahr would invite you to appear on his show.

He gave you credit on his show last week.

Maybe it was about filibustering. perhaps I shouldn’t have killed so many brain cells during my years of chemical research.

Good article, I haven’t been around for awhile. Just dropped by have been following your work over the past year and have enjoyed the coverage.

Let the bribing begin…
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http://weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-now-selling-appeals-court-judgeships-health-care-votes
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“Obama Now Selling Judgeships for Health Care Votes?”

“Tonight, Barack Obama will host ten House Democrats who voted against the health care bill in November at the White House; he’s obviously trying to persuade them to switch their votes to yes. One of the ten is Jim Matheson of Utah. The White House just sent out a press release announcing that today President Obama nominated Matheson’s brother Scott M. Matheson, Jr. to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.”

Scott Matheson Jr’s bio:
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Scott M. Matheson currently holds the Hugh B. Brown Presidential Endowed Chair at the S.J. Quinney College of Law, University of Utah, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1985. He served as Dean of the Law School from 1998 to 2006. He also taught First Amendment Law at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government from 1989 to 1990.
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While on public service leave from the University of Utah from 1993 to 1997, Matheson served as United States Attorney for the District of Utah. In 2007, he was appointed by Governor Jon Huntsman to chair the Utah Mine Safety Commission. He also worked as a Deputy County Attorney for Salt Lake County from 1988 to 1989. Prior to joining the University faculty, Matheson was an associate attorney from 1981 to 1985 at Williams & Connolly LLP in Washington, D.C.
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Matheson was born and raised in Utah and is a sixth generation Utahn. He received an A.B. from Stanford University in 1975, an M.A. from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1980.
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Maybe we should compare and contrast his background with that of Harriet Myers…….

Thank you Karen for replying. I hope that a few of them do.

This is off topic but do you think that KBH will be able to resist Cornyn’s pleas to not leave the senate?

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/politics/national/stories/030410dntexcornynkbh.1714108eb.html

The time for talk is over. I am not from MO. but, show me.

Bonus Brownie Points™: what did BC + SK say when they jumped off the cliff? (Hint: you can’t type ”it” verbatim without being sent to time-out moderation or beg KT to let us say it , just say it!)

Do we have a betting pool on when rusty apologies to KT?

I’ll take “never” as he is much too craven for that.