The takeaway: the healthcare summit end-game
Healthcare summit, February 25, 2010. Photo from Yahoo!/Reuters
I was pretty caught up with work and AMEXgate yesterday, and didn’t post anything about the day-long healthcare summit, though I did have it on most of the day. TPMDC did a great job following the action, and I’ll just add the following takeaway:
The point of yesterday was to demonstrate, once and for all, that President Obama indeed values bipartisanship, but he cannot achieve it on this particular issue because at the end of the day, Republicans fundamentally do not believe in a right to healthcare access, which of course is their ideological prerogative, and are therefore not prepared to compromise on or accept the three pillars of reform that are non-negotiable from the White House/Democratic point of view. Read more
The 2009 Big Lie
Departing Senator Evan Bayh and a host of hand-wringing pundits are pushing the moany meme that what’s wrong with Washington, as evidenced by the Senate stalemate of 2009, is a lack of “bipartisanship” and the silencing of poor, beleaguered moderates. Really? The way I remember it, Democrats, especially in the Senate, weren’t the victims of a lack of bi-partisanship, or bullying by liberals (who got exactly nothing they wanted in 2009), or even of Republicans. Democrats were victims of other Democrats, who had they not joined Republican filibusters of Democratic bills and collaborated with Republicans to enforce “minority rule” and choke off Democratic ideas that didn’t meet with the approval of Republicans (or that couldn’t get 65, 75, even 85 votes!…) a lot would have gotten done last year. Read more
Battle lines: Reid and McConnell choose strategies
Grumpy old men: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY-left) and Majority Leader Harry Reid (NV-right)
The dies is cast for the political strategy for the midterms. Things aren’t gonna get much better, or more bipartisan, so both sides appear to be settling in, hunkering down, and preparing to fight it out, with distinct strategies emerging. Read more
Why is the PATRIOT Act in the jobs bill?
Here we go again … Another horrid “bipartisan” compromise (which apparently means including the worst ideas from the “center” and the right in one, steaming pile of crappy legislation…) crafted by the gruesome twosome of the Senate’s dreadful finance committee, who having already wrecked healthcare reform, have apparently decided to jam through a renewal of the authoritarian PATRIOT Act in the compromise, subcommittee version of the jobs tax cuts bill:
The bill includes an infusion of funds into the Highway Trust Fund, the so-called doc fix for Medicare reimbursements and an extension of unemployment insurance and other benefits for the jobless.
It also includes several provisions outside the panel’s jurisdiction, like a reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act, the national flood insurance program and $1.5 billion in agriculture disaster assistance.
(Sigh.) So the rural, small state Senators strike again, cramming in farm gimmes for their home states and re-upping the historic federal power grab that gave GWB the power to read your mail (and Obama too.) In what sense, exactly, is this a jobs bill??? Put me down as one of those people who is angry at Washington.
Snowe job: is President Obama putting ‘bipartisanship’ before principle?
Who's the boss? President Barack Obama and Maine Senator Olympia Snowe.
As the healthcare reform debate drags on and on and on, well past its freshness date, and long past the time Congress and the administration should have been able to move on, a disturbing pattern is emerging. It works like this: the “blue dog” Democrats fight real reform, on behalf of the insurance industry; the public, which widely favors a public health insurance option, fights back; pro-reform members of Congress in both houses, strengthened by public support (and by public attacks on their conservative colleagues) grow bolder, and grow in numbers, getting us closer to reform that will actually lower costs, and reduce the vice-like grip insurance companies have on our healthcare system; and then the Obama administration screws it up, insisting on “bi-partisanship” at all costs, protecting the blue dogs at the expense of the rest of the caucus, and attempting to strip down or strip away the most fundamental reform — the public option — for the sake of getting the vote of a single Republican Senator: Oympia Snowe, as if any sentient being would be fooled into believing that one Republican vote does bipartisanship make. . Read more
Baucus bill passes 14-9
Olympia Snowe avoids a Democratic shunning by voting for the Max Tax. And still no public option … All 13 Democrats on the Finance Committee voted aye, and all Republicans with the exception of Snowe voted no. Politico has more on what happens next, and on Baucus’ relief, having sold everything but his wife’s jewelry to the insurance lobby in order to bring Snowe on board (and getting dissed by the insurance companies anyway.) The Hill, meanwhile, reports on the threats Snowe is facing from her caucus, over a vote that wasn’t even necessary for passage of the bill through the committee. Go figure. It’s Washington …
Baucus, White House quest for bipartisanship ‘like a child looking for a unicorn’
Rep. Anthony Weiner says it all (again) on heatlchare reform:
The several months that Baucus’ Gang of Six spent in pursuit of a bipartisan bill were a waste of time, he said, because the GOP has no plans on cooperating. “The Senate and the president to some extent have been like a child looking for a unicorn. I don’t see it,” Weiner said. “The Senate is [often called] the cooling saucer of our democracy. It’s starting to seem more like the meat locker of our democracy.”
Related: Max Baucus’ lonely road
Max Baucus’ lonely road
He pumped up the hype for his “bipartisan” healthcare reform bill, but I think it’s fair to ask: if Max Baucus (the insurance industry’s $3 million man) can’t get the five other people on his “Gang of Six” rump committee to stand with him at a press conference, let alone endorse their? his? bill, what makes him think that thing can pass the Senate? If you think it’s worth your while to read the Baucus bill (or you’re a big insurance company, so reading it is like reading your own mind,) have at it.
Or just watch Max’s lonesome press conference today:
The new WaPo poll: support for health reform growing
The edge appears to be wearing off the opposition to healthcare reform. The upshot of a new Washington Post/ABC News poll:
- President Obama is back above his vote margin in terms of support for his overall job performance: with 54% approving and 43% disapproving. Strong approval continues to be more intense than strong disapproval, though the latter is up to 31% (with 35% strongly approving.)
- Approval and disapproval of Obama’s handling of healthcare splits evenly at 48% each, while his handling of the overall economy leans positive, 41% to 46%. Obama’s personal favorability rating remains a high 63%, versus 35% who think he’s a Kenyan-born Marxist/Socialist. (Sorry, couldn’t resist…)
- And despite the Beck-Limbaugh-Fox News Axis of Evil’s unyielding drive to paint Obama as some sort of radical, 53% of Americans find his views to be “about right,” versus 39% who call them (too liberal) — oh, and sorry, Joe Scarborough, this poll shows that most Americans consider themselves to be moderates, not conservatives, and Independents (43%), not Republicans (21%) or Democrats 32%).
- Obama’s biggest problem is the deficit. More people disapprove of his handling of that (55%) than approve (39%)
- And Americans trust Democrats and the president more than Republicans (48% to 28%) to cope with the problems facing the nation. Another 19% trust neither party. And that’s true on issue after issue: Read more
Kill Bill: Why liberal Democrats may need to kill Obama’s health bill in order to save it
I don’t know what the president is going to say tonight in his joint address to Congress. But after the “summer of crazy,” in which the president and his team lost the communications battle against a lunatic smorgasbord of charges, from death panels to socialism, and with an administration that even up to yesterday, was still lamely talking “bipartisanship,” I’m not what you’d call hopeful.
Ted Kennedy has passed on, and the White House has yet to utter a word about the bill he essentially wrote for the Senate HELP committee. The public option is “a great tool” but not essential to the final product according to Robert Gibbs (both in his press conference yesterday and on NPR this morning.) And Gibbs insists that the president tonight will not “focus on the negative” by issuing veto threats. Instead, says Gibbs, he’ll talk about positive stuff most people can agree on. Well isn’t that nice.
Well I didn’t get a chance to sign that petition of Obama staffers, donors and volunteers (I was on staff for less than a month toward the end of the campaign,) but I wholeheartedly endorse the sentiments in it. If the president tonight stands before a joint session of Congress and the American people, and repeats the now tired (and ineffective) litany of well worn phrases that have characterized his team’s attempts to explain healthcare reform (“if you like your healthcare, you can keep it … insurance companies won’t deny pre-existing conditions … we want a bipartisan bill … blah blah blah…) I think I’m going to turn off the TV, because that’s not change I can believe in. Read more
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