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Democrats have made a clear indication to pass a comprehensive health care bill within the next two months, rejecting calls from Republicans to start over or move in an incremental fashion.
Rob Andrews, who attended yesterday’s bipartisan health care summit, laid out the path forward by saying he expected minor changes to the President’s proposal, based in part by some ideas from Republicans at yesterday’s summit, within the next week. Democrats would then seek to move that proposal through the legislative process. The President described a wait of up to 4-6 weeks to see if Republicans would come together on a proposal, but if it takes that long, it’s because Democrats are lining up votes and determining process, not in the hopes that Republicans change their minds at the last minute and jump aboard.
Before the summit even ended, Dick Durbin acknowledged that Democrats would press forward, regardless of the GOP’s stance. Harry Reid, the Majority Leader of the Senate, agreed in a statement after the meeting. “Health reform is not about process or sound bites; it’s about real people like Jesús Gutierrez in Reno who struggle with a health system that too often stands between them and the care they need and deserve. Ideological differences will always exist, but unless we act health care costs will continue to skyrocket and thousands of Americans will continue to lose their coverage or be denied treatment every day.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi concurred. She described herself as “not overly optimistic” that they would get Republican support for the bill, but promised to incorporate some of their ideas if they seemed worthy of support. Nevertheless, she clearly stated that the Democrats would move forward:
“The fact is, is that we are going to move forward. The ball is in everybody’s court to try to find some common ground on how we move forward. Mr. Durbin pointed out a defining difference that emerged in this meeting, though, and that is in order to make the changes, in order to end discrimination of pre-existing condition and all the reform that we want to make, in order to hold in the insurance companies accountable, there had to be some regulation of the insurance industry. That seemed to be the big separation between the Democrats and the Republicans. Whether that can be bridged remains to be seen.”
Asked at her weekly press conference today if the Senate can use the reconciliation process to fix the bill to the House’s liking, she said, “What you call a complicated process is called a simple majority.” She firmly rejected the GOP call to “start over, itsy-bitsy spider, little teeny tiny… you can’t do it. Doing this incrementally just doesn’t work.”
The President gave his clear blessing to proceeding on the reconciliation sidecar track, and a blog post at the White House’s website by Dan Pfeiffer buffeted that.
The President believes that a problem this big cannot be addressed incrementally. And while insuring 30 million people is going to cost money, it’s important to remember that most of this money is going to tax credits that will reduce premiums and help people get better coverage.
And while the President appreciated the participation and input of everyone today, he doesn’t think we can just scrap a year’s worth of work and start over. The millions of Americans that are suffering can’t afford another year-long debate. There’s too much at stake.
TPMDC reports that the timeline puts final passage at around April.
In a statement, the Progressive Caucus lamented the lack of diversity at yesterday’s summit, noting the absence of leaders from the Progressive Caucus or the Tri-Caucus (African-American, Hispanic or Asian Pacific Islander Caucuses). And they highlighted the importance of the public option as the best proposal to help reform the system. But in the end, they are expected to fall in line, with few exceptions, like Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who reaffirmed his no vote yesterday.
Really there are two issues at this point – working out the reconciliation process itself, included the order of which chamber would vote first; and then determining whether the House and Senate actually have the votes. Both have unresolved questions, but the question of the votes in the House seems like the major obstacle. Bart Stupak has identified 15-20 Democrats who voted for the bill previously who would not do so again, citing the abortion language. And it’s entirely unclear whether that gap can be made up with those who voted no initially, even if Stupak is exaggerating. Recent House retirements and deaths have thinned the margin for passage even more. And one of the few House Democrats who was amenable to flipping his vote, Jason Altmire (D-PA), didn’t think the votes were there this time around.
“It’s going to be tough because the mood is different than it was in November,” Altmire said. “The vote in Massachusetts is the result of a change in public opinion.” [...]
Altmire does not know if Pelosi has a reserve of lawmakers willing to change their “no” vote to a “yes” to make up for this new deficit.
“And what about the marginal members in the middle who got hammered over this bill and would love a second chance to perhaps go against it this time?” Altmire asked.
Altmire said he is hoping Obama’s proposal is “a starting point for future discussion,” not the final bill.
Otherwise, he said, “I don’t see how you are going to change those numbers given the mood swing that has taken place over the last four months.”
At some point, the determination by the leadership to move forward must be met with the determination to solve the jigsaw puzzle that leads to 50 votes in the Senate and 217 in the House to ensure final passage of a single bill.
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Just a quick note to say thanks for the fine work you’re doing here. The News Desk has become one of my daily go-to sites. While I sometimes don’t agree with your analysis, more often than not I do and either way it is refreshing to read critique delivered without overwhelming preceeding bias and facts reported without selective parsing. You’re doing a great job.
Regards getting the votes together, I think Pelosi will be fine. She is very good at working the caucus, knows everyone’s weaknesses and needs, has far more power than does Reid, and will horsetrade and threaten until she gets her majority. Stupak will likely hold his ground, but he’s going to find that most of his “group” is willing to trade one principle for another if it advances their own power and political future. Plus, nobody in the House wants to be the next Jane Harmon. If Kucinich doesn’t provide support at the end of all this, then he is the self-centered horse’s ass I’ve always though he was. Greater good, Dennis; greater good.
The Senate is IMHO the more problematic chamber, but Reid’s emerging vocal belligerence seems to me to signal that he feels he can round up 50 and doesn’t need to be nice to the rest of them. The struggle will be to get those 50 and still deliver a package that will satisfy Pelosi and her caucus. As I’ve written before, those two talk all the time and I don’t think they’d be sounding this confident if they hadn’t already sorted out a range of alternatives that will work.
For myself, I’ll be pounding my reps on the public option. Both Feinstein and Boxer have signed on as wanting it, and my House Rep Pete Stark is one of the strongest advocates. What needs to happen, I think, is to turn the Bennett petition on its head; gather a critical number of Senators and Representatives who will not just support a public option but pledge to not vote for HCR unless it includes a public option. That may or may not be possible, but I think it is the right next move and the only way to get it is to push for it.
We may, in the end, have to settle for a bill without it; the reach of the insurance companies and their allies is wide and deep. But it is well worth the effort to make one last go in this session. This is not the end of the issue, and in the very near future it will become clear that without a public option the cost of insurance – indeed, the overall cost of health care itself – will continue to skyrocket. Public option advocates need to be in a position of I-told-you-so, and be ready to provide a solution.
Just because you think passing Obamacare is the “greater good” doesn’t mean reasonable people can’t disagree. I respect Kucinich for voting his conscience.
And if you think passing this bill makes a public option more likely you are delusional. State-based exchange make any kind of future PO extremely difficult. When premiums continue to skyrocket, what will happen is working familes–now mandated to buy private insurance–will have to eat the cost. It will be a disaster.
OMG. No public option. IRS enforced mandates to buy crappy insurance thereby propping up the vile healthcartel for another ruinous decade. No reform of Big Pharma, no drug reimportation. And Stupak eroding abortion access for a generation of women. This bill is shit.
And worse, passing it will be throwing away the very strongest card we have: the fact that the healthcartel is jacking up prices as though they were drunk. The system is deteriorating at an accelerating pace. People’s eyes are popping open left and right. The worst thing we can do is to throw the healthcartel a lifeline. Damn.
The American health care “industry” is an abomination. Obama and the other whores in Washington want to force the people to bail out and perpetuate this monstrosity. I say let it burn. Say no to serf care.