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Two things are holding up the passage of health care reform right now. One is the raw vote count in the House, particularly the Stupak bloc. The other is the procedural hurdle of which chamber votes first on what bill.
It seemed that this hurdle had been surmounted last week when House leaders agreed to pass the Senate bill first, then move to a reconciliation bill with agreed-upon fixes. When independent whip counts secured 50 votes in the Senate for a reconciliation sidecar bill, this paved the way for such an ordering. But liberals in the House simply don’t trust the Senate to follow through on any promise. They worry that they could pass the Senate bill, have that signed into law, and then wait endlessly for a reconciliation fix that never comes.
As a result, some members want greater guarantees that only a reform bill with all the sidecar provisions will make it into law.
House liberals want to tie a series of fixes to the Senate healthcare bill to a vote for the actual bill, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) suggested Monday.
Weiner, an informal leader of a bloc of House Democrats who have demanded changes to the Senate bill in exchange for the House passing it, said many Democrats want to tie the votes together out of a fear that the Senate may renege on passing a separate measure making changes to its original bill.
“We’re not just going to go ahead and hope for a package of improvements, we’re going to have to have something pretty much in hand, and there are many of us who are saying we want a vote on both things at once,” Weiner said Monday during an appearance on Fox News Radio.
The easiest way to ameliorate these concerns is for the reconciliation bill to pass both houses of Congress first. There are credible reasons, mainly related to CBO scoring, why that may not be a viable option. But the political reasons for waiting on passing the Senate bill are far greater, especially if the Weiner bloc cannot be moved to pass that bill blind.
The biggest problem here is that the reconciliation bills passed by the House and Senate are almost certain to differ, and setting up a conference report would subject the fixes to the filibuster that the reconciliation process was designed to circumvent. One way or another, the House will have to eat some bad provisions, unless the Senate installs major party discipline on everything not already worked out by agreement.
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“mainly related to CBO scoring,” ; as I wrote yesterday “And what doesn’t get mentioned about CBO scoring that keeps being mentioned is that what the CBO ’scores’ is “They’re simply looking at the federal budget as a budgetary item.” NOT THE COST TO THE SYSTEM AS A WHOLE.”
A really trap given the fact that Obama has already endorse the Senate bill as is and really does not seem to want the changes reconciliation will make.
Right, but I just put that there as shorthand. The full argument, which I’ve published before, is that, per instructions, a reconciliation bill has to lower federal budgetary spending by at least $1 billion. And if the Senate bill isn’t law at that time, doing something like changing subsidy levels would be scored by the CBO at its total cost, not just the cost of the particular change, which means you’d have to offset all the subsidies in the bill at once. It would make it very difficult to get under the $1 billion number.
That is, of course, a completely different argument than the one you’re making.
And we all know how well relying on party discipline in the Senate has worked out. I can’t believe the House Dems would be crazy enough to believe anything the Senate tells them. Have they been paying no attention at all the past year? Many of those senators aren’t up for reelection in 2010 so they can delay, refuse, or do whatever they want while the House members go down in flames. Even if they tried to save themselves in November by blaming the lying senators, too many people would bounce them for being stupid and naive enough to fall for it or, like us, for considering us stupid and naive enough to fall for their story that they really wanted to give us what we wanted and did all they could for it but someone else ruined it for us.
How did they claim the Bush tax cuts lowered federal spending by any amount, never mind a billion?
Anthony Weiner will vote NO if there’s no PO..
wait did we say no PO, we meant Anthony Weiner will vote NO if there’s no medicare buy in
Wait..we meant Anthony Weiner will vote NO if it’s not tied to the reconciliation bill, yeah that’s the ticket!
No but the wrote they did not write the instructions too.
Just kill this monster, attend to jobs, regulate the financial industry, then offer up Medicare for all (fuck Obama) and be amused watching the Reps. twist themselves into pretzels both defending and excoriating Medicare.
The easiest way to pass the piece-o-crap bill is for Rahm to drive all the no-voters out of the house.
They don’t have to justify any budgetary changes that accrue to the benefit of ‘John Galt’ and his merry band of savvy business cronies.
Since birth is paramount, is there anyone in the Stupak bloc doing anything about the snowflake babies?
I smell Lucy and her football. Thank goodness some House Democrats do as well.
Who would trust the Senate? Senators don’t; why should anyone else?
Christianity would indicate that all test tube embryos must by law be forcibly implanted regardless of viability. If John and Sally make extras, they gots to take ‘em all in the cervix or get female friends or relatives (daughters, nieces?) to get implanted with their embryos.
Can’t throw out any embryos or keep them frozen long enough to kill them.
Considering the senate bill does not contain the deal Obama made with the unions can he just walk away from the reconciliation bill?
You don’t think that O has any intention of honoring any deal he made with unions, do you?
Why don’t churches have anti-fertilization clinic rallys? Why are fertilization doctors (who can be said to murder embryos in freezers) safe from the insane wrath of right-wing nut jobs?
AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…
Citizen David Dayen and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:
Another fine post, Citizen Dayen, but the whole convoluted mess is a massive distraction from what is really goin’ on inside the White House. First of all, there is absolutely no question that there are 50 plus one votes for ANY “fix” if it’s backed by the White House. As a matter of fact, if the White House used a vote on the Public Option as a negotiation point with any possible conservative opposition, I believe it would get 60+ votes. Secondly, it is clear that healthcare reform is NOT the reason healthcare was brought forward first and as a matter of fact, we now know that “bi-partisan” corporatist healthcare reform was supposed to establish the third point of the “bipartisan” triangulation of Democrats with corporate Republicans. That we haven’t had banking reform or a jobs bill argues for a strategy that ObamaRahma really want to keep free range for the corporate oligarchy until there is a firm “bipartisan” corporatist center of gravity in the congress, and if that means waiting until January of 2011 then so be it. Finally, reducing or eliminating the Democratic majority in the House is the White House’s single political objective for this year and only by threatening to kill the Senate bill and hang it around Obama’s neck will this Byzantine political mess get rationalized.
KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, NO MATTER WHAT, WE WILL BE HERE WHEN THIS ONE IS OVER!!
In the minds of that great deliberative body called the Senate, the House is the poor, white trash relatives that they wish to ignore.
This bill will turn out to be next to nothing for those of us who need it and a gold mine for insurance and the health (don’t) care industry as a hole. I prefer nothing to an even greater redistribution of wealth this bill will surely guarantee. KIll the goddam thing.
I have to be honest… I do not trust the senate one bit…
I am afraid the time has come to announce that the American people neither want nor deserve HCR, and move on. If we really want it we will say so in the next election.
In the meantime Weiner can introduce legislation that expands Medicare to all, and see where it leads us.
Citizen runfastandwin:
Absofuckinlutely, Citizen, and the echo in here just got overpowering. This is a game of chicken between Rahm and the Democrats like he forced on ‘em in 1993-94 and the only thing that kept another NAFTA triangulation from comin’ off was that not one of the fascist Republicans would play. This has given the always slower than molasses in January Democrats time to wake up before the scrawny little dancin’ rapist gets in bed with ‘em.
Stupak and his roguish bloc are members of the House.
The last time anyone trusted senators was the Ides of March, I do believe.
I’m surprised there’s not been a post on International Women’s Day – today, folks.
Natural Woman
Not so much:
“Yon Cassius has a mean and hungry look”
Not so much:
“Yon Cassius has a mean and hungry look”
I trust the senate. The senators? Not at all.
The only deliberative body in the world fueled by greed and ego.
You can’t beat somethin’ with nothin’. The House needs to put together and get a CBO score for a reconciliation-only HCR reform bill. If the Senate won’t go first with a sidecar fix, the House can pass its standalone bill and put the monkey on the Senate’s back.
HOuse members need only look at Obama’s history. When the going gets tough, he backs down.
Once the Senate bill is passed and signed, “reform” will have taken place. Obama can claim credit for it. He’s got what HE wants.
The Senate, if the sledding gets difficult, will just figure, hey, we got the “reform” we passed, why make a lot of trouble?
There will be no incentive to get over any hurdles. And, there WILL be hurdles.
If you think they have a lot of reason to push now and are not pushing, just think what will happen when they have no real reason.
Obama and the Senate have no motivation whatsoever in returning to HCR after HCR has been passed by the House. Obama will claim credit for HCR the minute the House passes the Senate bill and then there will be an immediate pivot onto something – anything – other than HCR. It’s up to the House if those members want to go down as the ones who turned us all into corporate serfs while wrecking the middle class, having healthcare take up more of the GDP while quality of care goes down. Obama and the others are just working on lying, bribing and blackmailing to get their way so that they can make mega-millions after leaving office.
When the Parliamentarian said it wouldn’t Stalin, er Bush, er Frist fired him and hired somebody who would know their job really depended on doing what they were told.
Fighting over scraps. Who cares if they just pass the Senate bill or if there’s this reconciliation sidecar? Both suck.
Kill the bill. Nobody’s talking about the real battle, that of putting teeth into the provisions requiring insurers to cover claims, or the other real battle, about the size and enforcement of the individual mandate. They are all wasting their time. Pass the Sanders provisions in the Senate bill as a stand-alone, then move on.
I think that this dwelling on the self imposed limits of reconciliation amounts to nothing more than idle irrelevance. First it was that the Senate parlimentarian decided was admissible, next having to abide by the Byrd rule, then that it could only deal with budgetary matters, now that it has to reduce the buget by $1 billion according to CBO or whatever.
Enough of this crap. This servile need to be forever castigating oneself for taking a stand is contemptuous and all too typical of the lack of nerve and resolve that liberals are justifyably loathed for. Who gives a flying fuck what Byrd originally thought or thinks now.
The Senate has been shown to be a group of worthless clowns who see themselves as thoughful deliberate childs of priviledge who by birth belong to the ruling class and who are wholeheartedly wedded to the way the country is configured for their benefit. They are now rightly a laughingstock and apparently their egos have been bruised. So they will act capriciously and hold their breath until turning blue.
Well fuck them. The left should not give in another inch. As Kucinich made clear tonight on Countdown, it is the insurance companies that are the culprits and root of the problem. Leaving them in charge of managing the cost of health care is asinine and not an option.
No more concessions nor weak kneed pleas that reconciliation binds our hands. Either the Senate votes for a public plan which directly competes and depletes private insurers profits or the whole HCR effort comes to nothing by their own doing. What sort of public is it that quakes in their boots before the likes of pukes like Emanuel.
It is preordained that through the fault of the Senate dauphins meaningful HCR will not come about and we must act to bypass the Senate. State run health plans are an immediate option and a move toward that should start.
Last I looked the House Speaker can hold passed legislation and not send it on to the President – so where is the problem? Indeed the “tied” passage is just a variation of this power – or am I wsrong?
If the speaker does have this power, the House passes the Senate bill and budget recon and then waits for the Senate to do budget recon. that is an exact copy of the House budget recon – at which point both go to the President. As to CBO score, the VP has total control and need not follow any rule provided 51 votes in the Senate approve his action.
If Obama has the leadership skills of Hillary, the process moves to passage of Senate bill and budget recon and signing by Obama – if he is as weak as he appears and as controlled by corporations as he seems he will claim some problem on the budget recon so as to screw the House – at which point it will be Pelosi’s decision to send or not send the passed Senate bill on to the president.
Or is the rule that the Speaker has the hold from president power just a false memory of mine?
No that’s true. However, do you really think that Pelosi will not cave if the senate fails to pass the rec bill? She’s going to hold out all by herself?
Never happen, which may be part of the plan.
I think Kucinich deserves a huge amount of thanks and support for his principled commitment to meaningful HCR.
I think that many in retrospect see what sort of President he would have been and what he might have accomplished. Especialy when he is contrasted with this actual hapless bag of crap that passes for president.
A stern lesson should be learned which is that media blabbering should be blocked out when the country determines its elected officials to high office.
Kucinich should be supported for President next election to oust this miserable spineless bought ought worthless servile corporate ass kisser currently occupying the WH. Let’s begin to promote him now and not be fooled again.