- Because they won't do the sensible thing and let all of us buy into Medicare, Democrats are looking to pay for their crappy, corporate insurance bill by raising the excise taxes on middle class plans. Since Democrats campaigned promising unions and other constituents not to do this, it isn't like women have to feel alone under this health insurance reform bus.
Hoyer: we are going to do it as soon as we have "CBO numbers we have confidence in" "saturday and sunday are possibilities"
This would seem to confirm the rumors that the CBO score hasn't been released yet because it doesn't reduce the deficit enough.
Democrats will have to continue to change the bill until they can get an acceptable score, but time is running out. Since they need three days from the release of the CBO score to the vote, and since Sunday is the last day they can vote, that mean tomorrow night is the absolute latest the score can be released. So, they need to find ways to make the bill reduce the deficit more, and they need to do it in 24 hours.
It would seem that the White House is looking to increase the excise tax as a means of placating the CBO. Ben Smith reports that AFL-CIO chair Richard Trumka has been summoned to the White House to discuss:
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is headed into a meeting with President Obama this afternoon after the White House and Congressional leaders have begun to discuss a higher-than-expected excise tax on some health care plans, in order to maintain their claim that health care legislation will reduce the deficit, a source involved in health care talks said.
It was actually the demand to reduce the excise tax that forced the current plan for the House to pass the Senate bill, and then fix that bill through a reconciliation "sidecar." With the backing of labor, House Democrats of all stripes stood together very strongly on this, torpedoing attempts to just pass the Senate bill unchanged, or attempts to try a smaller bill (or series of smaller bills).
Demanding massive concessions on the excise tax was the actual "Progressive Block" in the negotiations, behind the scenes. With further concessions being demanded on that front, it will take the blessing of Trumka to make the deal work. And so, he has been summoned to the White House.
Of course, including a public option would solve the problems Democrats are currently facing with the CBO, but hey, that was never part of the plan. Or really, even without a public option, you could still finance it by increasing tax rates on high-income households. But I guess a pound of flesh must always be taken from any left-wing group in order for any victory to be allowed.
Last night marriage equality supporters in New York State notched a victory with the special election of Queens Assemblyman Jose Peralta over incumbent (albeit expelled) Sen. Hiram Monserrate. With 95% reporting, the margin was a whopping 66-32%. Monserrate was one of just eight Democrats to vote against marriage equality, flip-flopping on his years of support and promises. He also joined the Pedro Espada-led Republican coup that left the State Senate in limbo for weeks. He was heavily targeted by LGBT advocates and organizations, including some close friends who live in the district. It is, as Duncan Osborne writes, a key first step in the State Senate.
We fell eight votes short of marriage in New York State, given that the Assembly had already passed legislation and Gov. Paterson led the effort for a Senate vote on it, and would have signed it. Seven more to go. Given Monserrate's conviction, expulsion and other litany of problems, he was be the easiest to defeat. There will be tough fight on other fronts. Sen. Onorato from Astoria opted not to run for re-election, and Assemblyman Mike Gianaris, a very strong LGBT ally and marriage supporter, is extremely likely to win the seat. Sen. Frank Padavan, a Republican also from Queens, may receive a challenge from former NYC Councilman Tony Avella. Other races may also pop up. It's also important to make sure allies who voted for the bill keep their seats so wavering Senators next time can see supporting marriage equality isn't political suicide.
We still have a great deal of road to cover, but we are well on our way towards winning the allies needed in New York State.
Today, Representative John Shadegg (R-AZ) took bad faith to a new level, claiming he supports single-payer in a discussion with David Shuster on MSNBC:
"The reality is, this bill is going to reward for-profit insurance companies that have done a disservice," Shadegg said. "This bill is going to give them exactly what they wanted. The insurance industry, the for-profit insurance industry, wanted an individual mandate and that's what they're getting out of this bill. The for-profit insurance industry did not want a public option because they don't like competition and guess what? They're getting that."
Then, after some back and forth with Shuster: "I would support single-payer."
"You would support a government-run medical system?" Shuster asked.
"Absolutely," Shadegg said. "I would support forcing American insurance companies to compete. Right now they have a monopoly.
But Obama is pushing a public plan that he claims will somehow co-exist with private insurance. Shadegg isn't buying it.
"Ultimately, that so-called public plan, or government plan, will run the private sector out of business, because the guys that are operating the public plan are setting the rules for the guys running the private plan," Shadegg says.
The congressman says Obama does not want people to think he will replace private health insurance. That's because of Democrats' bitter experience with the plan pushed by Hillary Clinton when her husband was president.
"I think Hillary figured out after the fact that when she proposed to dramatically change the healthcare system in America at a time when most Americans were relatively happy with their healthcare, she scared people," Shadegg says. "She wanted the same thing that Obama wants, but she was more forthright in proposing it, saying look, we need to go to a single-payer system. And she lost the fight."(...)
"The question is, through what mechanism do you deliver health insurance?" Shadegg says. "Do you put them in a government-run program that forces everybody into a one-size-fits-all kind of cookie cutter system and is run by the government and therefore not subject to the rules of competition, or alternatively, do you facilitate every American being in a system driven by choice, one that produces competition to hold down costs and drive up quality?"
And then, top up the ante, in October Shadegg described single-payer as the step before a Soviet-style gulag:
You know, it occurs to me, and I'll go through these other scandals very quickly, but what we're really getting here is we're not just getting single-payer care. We're getting full on Russian gulag, Soviet-style gulag health care.
So yeah, I believe Shadegg is being honest here. He isn't just cynically parroting left-wing complaints about the bill or anything. He really supports single-payer.
The base has fallen into line. And if Rahm was right all along that progressives, essentially, could be taken for granted, he's about to go from punching bag to hero in the eyes of many Democrats.
That statement is only supportable if you fail to remember what the actual health reform debate was like two months ago. In the wake of the Massachusetts special election, Rahm Emanuel wanted to scrap even the Senate health reform bill and pass something smaller:
Emanuel, for his part, is now pushing for a stripped-down health care bill that could be passed within a few weeks and force Republicans, for a change, to take a few tough votes.
The House should pass the Senate's health insurance reform bill - with an agreement that it will be fixed, fixed right, and fixed right away through a parallel process. [. . . ] The House and Senate must move forward together. And, there is no reason they cannot move forward together to make those changes through any means possible -- whether through reconciliation or other pieces of moving legislation.
Senior Congressional aides said that lawmakers and the White House were increasingly focused on a plan by which the House would adopt the health care bill approved by the Senate on Dec. 24, with any changes made in a separate bill using the budget reconciliation maneuver.
Instead of scrapping the Senate health care bill and passing something stripped down, Congress is moving to pass the Senate health reform bill with improvements through the reconciliation process. Which is what almost everyone except Rahm Emanuel wanted.
It beats me how someone can have the exact opposite of his recommended path forward come to pass, and still be vindicated. Emanuel wanted to water down the Senate bill further, but instead it will be getting stronger through the reconciliation process as progressives were demanding. Yeah, Emanuel really paved the way forward after the Massachusetts debacle.
1. CBO score still not out, deadline tonight. In order to pass the bill by the Easter recess, and avoid any further delays that could sink the bill, the Senate needs to take up the bill next week.
In order for the Senate to take up the reconciliation bill next week, President Obama has to sign the Senate bill into law before he leaves the country for a five day trip on Sunday.
In order for President Obama to sign the bill into law before he leaves the country, the House needs to pass the bill by Saturday night.
And, in order for the House to pass the bill by Saturday night, the CBO needs to release its score of the bill tonight, 72 hours before the House votes.
However, its Wednesday, and there is still no score. While one is expected tonight, the holdup is a pretty serious one. As Jonathan Cohn explains, the reconciliation bill might not reduce the deficit during the second decade after its enactment, which is required in order to pass the bill through reconciliation.
Hard to imagine that this is something which can be fixed in a single day, and without a public option.
2. Two "lean yes" votes move to undecided Reps Marcy Kaptur and Jason Altmire had been in the "lean yes" category of David Dayen's whip count. They don't sound like "lean yes" votes today, though.
Kaptur said she's spoken to Rep. Dale Kildee (D-MI), another pro-life Dem who's signed off on the Senate's abortion language, but didn't find his reasons persuasive.
Sounding more like a no than he was last week. On March 16, Altmire told Fox Business Network that he has major problem with Democrats' apparent "deem and pass" strategy, calling it "wrong."
Last night, there was a report that Speaker Pelosi had called an impromptu meeting at 10 a.m. this morning with all women in the Democratic caucus.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is asking all female Democratic Members to attend a hastily called meeting Wednesday morning but isn't saying what the meeting is about.
Pelosi's office sent an e-mail out Tuesday evening requesting that all female Democrats come to the Members-only meeting at 10 a.m.
An aide to one Democratic Member said Pelosi's office said the topic of the meeting was "to be determined."
Lincoln Davis, Jim Matheson, Harry Teague, Travis Childers, John Barrow, Zack Space, Chris Carney, Brad Ellsworth, Jerry Costello, Henry Cuellar, Nick Rahall, Solomon Ortiz, Earl Pomeroy, Bill Foster, Harry Mitchell.
Of this group, only Bill Foster and Harry Mitchell opposed Stupak, and they are probably the easiest votes to get anyway. Given this, was Speaker Pelosi preparing for a final cave to Stupak in order to get the remaining six votes?
Fortunately, the answer is no. An aide to the leadership has confirmed to me that the following Roll Call story about the meeting is accurate. Speaker Pelosi is meeting with everyone, and in the specifici meeting with the women in the Democratic caucus this morning, and reproductive rights were not discussed:
Abortion provisions in the health care bill were not discussed during a hastily called Wednesday morning meeting between Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and female Democratic Members. Instead, Pelosi ran through talking points on how health care reform benefits women, according to lawmakers who attended the meeting.
From today's earlier thread on the Kucinich announcement, I'd like to flag one comment from ArthurKC:
Kucinish carefully answered a broad question about concessions to him for his vote in a way that did not close the door to him having asked for and gotten a deal on ERISA. He answered in terms of denying anything particular to him or his district. And, it seems that both he and the WH are aware of the blowback on the Louisana Purchase and had gamed out what would be said to avoid stepping in a similar pile on ERISA.
But in the interview, Mr. Lieberman said that he grew apprehensive when a formal proposal began to take shape. He said he worried that the program would lead to financial trouble and contribute to the instability of the existing Medicare program.
And he said he was particularly troubled by the overly enthusiastic reaction to the proposal by some liberals, including Representative Anthony Weiner, Democrat of New York, who champions a fully government-run health care system.
"Congressman Weiner made a comment that Medicare-buy in is better than a public option, it's the beginning of a road to single-payer," Mr. Lieberman said. "Jacob Hacker, who's a Yale professor who is actually the man who created the public option, said, 'This is a dream. This is better than a public option. This is a giant step.'"
Lieberman went so far as to name liberals (albeit somewhat inaccurately) whose opinion he took seriously and used them as justification for throwing away the deal. It seems to me if you could pick any liberal liking something who could make conservative House Democrats think twice about supporting this bill, 499 out of 500 panelists would pick Dennis Kucinich announcing some awesome concession he got to push this bill to the left.
As an organizing discussion I'm sure this will start an interesting conversation over whether, when dealing with Joementum in the future, the Weiners and Hackers of the world should be lying in public and saying the compromise sucks just so he is tricked into being satisfied.
I suppose we'll know when this is all said and done.
