Weekly Pulse: Pelosi Makes Her Move; GOP Rep. Calls for Coup
By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has laid out a strategy to pass health care reform in the next couple of days by allowing the House to vote on the details of the reconciliation package instead of the Senate bill itself. As usual, progressives are fretting that winning will make them look bad. On the other hand, conservatives are baying for blood and calling for revolution.
'Deem and pass'
Nick Baumann of Mother Jones discusses the parliamentary tactic known as "deem and pass" (D&P), which House Democrats plan to use to avoid voting for the Senate bill before the Senate fixes the bill through reconciliation. The House doesn't want to sign a blank check. If the health care bill passes the House first, there's no guarantee that the Senate will make the fixes as promised.
Originally, the hope was that the Senate could do reconciliation first. The problem is that you can't pass a bill to amend a bill that isn't law yet. That would be like putting the cart before the horse. To clear that hurdle, the House will invoke a rule that deems that Senate bill to have passed if and when the House passes the reconciliation package. It's sort of like backdating a check. Ryan Grim explains the process in more detail on Democracy Now!
D&P does not equal treason
Progressives like Kevin Drum worry that D&P will make the Democrats look bad. Meanwhile, the Tea Party crowd is calling for Nancy Pelosi to be tried for treason, as TPM reports. The bottom line is that D&P is no big deal. Republicans used the process 36 times in 2005 and 2006; Democrats used it 49 times in 2007 and 2008. D&P is constitutional. We know because it has already been upheld by the Supreme Court. Kevin Drum writes, "If you have a life, you don't care about the subject of this post and have never heard of it."
Teabag revolution
There is no joy in Tea Party Land, as Dave Weigel reports in the Washington Independent. The tea baggers are frantically lobbying to stop the bill, but the reality is starting to sink in. Their leaders are shifting from trying to kill the bill to planning the tantrum they're going to throw when it passes:
While many held out hope that plans to pass the Senate's version of reform in the House would stall out, others pondered their next steps. Some, like Rep. Steve King (R-IA), took a dark view of what might come.
"Right now, they're civil, because they think they have a chance of stopping this bill," said King to reporters, waving his arm at a pack of "People's Surge" activists forming a line to enter the Cannon House Office Building. "The reason we don't have violence in this country like they do in dictatorships is because we have votes, and our leaders listen to their constituents. Now we're in a situation where the leaders are defying the people!" Later, King would expand on those remarks and speculate on a possible anti-Washington revolt in which Tea Parties would "fill the streets" of the capital.
Sounds like King is calling for a revolution, doesn't it? As it turns out, that's exactly what he says he wants if health care reform passes. Eric Kleefeld of TPMDC reports that King is hoping for something akin to the uprising that overthrew the Communists in Prague in 1989. "Fill this city up, fill this city, jam this place full so that they can't get in, they can't get out and they will have to capitulate to the will of the American people," King said in an interview with the Huffington Post.
Women and health care reform
Health care reform seems poised to pass. Amid the heady excitement, there's a sense of gloom in the reproductive rights community. Bart Stupak was defeated, but health care reform will probably end private insurance coverage for abortion.
In The American Prospect, Michelle Goldberg urges feminists to support reform anyway. She argues that the women suffer disproportionately under the status quo. If reform passes, it will insure 17 million previously uninsured women. Expanding health care coverage might help reverse rising maternal mortality rates in the United States.
A recent report by Amnesty International found that at least two women die in childbirth every day in the U.S., a much higher rate than most developed countries. The anti-choicers had the advantage because they were willing to kill health reform over abortion. The pro-choice faction did not allow itself the luxury of nihilism.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Here is where the Open Left public option whip count stood in the Senate as of late November, 2009:
Oppose bill with any public option (3): Mary Landrieu; Joe Lieberman; Blanche Lincoln
Open to an opt-in public option (1): Ben Nelson.
--Note: Not a worthwhile public option to support
Wouldn't filibuster an overall bill with a public option (2):Evan Bayh; Kent Conrad (never threatened to filibuster).
--Note: Neither would vote for a public option either as an amendment or stand alone bill.
Liked the opt-out (1): Mark Pryor.
--Note: Unclear if Pryor would support non-opt-out
Wouldn't vote against an overall bill with negotiated rates public option (3): Mark Begich ("not a dealbreaker," via constituent letter); Max Baucus (claims to want public option, supposedly voted against it only because it doesn't have 60); and Mark Warner.
--Note: Never promised support as an amendment or as a stand-alone, but wouldn't vote against a bill with one
Even now that Paul Kirk is no longer in the Senate, this count shows 49 supporters for a negotiated rates public option, plus one more if it is an opt-out (Pryor). With Biden, that is enough for passage.
Further, if the public option was included in the bill sent to the floor, rather than added as an amendment, three more votes--Begich, Baucus and Warner--could be counted on. That leaves room for defections, such as the one Jay Rockefeller recently made (although I still think Rockefeller is a potential "yes" vote).
Given this count, in theory, there should be plenty of votes to pass a public option through reconciliation. This is especially the case if an opt-out, negotiated rates public option was included in the bill sent to the Senate floor--something which Harry Reid did back in 2009. So, why doesn't it appear that Senate Democrats will pass a reconciliation bill with a negotiated rates public option?
Glenn Greenwald argues this is an example of bad faith. Senators Dick Durbin's office claims they are not going to allow any amendments to the bill the House sends them, but would whip for a bill that included a negotiated rates public option. The basic idea is that they don't want to blow up any deals on votes once the bill reaches the floor, and they don't want to give Republicans an opening to filibuster the bill through endless series of amendments.
While I am well aware that the White House is not pushing for the public option at all, I am still not willing to call it bad faith just yet. This is because no one has proven that there are 216 votes in the House for a reconciliation "fix" to the Senate health reform bill that includes a negotiated rates public option. There were 220 proven votes in the House back in November, but since that time three "yes" votes are no longer around, and an undetermined group of Stupak voters has also been lost.
Until someone proves that the House has 216 for a reconciliation fix with a public option, then the argument coming out of Durbin's office cannot be disproven. Adding a public option to the reconciliation bill in the Senate might well blow up a deal with the House, and cause the package to go down. This is especially given that in order to pass the bill, House leaders are going to have to cull about a dozen votes from the 37 remaining Democrats who voted "no" in November.
So yeah, it is possible that the Democratic leadership is acting in bad faith on the public option, but it hasn't been proven yet. The post shows that the votes should be there in the Senate. No one has made the same case for the House, but that will be the focus in the last-ditch effort for the public option over the next few days.
I need your help. Which states can be governed by a simple majority? If the current US Senate rules are so great, you'd expect them to be replicated in lots of States right? And if any state does dare entrust its governance to the tyranny of the bi-cameral legislature, with their penchant for spending less on redistribution, well we should expect those states to be doing very poorly right, what with all the crazy laws and socialism they will have.
It turns out this is surprisingly hard to answer. The National Conference of State Legislatures produces items like this and this which highlight the complexity of this topic. I started out reading various State senate rules but states like California, with its two-thirds budget requirement mean that majority rule isn't as simple as the absence of a filibuster.
Inside I will try and lay out an approach to answer this.
Senator Mark Begich is open to using reconciliation for health reform. From a letter to a constituent:
Thank you for contacting me regarding health care reform.
The reconciliation process is a budgetary tool used to address spending and deficit issues with a simple majority vote. The budget reconciliation process has been used 22 times by both parties since 1980. Action to clean up the health reform bill will further reduce the deficit.
Comprehensive health care reform has already passed the Senate with 60 votes. If the House passes the Senate bill, the President could sign that version of comprehensive reform into law. I believe reconciliation would only be used as a tool to take out special backroom deals and to eliminate concerns raised by many Alaskans I've talked with. The President has proposed narrow changes which I support, including completely closing the coverage gap for seniors' prescription drugs, eliminating the special Nebraska funding provision, providing additional federal financing to all states to help pay for the expansion of Medicaid, and strengthening the Medicare waste, fraud, and abuse provisions.
Again, thank you for contacting me. As the 111th Congress moves forward, please continue to be in touch with your thoughts and concerns.
When the health care debate began lo these many (many, many, many) moons ago, I felt sure of some things based on my experience with the health care reform battle in the Clinton White House. I was certain that it would take far longer than was being projected; that the bill would have lots of compromises that would make me unhappy; that the process would be messy, ugly, convoluted, bitter and highly partisan; and that every single step of the way would be wrenchingly hard.
It turns out that I was an optimist.
All of my assumptions came true in spades, but in every single case it's been worse than I feared. We are now finally - finally - coming to the end game. Over the next couple of weeks we will finally know whether having gone this far, Democrats can drag this wounded beast of health care reform across the finish line.
There are so many things about this process and this bill that I am unhappy about. The Obama White House made way too many tactical mistakes, compromised too early and too often, gratuitously insulted their base multiple times, and failed to show the leadership they should have on some of the biggest issues. The final package, while improved in some very significant ways from what the Senate passed, will be deeply flawed both policy-wise and politically. At this final moment of decision, though, I think progressives need to say yes to getting the bill passed.
Over 40,000 Americans a year are dying from not having insurance, and that number will go up if this bill isn't passed. People who don't have any way of getting insurance currently will get insurance with this bill, and subsidies to help pay for it - subsidies that progressives have succeeded at increasing from the inadequate Senate bill. A right to health insurance would finally be established in this country, crossing a rubicon that we have worked to cross for over a century. Insurers will no longer be able to screw people who have pre-existing conditions. Insurers will finally be subject to federal rate regulation.
For all the disappointments, for all the flaws, this legislation does some critically important things, and I believe it sets the stage for doing better things down the road. If Democrats can't get this passed now, the lesson that Democrats will learn is to never try anything big or difficult again. If we get this legislation passed, it begins to change the psychology of Democrats just a little: that they can succeed at being ambitious and that they can make big changes if they persevere in the face of big money and political challenges.
So I'm all in. As painful as the process has been, as disappointed as I am by the flaws in the bill, I'm all in. I'm not consulting with anyone anymore on this issue (HCAN has had me as a consultant for a while, but that's been done for some time). I'm in this fight because I think it's the right thing to do. Which brings me to the rather painful decision I had to make late yesterday: that cruise trip I won a few months ago in the Air American contest (many thanks to all of you who voted for me) leaves from San Diego tomorrow, and I've decided not to go. My wife and I were really looking forward to it, having never been on a cruise, and we were very excited to be able to spend some time with Rachel Maddow, who is the featured guest on the cruise. (Seriously, Rachel, you are my all-time favorite cable show host, and getting to hang with you was the main reason I wanted to go on this trip. Maybe we can do lunch sometime.) But with the fate of this bill hanging in the balance, with the Speaker still facing a tough hill to get the necessary votes, and next week being the time to finally pin people down and get this done, I could not in good conscience go on the trip. I started working for universal health care 30 years ago, I fought the good fight with the Clintons the last time around, and I am not going to leave the battlefield for a week now. I am going to fight tooth and nail to get it done this time.
Climate legislation is returning to the Senate's docket, and leaders on Capitol Hill are hoping that this version, a compromise bill spearheaded by Sens. John Kerry (D-MA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT), can pass without getting caught in the morass of money and politics that has delayed action so far.
A long, long time ago...
Remember, there was a time when Congress was going to pass climate legislation before the international climate change negotiations in Copenhagen. President Barack Obama was going to show up with a bill in hand and lead the world towards a better climate future. After the House passed its climate bill in June 2009, the Senate began discussing climate change, and a first stab by Sen. Kerry and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) went nowhere. Now, Kerry has turned to less liberal colleagues to draft an alternative that would appeal to moderates and even Republicans.
Now the Massachusetts senator is promising that climate change isn't dead. A new bill is coming-more information may be in the offing as early as today, as Kate Sheppard reports at Mother Jones.
Third time's the charm
Sen. Kerry is trying a new tactic to pass climate legislation. He's waiting to release his plan until he knows the bill has the 60 supporters it needs to circumvent a filibuster. The details have not been hammered out yet, and even the Senators who've been in talks with Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman don't seem to have a clear sense of what will be in the version that will emerge.
In the House, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, released an ambitious draft of the legislation, let lobbyists and members of Congress fight over it, and passed a much-changed edition months later. Sen. Kerry tried a similar plan on his side of Capitol Hill (that was the Kerry-Boxer bill), but it did not work.
With this piece of legislature, Sens. Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman are working out the compromises before they release the legislation. Both reporting and speculation about their bill say that it will abandon the cap-and-trade system passed in the House. Cap-and-trade restricts carbon emissions across the economy; a variation on that policy that the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman bill may favor will limit the system to a few sectors.
Will it work?
Kerry's expected bill may be a much weaker plan than any proposed so far, yet it is still not certain that the Senate will support it. The lead authors of the bill have been meeting with conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans, as Sheppard reports, but those targets have not promised support yet. Coming out of a meeting, Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) told reporters: "There were some interesting things that were discussed in there and like everything else in the United States Senate, the devil is in the details."
From a distance, banner-day climate legislation still seems possible. Environmental groups like the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Foundation, and the National Resources Defense Council believe that they will see a bill this year that caps carbon. These green groups would be able to live with the incentives handed to industry groups so far, according to Campus Progress' Tristan Fowler.
"There are compromises [that can go] too far. Fortunately, I don't think we're getting near that territory at the moment," Josh Dorner, a spokesman for the Sierra Club, told Fowler.
Sickly green
Before getting too excited about stamping a green seal of approval on Congress' legislation, consider Johann Hari's testimony in The Nation about the relationships between environmental groups and the industries that they oppose.
Hari has reported on climate change issues for years, and at first, he "imagined that American green groups were on these people's side in the corridors of Capitol Hill, trying to stop the Weather of Mass Destruction. But it is now clear that many were on a different path-one that began in the 1980s, with a financial donation."
Hari argues that as environmental groups began to reach out to polluters, handing them awards for green behavior and accepting support from their deep pockets, they learned to compromise too readily and accept political excuses for delaying action on climate change. While in other realms these compromises might fly, when the stakes are as high as they are on environmental issues, that behavior turns the stomach.
"You can't stand at the edge of a rising sea and say, 'Sorry, the swing states don't want you to happen today. Come back in fifty years,'" Hari writes.
The green future
When Kerry, Lieberman and Graham do release the compromised bill, watch for a tsunami of money and influence that could pack the bill with prizes for specific industries-or derail it altogether. Just this week, the natural gas industry's lobbyists told The Hill, a D.C.-based newspaper, that they were ready to fight with the coal industry over incentives in the Senate bill. At AlterNet, Harvey Wasserman writes that the nuclear industry spent $645 million in the past decade to get back into the energy game, according to a new report from American University's Investigative Reporting Workshop. (Hint: that $645 million is working in their favor.)
In the Senate, the influence of oil companies will play an important role, according to David Roberts at Grist.
"While coal has a lot of power in the House, oil has enormous power in the Senate, particularly over the conservadems and Republicans needed to put the bill over the top," Roberts explains.
No matter what legislation passes and what incentives it contains, environmentalists need to continue putting pressure on their representatives in Congress and on national environmental groups to push back against polluting industries and work to fix the world's climate.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Via lord_mike in quick hits, Senator Robert Byrd is open to using budget reconciliation to fix the Senate health reform bill. Byrd's staff writes into a local West Virginia newspaper:
I believed then, as now, that the Senate should debate the health reform bill under regular rules, which it did. The result of that debate was the passing of a comprehensive health care reform bill in the Senate by a 60-vote supermajority.
I continue to support the budget reconciliation process for deficit reduction. The entire Senate- or House- passed health care bill could not and would not pass muster under the current reconciliation rules, which were established under my watch.
Yet a bill structured to reduce deficits by, for example, finding savings in Medicare or lowering health care costs, may be consistent with the Budget Act, and appropriately considered under reconciliation.
This is the end of the reconciliation whip count. If Robert Byrd is OK with a reconciliation fix, then there is no longer any doubt the Senate has the votes for a reconciliation fix.
How meaningful is Byrd's support? In 2009, Byrd switched his vote on the federal budget from "yea" on April 2nd, to "nay" on April 29th, entirely because the April 29th version of the budget left open the possibility of using reconciliation for health care (the April 2nd budget did not). From Byrd's statement at the time:
"I like this budget. I support many of the policies that the President's budget embraces - including middle-class tax relief, and badly needed investments in our nation's infrastructure - but I cannot, and I will not, vote to authorize the use of the reconciliation process to expedite passage of health care reform legislation or any other legislative proposal that ought to be debated at length by this body."
"Using reconciliation to ram through complicated, far-reaching legislation is an abuse of the budget process. The writers of the Budget Act, and I am one, never intended for its reconciliation's expedited procedures to be used this way. These procedures were narrowly tailored for deficit reduction. They were never intended to be used to pass tax cuts, or to create new Federal regimes. Additionally, reconciliation measures must comply with Section 313 of the Budget Act, known as the Byrd Rule, which means that whatever health legislation is reported from the Finance Committee or legislation from any other Committee that is shoe-horned into reconciliation will sunset after five years. Additionally, numerous other non-budgetary provisions of any such legislation will have to be omitted under reconciliation. This is a very messy way to achieve a goal like health care reform, and one that will make crafting the legislation more difficult."
If Byrd is now open to a reconciliation fix after writing that last year, then the Senate will do a reconciliation fix.
With all due respect, the Daily Mail's hyperbole about "imposing government control," acts of "disrespect to the American people" and "corruption" of Senate procedures resembles more the barkings from the nether regions of Glennbeckistan than the "sober and second thought" of one of West Virginia's oldest and most respected daily newspapers.
As Natasha said to me this morning, "let's never take a trip to the nether regions of Glennbeckistan." [Homer Simpson revulsion noise]
Question #1: Open to using reconciliation to finish health reform? Yes: 45
Maybe: 5
Nope: 1
No comment: 8
Question #2: Include a public option in reconciliation bill? Yes: 37
Maybe: 4
No: 6
No comment: 12
Question #1 remains vitally important, as the House will not take up the Senate health reform bill until the Senate proves to House leaders that the Senate has enough votes to pass a "fix" to the Senate bill through budget reconciliation. On that front, Sherrod Brown makes a bold prediction:
Sen Sherrod Brown predicts Dems will get 52-57 votes for reconciliation on health care reform in the Senate
The higher end of that range sounds about right. So far, only one Senator, Blanche Lincoln, has come out in opposition to using reconciliation to pass health reform.
As far as the public option is concerned, the only chance it has is to be included in the reconciliation bill that will pass the House a couple of days after the House passes the Senate health reform bill. Tom Harkin has already declared that the Senate will not add a public option to that reconciliation bill if the House does not include one. So, if the House does not send the Senate a reconciliation bill that includes the public option, the public option is dead once and for all.
The clock is ticking. Only about two weeks left until the House takes up a reconciliation bill.
Michael Bennet is having a good couple of weeks. First, he starts a letter on including the public option in the budget reconciliation "fix" to the Senate heath reform bill which 34 Senators have signed. Now, he is proposing both lobbying and filibuster reform:
Joining a growing number of lawmakers angry at Washington, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet today will announce an ambitious set of reforms to change many of the rules under which his colleagues work, including an effort to restrict earmarks and limit the filibuster.(...)
But the kicker is the call to restructure the filibuster, a tool that has been wielded with devastating effect in the past year by Republicans and moderate Democrats.
Bennet, who is up for election this fall and faces a primary challenge from Andrew Romanoff, would reduce the majority required to overcome a filibuster to 55 votes after specific conditions were met.
The 51-vote Senate proposals given by Senators Tom Harkin and Tom Udall are preferred. However, as long as there are 51 Senators in favor of some sort of reform on the first day the Senate is in session in 2011, then there will be some sort of reform. And even some sort of reform is a very good thing.
Yeah, I'm with Red State, Michelle Malkin, Ed Morrisey and Erick Erickson. Where does Roll Call and the rest of the lamestream media get off calling Bunning's persistent use of a procedural tactic to block a vote on legislation, a "filibuster"?
filibuster - Informal term for any attempt to block or delay Senate action on a bill or other matter by debating it at length, by offering numerous procedural motions, or by any other delaying or obstructive actions.
Clearly this term has a specific, narrow legal meaning and only refers to what happens when between 41 and 49 Senators vote "no" on a cloture motion. That's been Senate tradition since the founders 1975!
Sen. Ted Kaufman will vote for a public insurance option as part of a health care reconciliation package, the Delaware Democrat told HuffPost Tuesday evening.
Whip count numbers now reflect this update.
****
The public option whip count in the Senate continues to make progress. Senator Ron Wyden says he would vote yes to pass a reconciliation bill with a public option:
Wyden, in a statement, said, "I've long believed we need a more competitive insurance market. If the House version of the public option came up for a vote in reconciliation I would vote yes."
Also, in Colorado, Senator Mark Udall says the same:
Senator Udall shares President Obama's over-arching priority of enacting meaningful and comprehensive health reform that will increase quality and access and put our system on a sustainable track by lowering costs for small businesses, taxpayers, and American families. As part of reform, he continues to feel that inclusion of a public option to go head-to-head with private insurers could play a significant role in bringing down costs and offering more affordable options to Coloradans. He thinks it's important that such a plan -- like the one approved in the House bill -- negotiate reimbursement rates while competing on a level playing field with the private sector, and if such a plan comes up for a vote under the reconciliation process, he would vote for it.
Asked directly if he supported a public plan that would give folks access to Medicare or something like it, Halter answered: "Yes."
"If you give individuals the opportuinity to voluntarily buy into a system like Medicare, there is broad support for that," Halter said.
Asked directly whether he'd back a reconciliation vote on the public option - and the use of reconciliation in general to pass reform, which Lincoln has hedged on - Halter answered Yes on both counts.
"Reconciliation has been used multiple times not just on tax bills but on health bills," he said.
When the "yes" and "maybe" votes on reconciliation are combined, they total 49. As such, if this pressure forced Blanche Lincoln to change her position on reconciliation, there would now be enough votes to pass a fix to the Senate health reform bill through the budget reconciliation process.
The economic collapse and ensuing high unemployment rates have reminded us that no one is immune to the vagaries of the 21st century economy. While there has been significant disagreement about how to jumpstart the economy, motivated as often as not by partisanship, most people in Congress understand that, at least in the short-term, basic human decency demands that our social safety net remain accessible to the millions enduring hardship because of the extended recession. For one Senator, though, it is simply too expensive to provide even modest support to those among us who are have been hit hardest.
This morning brings news that Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey supports passing a public option through reconciliation. Ryan Grim quotes a spokesperson from Senator Casey's office:
"He has been a longtime advocate for a public option and he believes that it is the best way to increase choice and competition and to hold insurance companies accountable. He has made this known to Senate leadership as next steps are considered. If there is a vote on the House public option in reconciliation, he will vote yes."
Currently, 30 Senate Democrats have indicated their support for passing a public option in an up or down vote via reconciliation. And last week, in a brief interview off the Senate floor, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) said they speak for him as well. "I appreciate the fact that...other members here have expressed my feelings about the issue," he said.
Question #1: Open to using reconciliation to finish health reform? Yes: 42
Maybe: 6
Nope: 1
No comment: 10
Question #2: Include a public option in reconciliation bill? Yes: 32
Maybe: 7
No: 6
No comment: 14
As I detailed yesterday, all of the "maybes" on question #2 seem like "yes" votes. However, as I will discuss in a subsequent post, the emerging process to finish health reform is a serious complicating factor to all of this.
Update--Harry Reid joins in: WhipCongress now lists Harry Reid as a supporter. That makes 33 in favor of a public option through reconciliation.
What they do not have to worry about are Republican attacks over the use of the budget reconciliation process. This is because no one friggin' understands Senate procedure, and the use of any sort of that procedure is never going to result in any significant blowback from the American people.
Over the last month, mainly by citing polls, I have made quite a few arguments that the country does not understand, or really care about, Senate process. However, leaving polls aside for the moment, consider an exchange I had with former President Bill Clinton about this subject back in September. Even he didn't understand Senate process (more in the extended entry):
Yesterday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that the public option was not currently on the table:
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) predicted Sunday that she would find the votes to pass a health care overhaul and said Democrats had already made major concessions to Republicans, including ditching the public insurance option.
"A year later, we're closer to what Republicans were suggesting at that time, an exchange and not a public option," she said on CNN's "State of the Union."
Pelosi said, "There is no public option on the table now."
And yet, despite this, public support for passing a public option in reconciliation continues to grow. Over at WhipCongress.com, 29 Senators have now signed the Bennet letter in support of a public option via reconciliation (although the website says 30, I count 29). Additionally, Russ Feingold has told a member of the Open Left community, Peter from WI, that he would support a public option via reconciliation. That makes 30.
Among the eight "maybe" Senators on the public option, there is significant potential for more support:
Bob Casey's office stated that Senator Casey supported reconciliation to finish health care, and also supported the public option, but did not clearly state he supported passing a public option in reconciliation.
That is eight more potential support for a public option through reconciliation, for a potential total of 38. So, even with all the pessimism, 50 no longer seems impossible.
The key at this point is making sure that there is a vote to include a public option in the Senate reconciliation bill. Such votes are far from guarantees, since Republicans and some conservative Democrats are going to try and defeat reconciliation for health reform through an endless series of amendments. As such, the Senate Democratic leadership is going to try and limit the number of amendments offered by as much as possible. Back in December, other Republican delay tactics prevented a Senate vote on Medicare for all. In this case, they might prevent a vote on the public option.
The Senate has adjourned for the weekend without passing an extension of unemployment and COBRA benefits. The immediate reason for this is Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning:
Jim Bunning, a Republican from Kentucky, is single-handedly blocking Senate action needed to prevent an estimated 1.2 million American workers from prematurely losing their unemployment benefits next month.
As Democratic senators asked again and again for unanimous consent for a vote on a 30-day extension Thursday night, Bunning refused to go along.
And when Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) begged him to drop his objection, Politico reports, Bunning replied: "Tough shit."
This is horrifying. 1.2 million people are about to lose their unemployment benefits because of Senate rules.
Democrats can blame Bunning, but why did they adjourn? Further, why do so many continue to defend procedural rules that make something like this possible?
Democrats are going to get blamed for this, too. People who lose their unemployment benefits are not going to think "oh, this happened because one Senator refused to agree to a unanimous consent on a motion to proceed, so I'll blame that Senator." No. That isn't going to happen.
Democrats are in charge, and they are going to get blamed for this. Democratic attempts to blame this on Senate procedure will ring utterly hollow. Not only do people not understand, or care about, those rules, but it simply sounds wimpy and pathetic for the people running the United States Government to throw their hands up in the air and say "our procedural rules prevented us from doing anything to solve this huge problem. Sorry."
Democrats did not have to adjourn. They could have kept fighting Bunning. Further, they all agreed to the rules under which the Senate operates, and most of them are still defending those rules. Blaming Senate procedure is not going to extend anyone's unemployment or COBRA benefits, and its not going to win many hearts around the country.
Sure, Jim Bunning is currently the biggest asshole in the country right now. However, if you think that procedure is a problem, then start working to change the procedure. If you think that unemployment benefits need to be extended, then don't adjourn for the weekend when those benefits are slated to run out.
Two of the favorite media narratives about the ideological leanings of Senators are:
Democrats won their large Senate majority by recruiting candidates with center-right leanings.
Both parties are equally polarized against a postulated American moderate mainstream.
An analysis of the three most comprehensive Senate voting scorecards runs counter to both of those beliefs. The 22 freshman Democratic Senators are actually more left-leaning than the 37 non-freshman Democrats. Further, Senate Republicans are much more conservative as a group than Senate Democrats.
The Hill is reporting the Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), the longest serving member of the Senate, sent a "Dear Colleague" letter opposing filibuster reform. Here is an except from the letter:
"I am sympathetic to frustrations about the Senate's rules, but those frustrations are nothing new," Byrd wrote. "However, I believe that efforts to change or reinterpret the rules in order to facilitate expeditious action by a simple majority, while popular, are grossly misguided."
Upon first glance, that certainly sounds like a blow to filibuster reform. However, its not. This is because, later in the same letter, Senator Byrd actually advocates for filibuster reform:
"Senators are obliged to exercise their best judgment when invoking their right to extended debate," Byrd said. " They should also be obliged to actually filibuster - that is, go to the floor and talk, instead of finding less strenuous ways to accomplish the same end."
Byrd argues that Senators should be forced to actually talk on the floor. Such an obligation would be a departure from the current "painless filibuster," where Senators are not obligated to talk in order to sustain the filibuster. After extensive research into the matter, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid concluded that current Senate rules do not obligate filibustering Senators to engage in a talk-a-thon:
Reid's office has studied the history of the filibuster and analyzed what options are available. The resulting memo was provided to the Huffington Post and it concludes that a filibustering Senator "can be forced to sit on the [Senate] floor to keep us from voting on that legislation for a finite period of time according to existing rules but he/she can't be forced to keep talking for an indefinite period of time."
So, by declaring that filibustering Senators must be forced to continuously talk on the Senate floor in order to maintain the filibuster, Senator Byrd actually is advocating for filibuster reform.
Granted, this is not the filibuster reform for which I am advocating. Personally, I want the Harkin plan, which would allow 40 Senators to delay legislation for a few days, but not ultimately stop it.
Still, Byrd is advocating for filibuster reform of a sort. And, as long as there are 51 Democratic Senators (including Vice-President Biden) in favor of some type of filibuster reform on January 3rd, 2011, then there will be filibuster reform. With Robert Byrd, we just hit #20. Here are all of them:
