It now seems quite likely that the Senate has the 60 votes necessary to force cloture on the motion to proceed with the health care bill. The final three votes Senate majority leader Harry Reid needed were Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, and Mary Landrieu, but all three now appear to be ready to vote "aye." Here is a rundown of all three:
"This weekend, I will vote for the motion to proceed to bring that debate onto the Senate floor," Nelson says. "The Senate should start trying to fix a health care system that costs too much and delivers too little for Nebraskans."
Nelson indicates that this does not mean he is ready to support cloture to pass the bill, but he is willing to let debate go forward.
Earlier today, Senate #2 Dick Durbin stated that Blanche Lincoln has told Harry Reid she would vote yes. Durbin is now walking back that statement, but really, the gig is up for Lincoln.
Anyway, what was Lincoln going to do--oppose even letting the debate go forward and then ask Democrats to vote for her in 2010? Not bloody likely, especially with a prominent figure in Arkansas still considering a primary challenge. Lincoln is highly likely to be a yes.
Right-wingers are in an uproar over this, but really--I am shocked, shocked to find that there is gambling going on in this casino! A member of Congress holding out on a key vote in order to secure funding for her home state or district!? I bet that has never happened before. This is really breaking new ground on Capitol Hill!
Further, while they don't seem to realize it, the right-wing uproar over Landrieu's deal actually makes it virtually impossible for her to vote against cloture now. Due to right-wing publicity, now everyone knows Landrieu is bringing $100 million home by holding out. As such, what is Landrieu going to do--issue a statement that preventing a floor debate on health care is more important than $100 million for Louisiana? Only 9% of Louisianans think she should block the debate. I bet a lot more than that want the $100 million, especially now that everyone has heard about the $100 million.
So, it looks like Democrats have the 60 needed to move forward on debate. The truth is that Reid probably secured the 60 votes before filing the cloture motion. It is a rare day when the leadership doesn't know the outcome of a vote before scheduling it.
The vote will take place tomorrow night, at 8 p.m. eastern, following an all-day debate. Notably, in exchange for the all-day debate, Senator Coburn has dropped his demand that the entire bill be read out loud, which means there will be less droning on C-SPAN2 during Monday and Tuesday of next week.
As expected, there are plenty of new public opinion polls on health care and health care reform. Though some people may already be tired of the topic, it is more important now than ever that we understand where the public stands on health care, how the trends in opinion are changing, and why. Indirectly related to issues of healthcare is a new public opinion poll on capitalism, twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Health Care
Health Care: the Individual Mandate and a Public Option The October Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll found that 66% of those surveyed report that they are in favor of requiring all Americans to have health insurance (provided there is financial help for those who need it). A majority of those surveyed (57%) also expressed support for the creation of a government-administered public health insurance option that would compete with private insurers. In addition, a majority expressed that “it is more important than ever to take on health care reform now” (55%).
Who will be better Off with Health Care Reform?
According to the above Kaiser poll, a majority asserted that the country as a whole would be better off if Congress passed health care reform (53%). A plurality (41%) expressed that individually, they or their families would be better off if Congress passed health care reform, with 27% expressing that they would be worse off.
In the comments to today's action post, some have asked why I, and other progressives, are embracing the Senate bill. Here is my blunt answer: 45,000 Americans die every year from lack of health insurance. The Senate bill reduces the number of people uninsured in this country by roughly two-thirds, thus potentially saving 30,000 lives a year. The House bill will reduce the number of uninsured by roughly 75%, thus potentially saving 36,000 lives a year.
By no means does this solve the health care problems we face in America, but this is still a real achievement. Throw in the fact that, against all odds, we managed to get a triggerless public option in the bill, and yeah, I'd vote for the Senate health care bill. And yeah, I will work to pass it.
Right now, we have 56 votes for cloture, and we need to get the last four frickin' members of the Democratic Senate caucus on board. The Adopt-a-State action is a great way to help do this. Please, join in.
The action is going well, too. By a long, long way, more members of the Open Left community are participating in this action than any non-petition action we have run since the Senate whip count campaign over the summer. Already, nearly 4,000 over 7,000 people have clicked through to SEIU's Adopt-a-State action site, just from the email blast. Many more have clicked through from the blog itself.
I'm glad that people are pissed off. I am actually glad that some are not willing to accept the bill. As I wrote earlier today, I believe we need a much larger, hardcore progressive base.
But personally, I support this bill, and I will work to get it passed. If you don't, that's fine, but if you do I hope you will take part in the Adopt-a-State action. This can save lives--a lot of lives--and we are only four frickin' senators away from pulling it off.
The Senate introduced its health care reform bill yesterday, and only four fricking members of the Democratic Senator caucus are standing in the way of passage. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana are the only four remaining "Democratic" Senators who have not ruled out joining with a Republican filibuster of health care reform.
What the #%@*!?!
What's worse, these four don't really give a rat's a$$ what you think, even though their vote affects you. Unless you are a resident of Arkansas, Connecticut, Louisiana or Nebraska, as far as they are concerned, you might as well live on Pluto.
Fortunately, Open Left is teaming up with SEIU to do something about it. Even if you do not live in Arkansas, Connecticut, Louisiana or Nebraska, SEIU has developed activist tools that allow you to contact voters in those four states, and tell those voters to tell their Senators to get on board with health care reform. Fight back and make a difference--sign up and tell one, or all four, of these "Democratic" Senators to pass health care reform with a public option:
All the efforts we made to retake Congress. All of the efforts we made to retake the White House. All of the efforts we made to find 51 Senators in favor of health care reform with a public option. It took us fifteen years to get to this point, and we still have to deal with four freaking Democratic Senators who might join with Republicans and filibuster health care reform? Aaarrgghhhh!
If you want to stop things from happening, or slow things down to the speed of molasses, being a US Senator is the world's greatest job. And if your entire political party's complete strategy is to kill every single thing proposed, it's a hell of a deal. But ever so slowly, painfully, creakily, the Senate is beginning to move forward on debating health care reform. It looks more and more like Harry Reid has gotten agreement to pass the motion to debate, the CBO has finally scored the bill, and the debate will likely begin next week- or, who knows given all the delaying tactics, maybe after they get back from Thanksgiving. But things are starting to move.
The motion to debate is only the first step, though, in these ridiculous Senate rules. Democrats are as of right now still probably four or five votes short on getting 60 votes to end debate. The same problem we knew about from the very earliest stages of this fight- that four or five conservative Democrats in the Senate and 60 or so progressives in the House are still dug in on seemingly irreconcilable differences on the public option- is still a big fat unresolved problem. Abortion looms as the second most vexing issue. And then there are half a dozen really important and problematic other issues to be resolved. It will be high drama right up to the end, and if anyone tells you they know how it's going to come out, they are fooling both you and themselves.
Reid has a host of alternatives once this gets to the floor, and he and the Speaker and the White House have many different levers of power to use to ram this through if they are willing to use them, so as I have believed all along, I still think something will pass. The question, though, is which factions do the best job of hanging together and negotiating most smartly, and which choices do the key power players make.
Reconciliation is still an option, but even progressives like Harkin and Rockefeller don't want to go there unless they absolutely have to because of the mess it would make of the bill, and the hoops that would have to be jumped through. If both Senate conservatives and House progressives remain dug in, though, dividing these bills into two pieces, the budget related items (including the public option) and everything else, is still the way that Reid might be forced to go. Since that is truly a last resort, he will continue to find the sweet spot that both sides can live with. And if all else fails, he can always just keep the bill on the floor for debate as long as the holdout Democrats want to debate it. Given that the polling numbers I have seen even in conservative states show that voters overwhelmingly want a debate and final vote allowed, that would put those Democrats in a very uncomfortable spot.
I wrote several months ago that ultimately the fate of this bill would come down to who blinks first, House progressives or Senate conservatives. One of them will win the majority of what they want on policy, and one of them will be given a fig leaf that allows them to say I forced a compromise. If it is House progressives who blink, or who let themselves be picked off one by one, not only would the final bill be far worse, I think it will be a political disaster for the Democratic party: bitter division, a disaffected base going into 2010, Republicans attacking full scale with no progressives to raise support and push back. Progressives have already compromised almost to the breaking point, and it is time for the conservatives in the party to do the same.
The Senate health care bill is now online. It is a lot to wade through, but I can tell you a few things right off the bat:
The opt-out public option in the bill will not begin until 2014. This is one year later than even the 2013 date included in earlier versions of the bill.
The opt-out mechanism is simply when states pass a law. So, that means both state legislatures (except in Nebraska), plus a Governor's signature. Now, even if the opt-out public option passes into law, conservatives have an extra year to try and organize against it.
The penalty for individuals not purchasing health insurance will be $95, and also will not start until 2014.
Also, while the Senate bill does not include Stupak language in the House bill, the public option will not cover abortion procedures.
Obviously, in a bill this large, these bullet points just scratch the surface. Consider them appetizers.
1. What's in the bill? The Senate Democratic caucus has just started their meeting on the merged senate health care bill. Wonkroom tweets, via CNN, that the bill will cost $849 billion, and reduce the deficit by $127 billion, over ten years. Via Quick Hits, it will only over 94% of Americans (31 million), which is up from 83%, but below the 96% (36 million) estimated by the CBO for the House bill. So, it actually has a higher cost per person covered than the House health care bill, with less generous subsidies to match.
Over at Fire Dog Lake, Dave Dayden breaks down what to expect in the bill. It appears that, at least for now, it will include the opt-out public option. The triggered co-op, not reconciliation, remains "Plan B.".
2. Will it get to the floor? Earlier in the day, majority leader Harry Reid gave Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu and Blanche Lincoln a sneak peak of the bill. The only conclusion to draw from this is that these are the only three Senators who have not committed to vote in favor a motion to proceed on the bill.
Ben Nelson seems to be leaning in favor of voting yes, although he doesn't promise to support the bill in its final vote. No indication from Blanche Lincoln. May Landrieu claims to be leaning toward voting against, probably in an attempt to force concessions even before the bill hits the floor. If she does defeat the bill, it will delay the process in the Senate by at least two more weeks, and water it down even further.
3. What is the timeline and process? The motion to proceed vote is expected on Saturday, in order to give 72 hours between unveiling the bill and voting on it. Then again, I'm not sure why, given that this is the motion to proceed, rather than the vote on the actual bill. A complete description of the process required to bring the bill to the floor can be read here.
Really limping forward here. At this point, the best case scenario is that the debate and amendment process will begin on Tuesday, December 1st.
In addition to the release of the Senate health care bill this evening (Senate Democratic caucus meeting, 5 p.m. eastern, with CBO score), the buzz today is that Senate majority leader Harry Reid won't use reconciliation for health care reform. This would reduce the chances of passing a public option in the bill, given that Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln and Mary Landrieu have to committed to voting for cloture on a bill with a public option.
However, the actual article reporting that Reid won't use reconciliation this isn't quite so definitive:
In a meeting Nov. 16 with Democrats who support a Medicare-like public option, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., indicated that he did not plan to try to move a health bill through reconciliation, other Democrats said.
"I'm not going to quote him, but suffice to say, after the meeting was over I thought it was unlikely," said Bob Casey, D-Pa.
Regan LaChapelle, a spokeswoman for Reid, said, "We are not ruling anything out, but Sen. Reid is continuing to work to put together a bill that will garner the 60 votes needed to overcome a Republican filibuster.
Not sure how much this actually changes anything. "Unlikely" isn't the same thing as "never." Reconciliation rarely came to the forefront in public discussions of health care, which almost always made it pretty "unlikely" that the Senate would use reconciliation. In fact, back in April, the Senate did not even include an option to use reconciliation health care in the budget, and only added it later on at the behest of the House.
The remaining questions are reconciliation are two-fold:
If the current bill reaches an impasse as the final vote nears, is Reid more willing to make concessions to Landrieu, Lieberman, Lincoln, Nelson and others than he is to use reconciliation? The answer is probably "more willing to make concessions."
How late in the game can the bill still be split into two, with the regulatory measures passing through 60 votes and things like the public option passing with only 51? The answer here, I believe, is as late as the conference committee between the House and Senate. Right up until the very end.
Really, it was never very likely that the Senate would use reconciliation, so I'm not sure this changes much. Then again, it was never very likely that the Senate would include a public option of any sort in the health care bill, and that did happen.
There is still a long time to go in this process--a minimum of three weeks until the conference committee, for example. If it is apparent that reconciliation is the only way to get a good bill, it still doesn't seem impossible that it can be used. It is a longshot, but it wlways was a longshot.
A Michigan woman threatened a Minnesota newspaper with mass murder for criticizing Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN)'s anti-health reform rally, reports Paul Schmelzer in the Minnesota Independent:
...A woman in Michigan, angered over a newspaper editorial criticizing Bachmann's event, threatened to take a gun to the paper and "do what they did at Fort Hood" in response.
How pro-life.
David Corn of Mother Jones reports that Bachmann (R-MN) may also face an ethics investigation for using her taxpayer-funded website to promote the Tea Pary-Superbowl of Freedom, a partisan political rally to defeat health care reform. The Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a non-profit political watchdog, alleges that Bachmann violated a House rule against using official websites for "grassroots lobbying or [to] solicit support for a Member's position." She literally told her supporters to come to Washington on Nov 5 and tell their representatives to vote against health reform. That's textbook grassroots lobbying and a clear no-no for a taxpayer-funded website.
Speaking of pesky rules and regulations, Rep. Bart Stupak's (D-MI) C Street residence is no-longer tax exempt. Stupak, who became famous for inserting a radical and far-reaching abortion funding ban into the House health reform bill, lives with several other lawmakers at a house on C Street. The house is owned by a secretive fundamentalist sect known as The Family. For years, C Street avoided paying property taxes by claiming to be a church. All that's over now. Ed Brayton of the Michigan Messenger reports that the IRS has finally figured out that C Street is a dorm.
Alex Koppelman reports in Salon that Stupak is reiterating his threat to kill health care reform if his language is stripped from the final bill:
"They're not going to take it out," Stupak said of Senate Democrats during an appearance on "Fox and Friends" Tuesday morning. "If they do, healthcare will not move forward ... At least 10 to 15 to 20 of us will not vote for it."
At Feministing, Jos Truit discusses the Hyde Amendment, a piece of 1976 legislation that bans the use of federal funds for abortions. The Hyde Amendment is back in the news because Stupak is falsely claiming that his amendment merely applies Hyde principles to health insurance.
Does he know that 45,000 born people die every year because they don't have health insurance?
The fight over abortion coverage in a reformed health care system is far from over. It's unlikely that Reid wrote Stupak language into his version of the bill, and it's equally unlikely that anti-choicers have the 60 votes to add it back in as an amendment. (Contrary to popular belief, the Senate is much more pro-choice than the House.) Anti-choice Dems Sens. Ben Nelson and Bob Casey seem to be walking back from their earlier threats to vote against a bill without Stupak language.
Harry Reid announced that Democrats would meet today to preview the Senate's version of the health care bill. The first procedural vote on the Senate bill could come before Thanksgiving.
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.
Forbes Magazine, which has never been called a liberal rag by the Right, recently published a 2009 national survey by the United Health Foundation entitled: "The Healthiest And Unhealthiest States". The funder for this foundation is none other than insurer UnitedHealth Group. In their most recent quarterly earnings report (October 2009) UnitedHealth Group cited revenues of $21.7 Billion, an 8% Year-Over-Year increase, and healthy profits. So no one can rationally accuse this health survey of being a hit job on the insurance industry. In truth it is chock full of interesting and useful health data, and worthy of close study, but what jumped out for me immediately are some bold political implications that it also documents. They are far from friendly to opponents of health care legislation currently before Congress.
The CBO is expected to complete its analysis of the Senate health care bill today. This completes the merging of the Senate Help and Senate Fiannce committee bills, and starts the process of bringing the bill to the floor of the full Senate.
Courtesy of a Senate aide, here is a complete description of the process required to bring the health care bill to the floor of the Senate.
Health Care Process
Leader Reid moves to proceed to an HR bill, which will be the vehicle for the Senate health care bill, and files a cloture motion on the motion to proceed.
Two calendar days later, the cloture motion on the motion to proceed ripens (there has to be one intervening calendar day between the day you file cloture and the day you have the vote)
The cloture vote on the motion to proceed occurs one hour after we convene on the third day (If cloture is filed on Wednesday, the cloture vote is Friday. If cloture is filed on Thursday, the cloture vote is on Saturday, etc)
Assuming 60 Senators vote to limit debate on the motion to proceed and end the filibuster, the Senate invokes cloture on the motion to proceed
Thirty hours after cloture is invoked the Senate will proceed to vote on adoption of the motion to proceed itself (This assumes (a) consent will not be granted to yield back any post-cloture time on the motion to proceed and (b) consent will not be granted to adopt the motion to proceed itself---adoption of the motion to proceed itself is routinely agreed to by UC but Rs could force a roll call vote).
Upon adoption of the motion to proceed, the Senate will be on the Health Care bill
Leader Reid will immediately be recognized to offer the complete Senate substitute amendment to the Health Care bill
Under the rules (Rule XV, to be exact), an amendment must be read before debate can begin on an amendment. (This is routinely waived by UC (you'll often hear Senators ask consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with when an amendment is offered) but Dr. Coburn has threatened that he will not agree to waive the reading of the substitute amendment). Reading the entire substitute amendment would take several days.
Whether read aloud in full or not, at this point, the substitute amendment will be pending and the full amendment process will begin when we return from Thanksgiving Recess.
Democrats, in return, say they'll force Republicans to stay on the floor continuously throughout the exercise. At least one Coburn ally will have to remain on the floor to object to unanimous consent requests to dispense with the reading. Whether they'll be able to require the presence of more than one Republican, though, remains to be seen.
The long and short of it is that, starting today, the Senate health care bill will be debated in public for two weeks before debate starts on the Senate floor. The Thanksgiving holiday, and all of these procedural hoops, delay the process tremendously compared to the House. All of this is just to start debate on the health care bill on the Senate floor, and there will be many more hoops to jump through once that begins.
Last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid filed a motion to introduce the health care reform bill to the Senate floor. That motion was supposed to be for today, November 16th, which would have forced the cloture vote on the motion to proceed with the bill tomorrow. If that vote succeeded, it would have started the debate and amendment process on the health care bill on the floor of the Senate tomorrow:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) late Tuesday laid the groundwork for the Senate's healthcare reform debate to start next Tuesday.
Reid filed a motion to introduce the bill on Monday, Nov. 16. Anticipating a Republican objection, the bill would be pushed onto the Senate calendar.
"A motion to proceed to the bill would be in order the next legislative day," said Reid spokesman Jim Manley.
However, it is November 16th, and there isn't going to be a vote on the motion to proceed tomorrow. What's taking so long?
Neither the vote on the motion to proceed--nor the 60 votes needed to pass cloture on that vote--will materialize until Reid finalizes the bill, and introduces it to the public with a full CBO report. That process, unfortunately, is ongoing and taking longer than expected. Reid's office is still in talks with the CBO, tweaking the bill to meet President Obama's targets and rounding up the 60 votes needed on the cloture vote on the motion to proceed:
The complex legislation, which Reid is taking a free hand in writing based on two committee-passed bills, must not exceed Obama's specified price tag of $900 billion over 10 years, and it must not add to the deficit. Ultimately it must be able to get the 60 votes needed to advance in the 100-member Senate.
"We've sent them a list of options; they raise questions. We answer them, we raise other questions, they answer them. The goal is to put together the best bill possible," Reid spokesman Jim Manley said Friday. "Senator Reid made a decision a while ago that he wants to get this right before taking it to the floor."
The process is complicated. About 11 p.m. last Tuesday, the budget office sent Mr. Reid 11 pages of questions about his legislation. On Wednesday afternoon Mr. Reid's staff met with budget office officials. And the back-and-forth continues.
Clearly, if Reid has not yet introduced the bill with a full CBO report, they have yet to meet all of their goals in the legislation. They might still not have satisfied the four remaining problem Senators: Mary Landrieu, Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson (Evan Bayh no longer appears to be a member of this group). They might not have met President Obama's goals of cost or deficit reduction. Unions might still be pissed as a tax on high-value health insurance plans. Senate progressives might be upset with the lack of subsidies in the bill. Whatever it is, they have still not met all of the goals, and thus are not ready for the motion to proceed vote.
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, predicted during an interview on the liberal "Bill Press Radio Show" that the Senate will have the 60 votes needed to call up the healthcare bill this week. But Harkin said senators will not begin amending the legislation until after the Thanksgiving break.
Harkin offers up the best case scenario---a vote on the motion to proceed before Thanksgiving. This means that floor debate and amendments will not start until, at the earliest, Monday, November 30th.
To compensate for this latest delay, the Senate is going to stay in session during Saturday's in December. It remains to be seen whether or not the Senate can still pass a health care bill early enough in December to leave a conference committee enough time to reconcile the House and Senate bills before Christmas. If they fail to do so, then President Obama will not sign health care reform into law by the end of the year.
It is a pretty narrow window, raising the possibility that the health care fight will drag on into January.
Much of the debate on health-care reform has concerned the creation of the "public option," which is limited in scope and would not take effect until 2013, and the amendment demanded by Catholic bishops that would expand the prohibition on federal funds paying for abortions to also prohibit subsidized private insurance coverage for abortions. But HR 3962 (the Affordable Health Care for America Act), as it emerged from the House on Nov. 7, would provide important help for middle-income families immediately. Effective Jan. 1, it would stop insurance companies from arbitrarily rescinding coverage when patients file claims. It strips the health insurance industry of its exemption from antitrust laws covering market allocation, price fixing and bid rigging. And the bill would end lifetime caps on how much insurers will cover, which is a leading cause of family bankruptcy
It's like we're in a Saturday morning kids scifi show... the goodguy robot (in this case MSNBC) is telling us that the Repubs are getting ready to attack the Senate's vote on a Health Care Plan any way they can.
To start with, more than one of the Repub Senators (led by Lamar Alexander - R, TN) have called for new "Town Hall" meetings, like the ones the House members had in August - and it looks like the groups of lobbyists are ready to bus the same people in.
Even as he is bringing a health care bill with an opt-out public option to the Senate floor next week, Harry Reid is making it clear that he is open to a triggered co-op if he is unable to find 60 votes for cloture:
Even as Senate Majority Leader Reid seeks votes for a healthcare bill with a public option that states can opt-out of, Reid has allowed Sen. Thomas Carper, D-Del., to work on what one aide called a "Plan B" if Reid cannot line up 60 votes for cloture.
Carper said he and some other senators, whom he declined to name, are working on an alternative public option if the opt-out falls short.
In states where private insurers fail to offer affordable coverage, Carper said the alternative would permit them to set up a non-profit board, likely appointed by the president, to offer insurance.
Yikes! A triggered co-op!
If there is any bright side to this, it lets us all know what is at stake in the Senate fight over the next few weeks. Either we round-up the five problem Senators--Evan Bayh, Mary Landrieu, Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson--to vote for cloture, or else the Senate will bring a triggered co-op to the conference committee. Those are pretty high stakes.
In addition to applying pressure on the five problem Senators, one move we need to make is to push for reconciliation, not a triggered co-op, as the fallback plan. Right up until the end of the process, the bill can still be split into two parts: one with the new regulations that requires 60 votes to reach cloture, and one with the public option and subsidies that can be included in the budgetary process and which cannot be filibustered.
A clique of anti-choice Democrats in Congress joined forces with Republicans to write abortion access out of the House's health care reform bill last Saturday. Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) wants to force women to choose between affordable health insurance and abortion coverage, even if they pay for abortion coverage with their own money.
Pro-choice Democrats and women's health activists are up in arms over the eleventh hour deal. Ellie Smeal of Ms. Magazinedenounces the Stupak amendment as a betrayal of women:
Millions of poor and middle-class women would be denied abortion coverage and millions more would lose the coverage they already have, since 85 percent of private plans now cover abortion. Far from being abortion-neutral, the Stupak amendment is a giant step backward for women. It's unacceptable. In the compromise to get the bill passed, women and their health-care rights were thrown under the bus.
Yesterday, The Pulse interviewed Jodi Jacobson, political director of RH Reality Check, about the implications of the Stupak amendment for reproductive choice in America. Jacobson explained that, if language from the Stupak amendment finds its way into the final health care bill, insurance companies would be forced to eliminate all abortion coverage if they wanted to participate in any aspect of the health care reform plan. Listen to the full interview here. (Note: there's a slight delay before the audio starts.)
Jacobson calls the Stupak language a "monumental setback." If an insurance plan accepts customers who take government subsidies, then nobody on that plan could have abortion coverage-not even those who were paying their whole premium out of pocket. In effect, the Stupak amendment would be "a total ban on public and private money for abortion coverage," Jacobson said.
In TAPPED, Michelle Goldberg accuses the Democrats of "leaving women behind" in their rush to pass health care reform at any cost. Goldberg warns that if the amendment becomes law, Democrats will have handed the anti-abortion lobby its biggest victory since the 2003 Partial Birth Abortion Act.
In the Nation, Eyal Press argues that the Stupak amendment would be an especially cruel blow to poor women:
If this highly regressive amendment makes its way into the legislation that Barack Obama eventually signs, millions of less affluent women who obtain access to affordable health insurance will thus join the ranks of low-income women on Medicaid, most of whom live in states that don't cover abortion procedures. The two-tiered system that dictates who in America has "choice" (more privileged women do, less affluent women do not) will be further entrenched.
Robin Marty of RH Reality Check wonders whether the Stupak amendment would apply to miscarriages as well as elective abortions. Sometimes, when a fetus dies in utero, doctors must surgically remove it. It's the same procedure as an elective termination and it has the same name: Abortion. Last month, Marty lost a much-wanted pregnancy. Doctors laid out her options: a $1500 surgery, a $40 chemical abortion, or an interminable wait to expel the dead fetus naturally. Marty chose the surgery. She worries that the Stupak amendment would take that choice away from other women.
The House bill is not yet the law of the land. There is still time to strip the Stupak language out in conference (the merging process whereby the House bill is combined with whatever comes out of the Senate).
But will it actually get stripped out in the senate? Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) announced that "If it isn't clear that government money is not to be used to fund abortions, I won't vote for it."
On a conference call yesterday, Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) told The Pulse that he was optimistic that a compromise could be worked out. "Ben Nelson said he wasn't going to support a bill if it isn't clear that government money won't be used to fund abortions," Specter said, "Well, we can make it clear that if someone wants to buy abortion coverage with her own money, she can do it."
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.
It can now be safely sated that the Senate will not pass the Stupak amendment.
Because 60 votes are required to attach an amendment to a bill in the Senate, there is no chance that the Senate will include the Stupak amendment in the health care bill it sends to conference committee. And, there simply are not 60 votes in favor the amendment in the Senate:
Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said that 60 votes would be needed to strip the current health care bill of its abortion-related language and replace it with a version resembling that passed by the House of Representatives on Saturday. And, in an interview with the Huffington Post, the California Democrat predicted that pro-choice forces in the Senate would keep that from happening.
"If someone wants to offer this very radical amendment, which would really tear apart [a decades-long] compromise, then I think at that point they would need to have 60 votes to do it," Boxer said. "And I believe in our Senate we can hold it."
"It is a much more pro-choice Senate than it has been in a long time," she added. "And it is much more pro-choice than the House."
While it is not clear that the Senate is more pro-choice than the House, even the House did not have 60% in favor of the Stupak amendment. On Saturday, 240, or 55.2%, of House members voted for the Stupak amendment.
This is a rare situation in 2009 where the 60-vote culture of the Senate actually works in favor of progressives. It is much harder to add an amendment in the Senate than in the House.
Even in the event that the Senate pursues reconciliation for a health care bill, where only a simple majority of Senators would be required, the Stupak amendment could not be included:
By the same token, the Stupak amendment would definitely run afoul of the Byrd rule. This rule dealing with abortion is clearly an "extraneous matter" and the Parliamentarian would rule is as such. It violates the first part of the Byrd rule because it does "not produce a change in outlays or revenues." I see almost no way the Stupak amendment could remain in a bill passed using reconciliation.
It isn't even clear that there are a majority of Senators in favor of the Stupak amendment. For example, the regressive Senate Finance committee already rejected Stupak-type language by majority vote:
On a 13-10 vote, the Senate Finance Committee rejected amendments from Sen. Orrin Hatch that would have the bill conform to current federal law prohibiting direct abortion funding.
Hatch amendment 355 would make it so the Baucus bill "prohibits authorized or appropriated federal funds under this Mark from being used for elective abortions and plans that cover such abortions."
The otherwise party-line vote saw pro-abortion Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe side with Democrats against it and Sen. Kent Conrad of Noth Dakota join Republicans in supporting it.
There are a few anti-choice Democrats in the Senate: Casey (PA), Conrad (ND), Nelson (NE), Reid (NV) and possibly a few more. However, there are not enough to pass the Stupak amendment in the Senate. It is a dead letter in that chamber.
The battle over the Stupak amendment will take place in the conference committee. Supposedly, the White House is in favor of removing the Stupak amendment. Also, supposedly there are enough House Democrats to kill the overall health care bill if the Stupak amendment is not removed. Further, Stupak himself has claimed that there are enough votes to pass the health care bill in the House without the Stupak amendment. Right now, it certainly seems as though the tide is turning against Stupak, and his chances of victory before the end are less than 50%.
There has been a great wailing and gnashing of teeth over the past day or so as those who follow the healthcare debate react to the Stupak/Some Creepy Republican Guy Amendment.
The Amendment, which is apparently intended to respond to conservative Democrats' concerns that too many women were voting for the Party in recent elections, was attached to the House's version of healthcare reform legislation that was voted out of the House this weekend.
The goal is to limit women's access to reproductive medicine services, particularly abortions; this based on the concept that citizens of good conscience shouldn't have their tax dollars used to fund activities they find morally repugnant.
At first blush, I was on the mild end of the wailing and gnashing spectrum myself...but having taken a day to mull the thing over, I'm starting to think that maybe we should take a look at the thinking behind this...and I'm also starting to think that, properly applied, Stupak's logic deserves a more important place in our own vision of how a progressive government might work.
It's Political Judo Day today, Gentle Reader, and by the time we're done here it's entirely possible that you'll see Stupak's logic in a whole new light.
Earlier today, Senator Claire McCaskill said that she could live with the Stupak amendment being in the final health care bill:
"And so, I am not sure that this is going to be enough to kill the bill," McCaskill added. "And frankly, once again, this is another example of having to govern with moderates. We can't just turn our back on the fact that the reason we are in majority, is because states like Indiana, and Arkansas, and Louisiana, and Missouri, and North Carolina, and Virginia sent Democrats to the Senate."
Still, whether they are listening or not, a lot of progressive activists will remain rightly cynical that the language will stay in the bill. Even as some Democrats threaten to kill the bill if the Stupak amendment is still in the bill after conference committee, it just seems like threats of that sort from conservative Democrats are both more serious and taken more seriously.
Progressives are actually going to have to defeat a bill before their threats are taken seriously.
After two weeks where most health care attention has been on the House, we now return to Senate. Here's where things stand:
Five Problem Democrats The only barriers to health care reform at this point are Senators Evan Bayh, Mary Landrieu, Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln, and Ben Nelson. There are fifty-one Senators who support health care reform with a public option, and four--Max Baucus, Mark Begich, Kent Conrad, and Mark Pryor--who have made absolutely no threats to filibuster. The same cannot be said of the five "problem" Senators listed above.
Three cloture votes--threats are on the second and third There are three votes where the problem Senators could potentially join with Republicans to block the bill. First, on the cloture vote to bring the bill to the floor for debate and amendment. Second, on the cloture vote to end that debate and bring up a floor vote on the overall bill. Third, on the cloture vote to end debate and bring up a floor vote on the overall health care bill after the health care bill is returned from conference.
Right now, most of the threats to block the bill are on the second of these votes. Evan Bayh and Joe Lieberman have said they are likely to allow the floor debate. Ben Nelson has not said he will bock the floor debate, and Mary Landrieu senses a compromise is close. Blanche Lincoln recently had a one-on-one with President Obama.
So, a floor debate will likely go forward. However, that will not mean the five problem Senators have been forced into line.
Timeline The current, vague timeline for the Senate is "the end of the year."
Since Harry Reid announced that the merged Senate bill would contain a public option, the process in the Senate has slowed to a crawl. The hold-up appears to be that Reid is waiting for CBO estimates which will not be completed until the end of this week.
This means, at the earliest, floor debate and amendments will start for the health care bill one week from tomorrow. If it does not start next week, then it will start the week after Thanksgiving.
Harry Reid is also telling Senators to get ready for Saturday sessions in December.
Stupak moves to the Senate(more in the extended entry)
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