Christina Bellantoni has the tick tock on how an obscurely sourced (at best) memo purporting to detail Democrats’ messaging plan on health care reform traveled in just a few hours this afternoon from a Republican lobbyist to political reporters to Hill aides and onto high-profile news websites before Democrats beat the story back with cries that the memo was a “hoax.”
It can be very difficult to discern genuine momentum in politics. You have so many cross currents and variables, plus there’s often concerted efforts from various sides to create the misimpressions of momentum. So we’ve been careful this week in reporting on the push to pass health care reform. We’ve tried to try to limit ourselves to reporting on what we can actually document and observe, rather than characterizing it more broadly or predicting the outcome.
That being said, there’s been a decided shift in favor of reform over the course of the day today, especially late this afternoon. Most of the lawmakers who announced their decisions earlier this week had gone in the direction they were expected to go in. Today, however, some of the tougher eggs cracked, and there was at least one big surprise. Brian Beutler brings us up to speed on the day’s late developments.
Earlier this week I mentioned the man suffering from Parkinson’s disease who was yelled at by anti-reform protesters during a rally outside the office of Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy (D-OH) in Columbus. They also dismissively threw dollar bills his way. TPM interviewed the man today. His name is Bob Letcher, and he’s a disabled 60-year-old former instructor at Ohio State. Here’s his story.
Protestor outside Obama rally in Virginia says if Health Care Reform passes there will be a civil war.
There’s a certain choreographed drama to the way everyone, or almost everyone, falls into line when it comes time to finally vote on a big bill like the Health Care Reform legislation. But one flip that genuinely surprised me was Rep. Allen Boyd (D-FL). Boyd is an extremely conservative Democrat. And, for those of you with somewhat long memories, was the only House Democrat to consistently support President Bush’s push for partially phasing out Social Security in 2005.
A bit of background is necessary on the ‘doc fix’, starting even with just what it is. To greatly simplify, standing law has reimbursements to doctors under Medicare being slowly shaved down over time. But Congress sets the cuts aside every year. So it’s one of these things that is already a reality. It’s just that the government and its accounting pretends this cut law is in effect, when in fact Congress always votes not to enforce it.
Democrats have made no secret of the fact that they want to change the law outright — which is little more than making the current reality official. And pretty reasonably they say that it doesn’t have anything to do with the Health Care Reform legislation since it’s not like something that makes this bill cost more.
So what does that tell us about the disputed memo? Hard to say. One thing that’s weird is that the memo seems to buy into the idea that the ‘doc fix’ is part of the Health Reform legislation, which does not sound like something a Democratic aide would say But again, very hard to draw any conclusions. All we know is that Dems are furiously denying its theirs.
Rep. Cao (R-LA) was the only Republican to vote for reform the first time in the House. He’s been saying he was going to vote no this time. But President Obama has been lobbying him. So CNN just asked him where he stood after Rep. Cantor, the Minority Whip, said Cao was a “firm no.” Cao responded: “Right now, I’m a firm no.”
Watch the video here.
The House Republicans are now holding a press conference attacking the CBO numbers which say that the Health Reform bill lowers the deficit. Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) didn’t reference the disputed memo but said that just this morning Speaker Pelosi said that they would do a “doc fix”. And she did seem to say that. Here’s the quote.
Q: Madam Speaker, on the Medicare question, the so-called doctor fix, can you speak to why that was not included in this legislation?
There was an alleged Democratic memo (flogged hard by Drudge and originally published by Politico) which had the Democratic House leadership alleging telling members to keep quiet about plans for a “doc fix” later this year (basically something that would bust the budget and make the deficit reduction moot). But Democrats up on the Hill are saying categorically that no Dem communications person authored it. And they claim it’s a “hoax”.
A fraudulent memo leaked to the press sounds like something more out of a movie than anything that really happens in DC politics. But the Dems are screaming bloody murder. And the Politico has now taken down the piece to confirm its authenticity.
I’m not ready to call this a hoax. I definitely believe the leadership aides who say they’re sure no Dem office authored the thing. But there are a lot of Dem offices. And there’s always that weak link, someone who puts something stupid to paper. So even for them it’s hard to prove a negative. We certainly cannot. But Politico pulling the piece suggests they’re not confident it’s real.
But that’s where it stands right now. We’ll keep you posted.
An article ran in the Politico yesterday which I thought rather credulously repeated Senate Republicans’ claims about how much success they think they’ll have scuttling the Health Care fix bill as it moves through the reconciliation process. (See our earlier piece on the Senate GOP’s psyops strategy to kill Health Care Reform in the House.)
But there’s a part of this drama that’s gotten far too little attention.
Most of what senate Republicans say they’re going to try to do is fight like crazy to keep the least popular parts of the original Senate package in the bill. That’s right. They’re going to go to the mat for the ‘Cornhusker Kickback.’ They’re going to do everything they can to prevent the “Cornhusker Kickback” from being overturned. Same with the “Louisiana Purchase”, the tax on “Cadillac” Health Care plans and a bunch of other stuff. Read More