It’s getting pretty hard to figure what members of the House are even thinking about with some of the crazy trial balloons they’re floating. Rep. Van Hollen (D-MD) for instance just told Greg Sargent that in part because of the Nelson/Nebraska Medicaid deal the Senate bill is just totally tarnished to be passed. But TPM Reader DG points out why what Van Hollen is saying, at least on this count, is complete nonsense. Read More
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) released a statement today in which, broadly speaking, he endorses passing the Senate bill along with a separate amending bill which would pass the senate through reconciliation and passing yet another bill which would pass other popular reforms later in the year. Details and emphasis are important. So I’d recommend reading what he says word for word, after the jump … Read More
Obama, on health care reform: “I have to admit, we’ve run into a bit of a buzz saw along the way.”
A longtime reader sends in a thoughtful question …
If you were a Democratic Congressman reading through ‘Citizens United,’ and contemplating the impending flood of corporate cash, would you rather:
(a) Postpone a vote on health care reform, perhaps indefinitely, incentivizing every corporation with a vested interest in the status quo to flood your district with negative ads, in the hope of dissuading or unseating enough Democrats to kill reform?
(b) Pass the Senate bill tomorrow, putting the issue to rest, since repeal would take a veto override – and then spend the summer on issues with a more immediate appeal to voters, while blaming any negative ads that do air on your willingness to stand up to powerful interests?
I’m not sure the implications of ‘Citizens United’ have really sunk in. But this is it for health care reform – it happens now, or not at all. And the only thing more dangerous than reforming a hugely powerful industry is coming achingly close, and then failing. How much would it be worth to the health care industry to unseat enough members to kill reform permanently? How badly do House Democrats want to find out?
“Reality-based” was one of the Democrats’ great touchstone phrases of the Bush years. And like so many self-identifications it started off as derision. The phrase came from this passage in a 2004 article by Ron Suskind in the New York Times.
The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
The phrase, grabbed from the Bushies and latched on to by progressives explained so much about the Bush White House mentality, that facts and realities weren’t “stubborn things” but fairly soft impediments in the way of willful self-assertion. Read More
Take a moment to read this story. Virtually all the top health care policy experts on the progressive side have gotten together to ask the House to just pass the friggin’ Senate bill and then follow-up with an amending bill which can go through reconciliation in the Senate.
It’s sort of a perennial issue in progressive policy reform, balancing what works in policy terms with what make sense politically. And so often the two calculations don’t dictate the same course. What makes this situation so bizarre, however, such a watershed in some ways, is that each calculus points to the same conclusion. Everybody can see it. But a lot of members of Congress want to drop this bill and pretend that they’re going to pass a bunch of smaller bills later in the year.