If Democrats decide to use the procedural move that Congress calls "reconciliation" to pass health care reform, get ready for a war of words. It will be won not by the biggest guns, but the biggest mouths. What's true won't matter; what's loudest, what's catchiest, will. That's democracy in the age of newsertainment.
Start with the fact that few people know what reconciliation is. It sounds like something from family law, or how Nelson Mandela got South Africans to put apartheid behind them. Politicians love a blank slate; it's a great opportunity to define -- that is, poison -- the debate. Hello, death panels.
The reason that reconciliation has come up now is the prior war over filibusters, supermajorities and cloture. (I didn't say this would be simple.) Until 1975, a majority of the Senate -- 51 votes -- was what you needed to pass. Only two situations required more: votes of two-thirds specified in the Constitution (like ratifying treaties), and votes that the Senate's internal rules -- which senators can make and change as they want -- peg to a number more than 51.
For years, one of those rules -- Rule 22 -- said that Senators can speak as long as they want, and sometimes talk a bill to death (filibuster), and that the only way to close down a filibuster (cloture) was to round up 67 votes, which was really, really hard. In the 1960s, the filibuster was used to block civil rights legislation. In the 1970s, Alabama Republican Senator Jim Allen used it to deep-six whatever he didn't like -- a federal consumer protection agency, a Legal Services Corporation, electoral college reform.
But some deft and tense maneuvering in 1975 by an uppity senator named Walter Mondale led to a change in Rule 22, lowering cloture to three-fifths: 60 votes, a supermajority. (Mondale says that "the procedural exchanges grew so dense that at one point we were voting on the following: A motion to table a motion to reconsider a vote to table an appeal of a ruling that a point of order was not in order against a motion to table an other point of order against a motion to bring to a vote the motion to call up the resolution.")
Both Democrats and Republicans used filibusters. But starting in 2007 their number spiked, doubling, when Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell began using it, like Jim Allen, to bottle up anything he didn't like. It's basically been that way ever since. Worse, no one has to pull a Jimmy Stewart/Mr. Smith all-nighter any more; the mere threat of a filibuster is enough to make the other side cave, unless they actually have a hard count of 60 votes, which is almost never. You can't get a bill to the floor for an up-or-down majority vote without a preceding procedural vote, and if you filibuster the procedural vote -- which is what Republicans are now doing day in and day out -- then doing anything at all requires a supermajority.
Democrats have nothing like the party discipline that Republicans do, so the "filibuster-proof supermajority" that the press decided they got in the 2008 election was never real. Senators like Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson could be counted on for nothing, especially cloture votes. So the Republican strategy worked. Sixty became the new majority. If the media effectively nailed Republicans for hyperpartisan obstructionism, I missed it.
Enter reconciliation. Every year, Congress passes a budget resolution. Every year, Congress passes laws that break the budget. Reconciliation is the policing process Congress uses to force itself to stay on budget. It instructs congressional committees to change current laws until they square with the budget's revenue, spending and debt-limit levels. And because the Senate set things up this way, votes on reconciliation can't be filibustered. You don't have to climb Mitch McConnell's mountain to pass it; it takes only a simple majority.
Over the years, reconciliation has been used to end-run filibusters on all kinds of legislation. Clinton used it to pass welfare reform in 1996. George W. Bush used it to ram through his tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. Both parties have used it to pass laws that couldn't make it to an up-or-down majority vote any other way.
Now Republicans are howling that using reconciliation to pass health care is an unprecedented, dastardly abuse. But as Sara Rosenbaum, chair of George Washington University's Department of Health Policy Reconciliation, told NPR, here are some of the health care reforms that were passed via reconciliation: COBRA, the law that lets you keep your employer's insurance, though at a steep price, after you've left a job; SCHIP, the children's health insurance program; Medicare expansions like cancer screenings, protections for nursing home patients, and the hospice benefit. It's harder to find past health policy changes that weren't done through reconciliation, than ones that were.
But in this debate, the facts won't matter. Republicans are calling reconciliation "the nuclear option," and are threatening to stop it with a tsunami of diabolically clever amendments that will drown Democrats in procedural hell and force them to vote for terrorism and against apple pie.
But as a former Senate parliamentarian points out, reconciliation is designed to be a 20-hour process, and the person who gets to decide whether Republican procedural tactics are out of order is the vice president, in this case Joe Biden, whom the Constitution makes the president of the Senate.
It's conceivable that reconciliation will result in the passage of health care reform. But whether the public will think of that as a triumph of legislative skill, or a commie coup by death panel-y Democrats, will depends on who wins the battle of sound bites, not who has history on their side.
This is my column from The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. You can read more of my columns here, and e-mail me there if you'd like.
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Well then we all better give up and get used to it, because it's well-known which side has the biggest, loudest, most obnoxious mouths. It's not even close. It's the same side that basically created the 'age of newsertainment' - if Americans thought about the facts and their best interests, they would realize they're being screwed, and stop voting against themselves and for the wealthy.
At the very least, each legislator to utter a word should be accurately subtitled on screen while speaking. Subtitle one: The names and composition of the entities that made contributions to this speaker. Subtitle two: The legislative agendas of each of the preceding entites. Subtitle three: The legislator's initiatives and bills. Subtitle four: How closely do those initiatives match the entities' agendas?
The American people are owed at least that much instant truth from the folks they elect and pay to run this country.
From that point onward, insurance companies geared their policies and pricing toward corporate insurance packages, to the detriment of individual policy-holders.
What the present state of health insurance would be today had this not occurred at the outset, esp. the inequities in pricing and the highly suspect policy terms we now experience is unknowable.
That aside pass a health care bill through reconciliation. It a start & the party of no will
hate it. Reason enough.
Why can't that be done now?
Simply add in Medicare Availability, At Cost, For Everyone.
And please stop calling it "public option."
What???
You must have me confused with someone else... I wasn't speaking for anyone but myself.
However, it looks like what they want to do is have the House pass the Senate bill as is. Then they want to pass another bill in the Senate via reconciliation that only focuses on a few issues.
Dems have to remember that after they may get this approach to work is that they will probably commit political suicide. Then the Repubs will come in and reverse most of this legislation.
Obama won't have much choice because the Repubs will attach these changes to bills that Obama has to pass like defense spending, social security, medicare, and/or medicaid legislation.
From out of these ashes new models of health care delivery will emerge. Medical providers and local businesses might form health care cooperatives. Communities may sponsor the $200k expense for a medical student's education in return for years of committed service. Fees for medical procedures will be based on auto shop models of man-hour units and not on arbitrary fee reimbursement schedules, which drive hospitals to promote and deliver the highest value-added services rather than the most epidemiologically necessary for the community. With this change, complicated billing codes will disappear, and patient statements will have some semblance of transparency.
The dems have lost the battle of the sound bites almost every single time since obama took office. The mere fact that the words "death panels" have become a household name proves that. Of course, senators and the president have once again failed to point out loud and clear that the republicans used a filibuster to pass hundreds of billions in tax cuts WHICH WERE NEVER PAYED FOR in 2001 and 2003 through reconciliation. Nor have they really brought up the republican threat of banning the use of the filibuster for certain votes in 2005 also known as the nuclear option. What's worse, FOX news has lived up to their misinformer of the century MO by calling reconciliation itself the nuclear option, saying the nuclear option was a term the democrats used (when it was a republican term) and showing clips of obama, pelosi and biden railing on the nuclear option to prove their point that dems are hippocritical even though the nuclear option and reconciliation are two totally different entities.
I blame the Obama crowd for this: not often, consistently, always and without hesitation calling out the lies that are propagated by the "no" crowd when they preach to their constituents; when they say that the Obama health-care plans include or allow for:
Death panels
$500B cuts in Medicare benefits
Premiums will go up
the bills allow money for abortions
"socialized health-care", whatever that means (Canada, UK?)
A government bureaucrat decides your treatment not your doctor
The plan creates a $3 trillion deficit
Reconciliation is the Nuclear option
and on and on and on....
No wonder their "constituents" by an overwhelming majority want congress to scrap the current bills. If the "NO" crowd is called out often, consistently, always and without hesitation, they will be forced to stop the BS. Here is an example: none of the repubs mentioned at the summit “the death panels†because that is one claim that has been disproved sufficiently; but they used all the other talking point lies, including a new one - about premiums going up under the Obama plan. Lamar Alexander never thought that he was going to be called on it.
Bottom line is that the president has the duty and responsibility to correctly inform the American people. When he decides how to proceed with health-care he should go on all networks in prime time and debunk all the BS so that we understand the real situation.
It's a new version of 'ignorance is bliss'. Because I know that the information is out there, I am relieved of the obligation to look for it. I can just say whatever I believe, and challenge anyone else to prove I'm wrong, and then ignore their evidence when they prove I'm wrong because everyone knows that X is biased, where X is evidence that tends to refute my predetermined belief.
All the information is out there, and it is the sacred duty of every American to assume it supports their existing worldview and fight to the death anyone who suggests that worldview should be scrutinized..
Here's why. If Insurance companies have to now a-l-l pay for this end of life counseling, it will be a big recurring expense that they can't do anything about. All we have to do is -- of course -- "follow the money" on this and we'll see that Ins. cos see this as "just one more thing they have to cover" and they don't want to do that...their bottom line will decrease, heaven forbid.
Since everyone is going to die at some point, everyone will be using this service, it will go on forever and ever. It isn't like there will be a cure, like for some other covered illnesses that can be phased out of coverage, death is never going to die for the Ins cos.
They had to get out in front of this as quickly as they could, so Sarah Palin was a likely spokesman because of the attention she gets for tweeting nothings. "Sarah says Death Panels" and the game is on.
This is not health Care reform.
No other industrialized country would put up with such utter nonscense.
Support and fight for real reform.
http://www.pnhp.org/
The problem I have with this post is not that you are being overly "objective" that's fine, I get it, but the problem I have is that you throw in phrases like: the right is being "diabolically clever". How would that phrase work for you on a TV Sound bite!!! You just defeated yourself. Guess who wins your way of looking at it? No they are not clever, they are stupid and callous and say whatever they want to say regardless of the harm.. Stop admiring that and start thinking about why they do it.
But I get this too because there seems to be a small but influential clique in our society that has admiration for diabolical cleverness, and they almost romanticize this inept devolution, instead of calling out the harm it does and has clearly done. Unfortunately this admiration society for "calling things clever when the so called clever are clearly stupid" exist amongst the biggest mouths on the issues and the Pide Pipers of conversation.
Hahahah brilliant. I hope Kaplan reads this. Fanned.
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/webreturn/?url=http://www.whitehouse.gov
Dear President Obama:
Millions of Americans worry that tomorrow your "plan" will be that Congress pass health reform without the public option. There is ample ground to speculate you have some deal with insurers that they won't contribute to Republican candidates in return for your betrayal. Do not throw away meaningful competition on premiums.
The American people are STILL polling public option. This hardly puts it in the category of the famous advice we've heard you've received about ignoring progressives. This is not a progressive issue. This is mainstream America.
More than 30 Senators have signed Bennet's letter. 51 will with your leadership. You are a Democratic President. Stop acting like that's a problem. Do not compromise when OUR party attempts real reform. Start acting like that's a GOOD thing. Furthermore, you need to stand up now, as otherwise this fall Democrats will have NOTHING to campaign on.
Tomorrow, do what is best for your party and the American people.
With all the sincerity of a soap opera, Obama complains how the Supreme Court’s campaign reform decision will remove all restraint on the influence of corporate special interest. Meanwhile he presses forward on health care; despite polls the majority of citizens do not want this bill. If politicians will not acknowledge the will of the people, what does it matter if corporations control newspaper chains and broadcast networks? The health care debate is a perfect example of special corporate interests pulling the strings.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5B20OL20091203
Look, the news is that both the Senate and House bills are being melded in committee and the public option may still be on the table. You'll be right only if the final bill ends up looking like the Senate bill, which almost everyone loathes. However, the ongoing political process is an effort to bring us meaningful reform BEYOND the limitations of that legislation. The intent of the public option is to present a competitive plan to keep corporate insurers from railroading us.
You have a better solution, hurry up and tell the 47,000 Americans who die every year due to a lack of health care. Share it as well with those going bankrupt from medical bills. I can tell you my own family is well enough off to survive a medium emergency. However, one major medical disaster, and that's where we're going to be. America needs health care reform, and that includes me and you. You just have to think out where you'll end up after a genuine medical crisis.
NONE of the bills being considered is a "Federal takeover" of health care. That's a scare tactic, and the same thing Republicans said about Medicare -- which now they *insincerely* defend, because Americans love it, although Republicans campaigned and legislated against it when in power. Get it? Americans love public health care!
I agree that writing 30 million new policies for private insurers should be rejected as corporate theft. You should also reject their lobbying money, and their bloated inefficient system that places profit above health. You should agree that it is the *duty* of your government to use the democratic power as they were elected to do, and prevent this theft by creating a public health system like EVERY OTHER western nation has.
You say Obama's concern about the recent supreme court decision on free speech is "insincere". Where is your evidence for this serious accusation? (see mine above re: Republicans and medicare).
Most importantly you say "If politicians will not acknowledge the will of the people, what does it matter if corporations control newspaper chains and broadcast networks?" You have these clauses backwards. It is because corporations control these things that politicians are rewarded for and protected from acknowledging the will of the people.
If you care at all for the will of the people you should care much more about the recent Supreme Court decision than about health care. AND you should support a public option in health care, like a clear majority of Americans.
As to reconciliation, no one gives a crap as to the particular vehicle by which we get health care reform. If you have some issue with it personally, watch Rachel Maddow for real news. It's been used 22 times since 1980, and 16 of those were by Republicans. Furthermore, pretty much all health care reform is passed through reconciliation, as in check out the meaning of COBRA.
And Maddow spends too much of her broadcast belittling those she disagrees with. She is unwatchable.
On the other hand, the polls show that the public does support the public option, and the stronger it is, the more they support it. So if the Democrats would actually like to win in November, they should pass a bill through reconciliation that includes the strongest possible public option. That also means that President Obama needs to fight for the public option. After all, it was his explanation of the public option as an opportunity for choice in health care coverage that convinced people to support it. If he lets those people down now, they will let him down in November.
The Federal Government does not have the authority to tell citizens how to spend after tax dollars! Where does after tax (my) money start if the Federal Government can tell me what goods and services I must purchase? Will government be requiring I buy a new car and TV next? According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Federal Government has never required Americans to purchase any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States.
Do you believe in a Federal Government small enough to fit in the Constitution? Should We the People respect law makers who will not be constrained by laws already on the books? Representative John Shadegg (R-AZ) has re-introduced The Enumerated Powers Act. EPA would require Congress to reference the specific clauses of the U.S. Constitution that grant power to enact laws.
Join the campaign at: http://www.downsizedc.org/etp/campaigns/87
Just adding the public option to the already unpopular bills will not change the game that much. And Obama has more to worry about than this fight. The economy, which is really what people want him to focus on, is again on shoved to back burner. It takes an incredible political hubris to think listening carefully to your constituents isn't an essential.
And the governments solution is require everyone buy insurance. Why didn’t the poor uninsured think of that? Is it because Ma and Pa cannot just print more money and must balance a checkbook? Of course there will be subsidies for the poor, but the only sustainable transfer of wealth is full employment!
What if the Federal Government had spent the bailout money rebuilding the nations crumbling infra structure instead of subsidizing corporations and banks that were too big to fail? Would providing people wages in return for work, enabling them to purchase health care and other necessities be a better use of government funds?