Before, it was healthcare every 15 years, from now on it’s going to be [revisited] every single year.
File under: things the TeaBaggers will ignore. The solution to tax-cut driven deficits? More tax cuts, naturally. And, of course, never forget that Fanny/Freddy loans to those brown people is what drives the whole thing anyway.
ryking points out weakness in the Democrat by noting that:
Yeah, but where are the accomplishments? What was W’s healthcare? What historic game-changer did the man manage to pass? Certainly not what he tried hardest to do with his “political capital”: Social Security Privatization. The link notes these “accomplishments”:
– John Ashcroft nomination
– Iraq war resolution
– Repeated Iraq funding resolutions
– 2001 & 2003 tax cuts
– Patriot Act
– Alito
– John Roberts
– Medicare Part D
Pretty weak tea there. Let’s knock off the low hanging fruit first: Americablog and ryking seem to be forgetting that, back in them days, a President was deemed capable of choosing who would serve in his cabinet; anyone not utterly and plainly incapable or actively serving time in prison was generally passed along through without much of a fight. Thus Ashcroft (Brownie, Gonzales, Bolton, and a host of others. Seriously, it’s not hard to understand: GOP Presidents are given wide latitude in their appointments by Democratic Senators. Democratic Presidents are not afforded this luxury by the GOP Senate). Obama, specifically, is not allowed even the most controversy free, obviously overqualified appointments; all of them have been subject to secret holds and as many time-wasters and cloture votes as are possible to throw up. And that’s leaving aside the furor over (previously and entirely) non-controversial advisory roles (aka the Czars).Do the Democrats or our Liberal Media hold the GOP to any of this? Why, of course not. Any time there is a microphone around, a Democrat should be screaming into it that the GOP is killing babies because it won’t approve [insert name]. All the time, every time. Only then will things begin to change. But we hold ourselves above all that, apparently.
The tax cuts broadly fit under the same aegis: give the “winner” what he wants. Elections have consequences: The GOP was in charge of all three branches, it is they who should set policy (speaking here in the extremely broad strokes of Our Media Elite; you know, like Cokie Roberts). Democrats, mind you, are never afforded such a luxury, and furthermore forget said poor treatment “the next time around,” immediately sucking up to the furthest right-wing opponents they can find in the hopes of “rekindling bipartisanship.” Idiocy, but undeniable.
9/11/01 and the spectre of mushroom clouds being our wakeup call led to Iraq and the Iraq votes. Honestly, given the volume and velocity of the lies in and around that debate, it’s amazing any kind of push-back was managed, much less a successful one. Not that we’re going to investigate any of that, of course. Gotta keep ourselves focused on the future! That way it’s easier to repeat the past in four years. But, once we’re in Iraq, you’re not going to vote against the troops, are you? Why do you want to kill our troops? The votes follow. And continue to this day. However, the GOP is now merrily allowed to vote to kill our troops. The media: zzzzzzzzzzzz. Boooooooooring. Old news.
Roberts played his role perfectly. Exactly what in his confirmation hearings seemed so far right as to warrant a filibuster? Again, anyone from the right-wing of American politics is allowed wide latitude on appointments. Plus, by the time you got to Alito you had the Gang of 14, whose ranks included many of the right-wing Democrats now giving insurance reform fits. So a filibuster there, though widely discussed (and, IIRC, attempted), was functionally never possible. You couldn’t hold 41 votes against a cloture with those 14 avowed non-participators. That was the point. All of whom, by the way, completely lost interest in judicial filibusters right after Obama won the election. Amazing. The media has certainly put this whole thing into the memory-hole and so have ryking and Americablog, apparently.
Which leaves us with Medicare Part D. Broadly framed, Medicare Part D gets at a core Democratic issue: making health services affordable to as many as possible. Is it so hard to imagine why Bush peeled off lots of Democrats with such a move? This is the fundamental Achilles heel for the Democrat, something we touched on earlier today. Namely:
if a given piece of policy is flawed but ultimately in service to the greater good, then the Democrat will vote for it over their several reservations.
Republicans, however, show no such compunction. Obama and the Democratic Congress could offer them the complete elimination of the IRS and all non-tariff tax revenues and the GOP would lock-step against it. Period. Not invented here, so fuck off. This is ultimately and not coincidentally what Lieberman and his ilk are counting on:
I won’t be killing the bill, because these left-wing do-gooders will be too focused on getting something passed, no matter how fractional and/or dysfunctional the final product might be because of my actions
There is no point in the process where a Rockefeller or Brown will simply say “fuck it, I’m going to Wisconsin” and walk away. Thus, without a credible, bill-killing threat to sit on, it is the left that constantly is forced to give away while the right is constantly operating on the expectation of taking away that which the left most prizes. To the Liebermans of the world, it boils down thusly:
The more Kos and MoveOn squeal, the more likely it is we’re onto something that needs to be excised.
He said as much. What is needed, as Matthew Yglesias notes, is legislation that swings for the progressive fences but can be allowed to fail. Then you can bludgeon Senators X, Y, and Z over their murder of said (popular) bill; use that energy to launch a primary challenge from the left or unseat a Republican. Bank reform (which is what Yglesias suggests) might be a good one. But again, you need something that the left can walk away from. So, basically, it can’t be good policy but has to play in the media as though it is the best possible policy.
Good luck with that.
if I could construct a system in which insurers spent 90 percent of every premium dollar on medical care, never discriminated against another sick applicant, began exerting real pressure for providers to bring down costs, vastly simplified their billing systems, made it easier to compare plans and access consumer ratings, and generally worked more like companies in a competitive market rather than companies in a non-functional market, I would take that deal. And if you told me that the price of that deal was that insurers would move from being the 86th most profitable industry to being the 53rd most profitable industry, I would still take that deal.
You know what offends me? It’s not whether someone says “Happy Holidays” or “Merry Christmas”. It’s when I read that L.L. Bean, Pier 1, and Walmart are known to be actively and intentionally using slave labor in their products.
To put it bluntly, the idea that Lieberman now finds the very same proposal a grave threat to the public good is simply not credible. And while I understand the rules of strategic gamesmanship, somebody who took health care reform seriously–somebody who genuinely cared about ending the misfortune that visits people without affordable medical care–simply would not have made such a strong stand, over such a tiny issue, at such a pivotal time.
The proof, I think, is in the actions of Lieberman’s adversaries. Sherrod Brown supports the public option just as passionately as Lieberman opposes it. The same goes for Jay Rockefeller. But Brown and Rockefeller have already made a series of huge concessions, because those concessions were necessary to move a bill through Congress. Last night, both men signaled they were prepared to make one last concession–to give up on the idea of a public plan altogether–because that’s what it will take to pass the law.
Brown and Rockefeller, in other words, acted to promote the greater good. I can believe some of their adversaries are doing the same. I find it hard to believe Lieberman is among them.
Congressman Weiner made a comment that Medicare-buy in is better than a public option, it’s the beginning of a road to single-payer,“ Mr. Lieberman said. "Jacob Hacker, who’s a Yale professor who is actually the man who created the public option, said, ‘This is a dream. This is better than a public option. This is a giant step.’
Some on the Hill remain worried that Lieberman will discover new points of contention in the coming days, as they believe he had signaled that he wouldn’t filibuster the Medicare buy-in. They worry whether his word is good.
No reason to worry, Ezra. It is not good and never has been. The goalposts will move again. This time, my guess is “We’re moving too fast. The vote must wait until after Christmas.” Which would effectively kill the bill, so far as I can tell. So that’s what comes next from Joementum. Deep down I always knew I could count on Joe to submarine both the health insurance options of ~40 million people and the presidency of his least preferred option because he faced and lost a primary challenge. What a true patriot. Truly a model for us all.
Digby sums it up rather succinctly:
I think we have a way to go before this bill is bad enough for [Lieberman] and his cronies to allow the Democrats to commit political suicide with it.
Indeed we do. And indeed they are committing suicide. The only saving grace for 2010 is that the “you are now required to buy crummy insurance you cannot afford act of 2009” goes into effect after the 2010s, and but just in time to destroy Obama’s reelection bid. President Palin, here we come. (Naturally, she’ll abruptly quit after 90 days leaving us with President Beck. You heard it here first.)
I was very focused on a group that’s post-50, or maybe post-55,” Lieberman explained to the Connecticut Post. “People who have retired early, or unfortunately, been laid off early, who lose their health insurance or are too young to qualify for Medicare. And what I was proposing is that they have an option to buy into Medicare on the premise that that would be less expensive.
I tend to agree with Josh Marshall here:
the key issue senate Democrats now have in dealing with Joe Lieberman isn’t his position on the the Medicare Buy-In [it’s that Lieberman] isn’t negotiating in good faith. […] it’s as clear to [Republicans] as it is to anyone else that he’s now basically mocking his Democratic colleagues by moving the goal posts every time a new agreement is struck.
[…]
it’s definitely time for the Democratic caucus to strip Lieberman of all the benefits he receives as a member of the Democratic caucus. But that doesn’t accomplish anything at the moment. The only path I can see for the Dems is that they need to try to put 60 votes together with Sen. Snowe.
Two birds, one stone: give Snowe the chairmanship of Homeland Security (and whatever the hell else she wants) in exchange for her cloture vote. She can do whatever she wants to on final passage. She keeps the chair so long as she votes for cloture. Every time, every issue. Period. Irregular as hell? Sure. But it would drive home the point that playtime is over. If you value your committee appointments and/or office accommodations and caucus with Democrats then YOU WILL VOTE FOR CLOTURE. Or you will find yourself in the Senatorial equivalent of Siberia. Likewise, if you’re a Republican willing to deal on the issues of the day: we’ll make your life much more comfortable in exchange for some painless votes on ending debate.
Either way, Lieberman should find himself so far down the power ladder that he has a hard time buying bean salad at the Senate cafeteria. Only then will this idiocy even begin to stop.
And, by the by, if you believe for one second this isn’t entirely about tweaking the smelly hippies that caused Joe all his problems: you are without a clue. That’s all it’s about. Joementum could care less about policy or what’s best for the most people. He’s got some petty axes to grind and the issue to do it on today happens to be insurance reform. Tomorrow: cap and trade. The Senate is, was, and will be 59-41. Plan accordingly. Find the trapping that Lieberman most prizes and strip it away. You might get it back when… It’s childish, but also the only way to proceed when dealing with a child.
Lemkin 