Tag: Cloture

Code Brown: PAM

ryking reports that:

the Teabaggers were going apeshit over Brown’s vote for the jobs bill on Twitter and I almost wet myself laughing at the vitriol. I guess these imbeciles thought he’d vote like a typical GOP automaton. News flash, imbeciles: Brown knows he won a protest vote in Massachusetts; he wants to be re-elected after he serves out the last two years of Ted Kennedy’s term so he can’t — and therefore won’t — march in goosestep, er, LOCKSTEP, with the America-hating GOP.

I wish I thought this was an accurate analysis. Unfortunately, I’d say this is an example of the GOP leadership knowing that a lockstep vote here, coming hot on the heels of the Brown mania, would be an all-too-clear and inescapable indictment of their current anti-democratic ways.
Of a piece with that, repeatedly bottling up jobs bills just isn’t going to play for any of them. Thus, Brown is given the go-ahead to vote for cloture, and a few of the moderate GOPers also scurry in to join him. The key vote, though, comes later: when the bill will pass 98-0 or some-such. The GOP Senate knows well that people don’t pay attention to anything, and certainly not the vagaries of cloture votes. No price will be paid for their delaying or otherwise weakening bills; after all, the GOPers can still just run on having voted “for” it in the end. They know that neither will their enablers in the media ever bring up the inconvenient cloture votes nor will the Democrat ever stoop to being so impolite as to mention such a thing in public.

It’s basically stimulus 2.0: take all the glory of anything that works or turns out to be popular, while doing none of the actual policy work needed to bring it about. In fact, you fight all that every step of the way and use the legislative mayhem to further inculcate the sense that DC is fundamentally off the rails. Rest easy that nobody on any side of the aisle or in the media will say or do anything about it. It’s an entirely cost free position that, so far anyway, is working like a charm.

So, no. I don’t feel the need to advance our Code Brown independent vote counter past 0. That happens in the unlikely event of his taking a difficult stand, one clearly against the leadership’s wishes. When FOXnews hollers about a vote, or he’s forced to apologize for some perceived slight, or prostrate himself before Rush: then and only then the 0dometer will advance. And sorry, it’s just not going to happen.

Starve the Beast

Paul Krugman notes that the GOP has collectively been working for around three decades to bring on the catastrophic nexus, “preparing the ground” for the moment at which they can cut wildly popular programs like Medicare and Social Security in the name of “fiscal responsibility.” Unfortunately, with that day all but at hand, the GOP finds itself unwilling to pull the trigger and say these long-held beliefs publicly:

At this point, then, Republicans insist that the deficit must be eliminated, but they’re not willing either to raise taxes or to support cuts in any major government programs. And they’re not willing to participate in serious bipartisan discussions, either, because that might force them to explain their plan — and there isn’t any plan, except to regain power.

Absolutely right. And but Krugman goes on to note in today’s column that the state of the California health insurance system generally and the recent Anthem move to raise rates by ~30% specifically put to lie everything the GOP is saying about national health insurance reforms:

some claim that health costs would fall dramatically if only insurance companies were allowed to sell policies across state lines. But California is already a huge market, with much more insurance competition than in other states; unfortunately, insurers compete mainly by trying to excel in the art of denying coverage to those who need it most. And competition hasn’t averted a death spiral. So why would creating a national market make things better?

More broadly, conservatives would have you believe that health insurance suffers from too much government interference. In fact, the real point of the push to allow interstate sales is that it would set off a race to the bottom, effectively eliminating state regulation. But California’s individual insurance market is already notable for its lack of regulation, certainly as compared with states like New York — yet the market is collapsing anyway.

Finally, there have been calls for minimalist health reform that would ban discrimination on the basis of pre-existing conditions and stop there. It’s a popular idea, but as every health economist knows, it’s also nonsense. For a ban on medical discrimination would lead to higher premiums for the healthy, and would, therefore, cause more and bigger death spirals.

So California’s woes show that conservative prescriptions for health reform just won’t work.

To which we say: yep, even though Krugman starts with a straw-man in there. Some? How about “GOP leaders in the House and Senate say” or any other construction there? Some? That’s Bush league usage.

But, I think the synthesis of these two articles is what actually provides the way forward. We’ve said it before: Democrats can’t bring themselves to move good policy and the GOP categorically can’t resist bad policy, so combine the two. Spend a few years “preparing the ground” just as the GOP did on forcing government into the present fiscal situation in hopes of eviscerating the New Deal once and for all. Make it such that, when the inevitable happens, the end result will require the desired policy solution.
This means that you just pass into law the super-popular and death-spiral inducing community rating and tack on whatever meaningless and ineffective tort and state-lines “reform” the GOP wants to make that poison pill pass. Both sides celebrate. Then wait five years. Even conservatives agree that:

the country will face a choice: allow the numbers of uninsured to continue shooting up, or enroll more and more people directly in taxpayer-funded government insurance plans.

At the collapse of health insurance in this country, the GOP will be forced to roll out Medicare for all; after all, there will be no functional private insurance industry left to protect. Even the very rich will be priced out. Nothing gets the GOP’s attention more quickly than a situation like that.
Just think of the day that Single Payer is finally signed into law by President Palin. Likewise, the new Democratic majority will return to a Senate free from the filibuster as, everyone knows, that will be the first thing to go once the GOP is back in charge over there.

Somewhere, off in the distance, a dog barked.

Stunning! Those that overwhelmingly oppose healthcare are also overwhelmingly unlikely to vote for a Democrat, any Democrat in the upcoming 2010 Congressional mid-terms. (PDF of polling data here)

Does that mean that the Democrat will now go ahead and push through health insurance reforms, secure in the idea that those opposed would never vote for them anyway, and those “unsure” are, at least, somewhat malleable and willing to be convinced on the matter? Of course they won’t. Are you fucking retarded?

Realistically what I think is going to happen is that almost no significant legislation of any kind will pass until 2017, by which point the GOP will [likely] control both the White House and the Senate and immediately eliminate the filibuster via the “nuclear” approach [meaning 50 Senators vote in favor of an opinion on the part of the President of the Senate that the super-majority is unconstitutional; thus the filibuster ceases to be]. Republicans, to their credit, tend to prioritize their vision of the national interests over issues of process and ego. Democrats, by contrast, seem to have mostly gotten into politics in order to bolster their own sense of self-righteousness and aren’t especially concerned with whether or not their conduct in office is efficacious.

Matt Yglesias, positively bubbling over with optimism for the country. If the filibuster goes in my lifetime, I think this is exactly how it will transpire, though: as the first action of a Republican controlled Senate serving a Republican President.
Yglesias is also 100% right that the credible threat of filibuster reform is more potent and much more likely to end in real reform than the actuality of that process (meaning: pushing a bill to end it with everyone knowing 67 votes aren’t out there). Democrats can never get these concepts through their heads, though. So forget about it.

1776

We fought the British over a 3 percent tea tax. We might as well bring the British back

–William Temple of Brunswick, Ga., perhaps marginally better known as the fellow appearing at tea-party events dressed in his trademark three-cornered hat.

Indeed, William, why don’t we? The Brits are at least having a truth-commission of sorts that aims to get to the bottom of (but not prosecute those involved in) their complicity in the lie-laden run-up to the Iraq folly. Likewise, the Brits enjoy (and broadly support) their National Health Service, which, I might add, routinely outperforms American healthcare in any outcome metric you might reasonably choose to look at and costs half as much (as a share of GDP) to operate. Conservatives in Britain strongly support NHS. Wouldn’t think of privatizing it. Furthermore and finally, the Brits actually have a functional parliamentary system, as opposed to our functionally parliamentary system in which nothing can get done. In scary, scary Britain, when your party wins an election, you get to set the policy and set about governing. Imagine that. If the public broadly disapproves of your outcomes and prefers the platform of the shadow cabinet, then, hey what do you know, those folks get elected and start governing. Lather, rinse, repeat. It’s what we in the Big City call “representative democracy.”

So count me with the Tea Partiers. Let’s ask Big Daddy Britain if we can just come back and all is forgiven.

All during that health care debate, whenever things got impossible you could always say: “What I think they should do is pass the Wyden-Bennett Reform Plan,” and everybody would shut up and slink home to look it up on Google.

It’s a more elegant version of the Bipartisan Study Commission. Which, by the way, the Republicans recently filibustered.

Actually, I think we just need one simple change that will get us back to the good old days when Congress was capable of passing standard legislation and could occasionally summon the will to make large, imperfect fixes of urgent national problems.

Get rid of the Senate filibuster. It wouldn’t make things tidy. It wouldn’t be utopia. The Democrats will miss it next time they’re in the minority. But when people elected a government, it would get to govern again. And probably, it could keep the lights on.

Gail Collins, apparently summoning this material
from some long forgotten font of agreement between us.

America Held Hostage: Day One

The Democrat, at least as currently constituted, simply does not understand what it takes to message. Every Democrat serving at every level should never even approach a microphone without uttering “America Held Hostage, Day X.” It’s as simple as that. Why is Senator Shelby holding America hostage over a couple of earmarks? Does he hate America?

Likewise: Up or down vote. Why won’t the GOP let the Senate vote on jobs creation? Why is the GOP against democracy? Just let the Senate vote; we will abide by the outcome. And etc…

That this is all so hard for them to understand is, perhaps, the single greatest argument in favor of their being dispatched from service come 2010. That they further don’t seem to understand that is, well, remarkable.

America Held Hostage: Day One

Imagine a chamber in which senators were elected by different income brackets – with two senators representing the poorest 2 percent of the electorate, two senators representing the richest 2 percent and so on.
Based on Census Bureau data, five senators would represent Americans earning between $100,000 and $1 million individually per year, with a single senator working on behalf of the millionaires (technically, it would be two-tenths of a senator). Eight senators would represent Americans with no income. Sixteen would represent Americans who make less than $10,000 a year, an amount well below the federal poverty line for families. The bulk of the senators would work on behalf of the middle class, with 34 representing Americans making $30,000 to $80,000 per year.

Annie Lowrey

Decoder rings

Various folks are trying to sort out just what Obama means with this statement:

That’s why I think it’s very important for us to have a methodical, open process over the next several weeks and then let’s go ahead and make a decision. And it may be that if Congress decides, if Congress decides we’re not going to do it, even after all the facts are laid out, all the options are clear, then the American people can make a judgment as to whether this Congress has done the right thing for them or not. And that’s how democracy works, and there will be elections coming up and they will be able to make a determination and register their concerns one way or another during election time.

I think it’s pretty damned clear, actually. After all, he had just said this:

What I’d like to do is have a meeting whereby I’m sitting with the Republicans, sitting with the Democrats, sitting with health care experts, and let’s just go through these bills – their ideas, our ideas – let’s walk through them in a methodical way so that the American people can see and compare what makes the most sense.

So then, following “President’s Questions” and the GOP’s performance at same, Obama feels he (and, by extension, his party) is/are the ones with the real solutions (as opposed to mere slogans), no matter how flawed those solutions may be, to the truly existential problems facing our government. The GOP, on the other hand, is suggesting we can simply cover everyone, lower taxes, and still have budget surpluses to use on all the wars we can start as far as the eye can see.
In fact, the only member of the GOP caucus putting real ideas out there that could do anything about the situation at hand is Paul Ryan ® of Wisconsin, who comes right out and admits that:

Just look at the numbers. [That the healthcare problem is the deficit problem is] not a theory. It’s a fact.

-and that-

if Ron Wyden and I were in a room, we could hammer out a deal [merging our healthcare proposals] by tomorrow.

And but Ryan basically wants to cap Medicare benefits, privatize at least parts of Social Security, and a do whole host of other stuff that I’d disagree with. That’s not important, though. The point is: these would be extremely unpopular positions to put into law, but at least they are positions. They are not sound-good, rhyming boilerplate nonsense; they are actionable “solutions” that could be turned into actual legislation that might do something about the problem (again, this is whether you agree with the particular mode of the solution or not). This is radically different from what the rest of his caucus proposes, which can be efficiently boiled down to “USA! USA! USA!”

So then, what Obama is saying is this:

Let’s get the key, decision-making personnel and folks with real ideas in a room, Democrats and Republicans. We’ll have all the plans and ideas, the GOP will have nothing to offer other than elimination of extremely popular programs, assuming they even offer that. Even if a deal doesn’t get done, there are clear positions taken, clear stances made public in a way that can’t be taken back, and is ultimately very similar to what the “Questions” televent did. It will be live, and it will be compelling. As such, any deal that actually comes out of it basically has to pass, otherwise the GOP look like the two-faced negotiators that they have proven to be (but have yet to be called out on). Failure to make a deal most likely also redounds on the GOP, since they would ideally be seen as having no ideas to offer anyway (assuming they just show up and scream platitudes while the Democrats actually have functional legislation and CBO scoring to offer). Thus, you show America in microcosm (and, not coincidentally, in TV drama form) the real reason “nothing gets done” in D.C. and, simultaneously, make the GOP look very small indeed. Or you get a healthcare deal.

The key to this plan, though, is the CBO (or whoever could reasonably play Ref in this debate). You can’t just run the numbers in 48 seconds and, on the spot, call out somebody’s plan as totally unworkable horseshit. So the more likely outcome of such an event would be a draw; two weeks later, nobody bothers to check that the GOP “plan” consisting of rhyming maxims and hoary chestnuts about using the ER as your PCP scores poorly (if at all), while the Democratic plan of actionable legislation scores as a deficit reducer and, oh by the way, covers 30 million presently un-covered Americans out of the gate. And such an outcome redounds to the generally negative perception of the Democrat as a feckless, do-nothing, non-governing, circular firing squad failure machine. So, I guess this is pretty much what’s going to happen. Whatever it is, it’s always good for the Republicans.

You heard it here first.