If we don’t pass [healthcare reform] I don’t know what differentiates us from the other guys. It’s nice to believe good things, but no one keeps their home, or pays for their doctor visit, because Democrats believe good things. If anyone is searching for an answer to the lessons of Massachusetts, I promise you, it’s not to do nothing.
Democratic leaders in the Senate are asking colleagues who are reluctant to support Bernanke’s nomination for a second term as Federal Reserve chairman to nevertheless vote with them to end a filibuster and allow a vote on the actual nomination. The reluctant members would then be free to vote no to express their displeasure.
Of course, for everything else, a vote for/against cloture is somehow magically indistinguishable from a vote for/against final passage. Un-fucking-believable. And you can bet that every last motherfucker on the yes-cloture no-confirmation list is somebody who’s come out all “there’s no difference between cloture and final passage” before. And will expect (and experience) no blow-back from this sort of utter hypocrisy.
And we wonder why these fucktards fail. As Krugman notes: “I can hardly think of anything more calculated to solidify the view that Wall Street doesn’t have to play by the rules that apply to everyone else.” Yep.
The Democrat as currently constituted is utterly and completely unfit to govern. At least they won’t have to worry about it anymore come 2010/2012. Then they can go back to going along with whatever the GOP says to do, all in the name of comity.
I say again: any Democrat, or fucking execrable fucktard that is allowed to caucus with them, that votes against cloture on a key issue or critical Democratic initiative should promptly find themselves so far down the seniority tree that they are often unable to purchase bean salad at the Senate cafeteria. Period. Until that happens, you’ll end up with the shit-sandwich we’ve been eating since they took over in record fashion.
In the same vein: You want to start over on insurance reform, GOP? Fine, as a first step towards that exciting new future, let’s pass a revocation of all health care provisions, including Medicare, for all serving members of Congress and their families, effective immediately; furthermore, we will tie any and all future health plans for same to the costliest option offered under any new legislation. Put your fucking market money where your fucking market mouth is, motherfuckers.
Is this all so very complicated?
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said Monday that he would oppose any health care reform bill with a national insurance exchange, which he described as a dealbreaker.
“The national exchange is unnecessary and I wouldn’t support something that would start us down the road of federal regulation of insurance and a single-payer plan,” Nelson told reporters Monday.
If Senate Democrats still had 60 votes, this would matter a lot.
Today’s installment of What Paul Krugman Said:
A message to House Democrats: This is your moment of truth. You can do the right thing and pass the Senate health care bill. Or you can look for an easy way out, make excuses and fail the test of history.
Tuesday’s Republican victory in the Massachusetts special election means that Democrats can’t send a modified health care bill back to the Senate. That’s a shame because the bill that would have emerged from House-Senate negotiations would have been better than the bill the Senate has already passed. But the Senate bill is much, much better than nothing. And all that has to happen to make it law is for the House to pass the same bill, and send it to President Obama’s desk.
[…]
[S]ome Democrats want to just give up on the whole thing. That would be an act of utter political folly. It wouldn’t protect Democrats from charges that they voted for “socialist” health care – remember, both houses of Congress have already passed reform. All it would do is solidify the public perception of Democrats as hapless and ineffectual.
And, let me just add: this asinine idea that you can chop the bill up into component parts is both functionally impossible and utterly improbable. So: the GOP is suddenly going to agree to operate in the best interests of the public? Since when? Seriously, when was the last incident of the GOP acting as though it had any responsibility re: actually governing. Name it. I’d seriously like to know. You could offer them full revocation of all taxes, closure of the IRS, and immediate shuttering of 85% of all government offices outside military and interstate highways and they’d still say: Hells No. Even better, from their entirely predictable point of view: the chop-it-up approach then ties up all legislative action for MONTHS as you serially run the mini-bills out for failed vote after failed vote after failed vote. All of which, of course, end in giant collective failure and a total lack of action on the things people are hopping mad about: the banks, Wall Street reforms, and jobs initiatives. Which, not coincidentally, are precisely the issues the Democrat could utterly crucify the 41-vote GOP with for the next eight or so months, right up until the 2010 mid-terms.They are AGAINST all of those things. And will vote to prove it. Unfortunately, they won’t be given the chance.
What part of the months-long slow-roll of the “negotiations” that went on from August to December of last year have the Democrats suddenly forgotten? The GOP wanted no part of compromise or some mythical “centrist” option. They DO NOT WANT TO PASS HEALTH REFORM OF ANY KIND, no matter what its shape, size, composition, font, paper quality, or decorative binding may be. Repeat: THE GOP is FUNDAMENTALLY and COMPLETELY against ANY REFORM. Full fucking stop.
Democrats, you’ve got two choices:
That’s it. Those are your choices. Why this is so fucking hard to understand after the display across the last 10 or more years up there is well and truly beyond me.
Fuck this up and it’s over. Democrats will be functionally out of power in 2010, totally out in 2012; Obama recalled as little more than Carter2. I’d say the odds for this outcome are pretty much 80/20 in favor of exactly that happening. If only the Democrat had a powerful leader with charisma and a strong public following. Somebody like that could take charge of this cluster fuck, start giving legislative marching orders, and navigate the turbulent political waters. But that guy has Rahm fucking Emanuel whispering in his ear. Odds go to at least 85/15.
Merry Christmas.
File under “Great Fucking Idea” from Ezra Klein:
Democrats could scrap the legislation and start over in the reconciliation process. But not to re-create the whole bill. If you go that route, you admit the whole thing seemed too opaque and complex and compromised. You also admit the limitations of the reconciliation process. So you make it real simple: Medicare buy-in between 50 and 65. Medicaid expands up to 200 percent of poverty with the federal government funding the whole of the expansion. Revenue comes from a surtax on the wealthy.
[…]
If health-care reform that preserves the private market is too complex and requires too many dirty deals with the existing industries, then cut both out. But get it done. Democrats have a couple of different options for passing health-care reform this year. But not passing health-care reform should not be seen as one of them.
And that’s it. Harry Reid walks out to the podium (with Nancy Pelosi maintaining a stately distance, naturally) and says: Fuck all y’all below the age of 50. Move to Massachusetts if you’re so fucking concerned with your fucking lack of health coverage. Go die in the streets and see if we fucking care. Rest assured: we do not fucking care. Not anymore. Coverage is for closers only. It’s the American Dream!
Instead, the Democrat will most likely commence to explaining why 50 votes can’t even be mustered even for this little change and the Democrat should sit quietly in a corner somewhere, execute only GOP-sourced initiatives discussed only using GOP talking-points and rhetorical frames, and otherwise do absolutely nothing between now and the 2010 midterms. Whatever you do, don’t rock the boat.
Don’t, under any circumstances, swing for the fences on bank and Wall Street reforms, jobs packages, and other such heady initiatives that force would the GOP to go along or (the vastly more likely possibility) just shut the whole government down for the next 8 months giving you, the Democrat, 24/7 talking points about how the GOP just loves them some Banksters and hates, hates, hates the common man and his/her ability to get a job. Whatever you do, don’t allow a Medicare buy-in such as the quoted paragraph suggests, because then you might have to repeatedly pummel your GOP opponents with why, exactly, are they so afraid of adding a little competition into the market. Why, exactly, they are so beholden to the concept of care costing 4-5x what it would cost in any other Western nation while delivering a fraction of the benefit with regard to outcome, as measured almost any way you want to look. Whatever you do, 59 vote majority, don’t start doing things. That way lies destruction.
A message to progressives: By all means, hang Senator Joe Lieberman in effigy. Declare that you’re disappointed in and/or disgusted with President Obama. Demand a change in Senate rules that, combined with the Republican strategy of total obstructionism, are in the process of making America ungovernable.
But meanwhile, pass the health care bill.
No. I don’t want health care.
Before, it was healthcare every 15 years, from now on it’s going to be [revisited] every single year.
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.
Lemkin 