Tag: Cloture

Why not 100 votes?

Ben Nelson, (D) of Fucktardia, has lots of fascinating thoughts to share on the healthcare fight:

Voters should be able to evaluate “what’s been done and what remains to be done” before they go to the polls, Nelson said.

“Public debate can occur in the context of an election,” he added.

So, then, the outcome of the 2008 elections, the one held less than a year ago, in which healthcare was a central, if not very nearly THE CENTRAL issue, which came up in debates at the primary and national level…those elections: not to be counted. There should be several more elections, and if healthcare proponents can win each in a landslide: then and only then we can begin to consider taking up real reform.

But stopping with that sort of vaguely insane talk isn’t enough. Not for Ben Nelson:

But Nelson said 60 votes isn’t enough. The Nebraska Democrat said he’d only feel comfortable voting for a bill that he knows can get at least 65 votes.

“I think anything less than that would challenge its legitimacy,” he said.

Why stop there? Why settle for some interim position? The only possible outcome here is full commitment: that’s it, unanimous vote. Anything else would be unacceptable. And, presumably, after a unanimous vote and a Presidential signature, you’d need to let the states decide, unanimously, whether or not to implement. Why, it all makes perfect sense. It’s the only way for it to be legitimate.

[T]he time has come–and in fact, it is long overdue–for them to begin forcefully making the case that being a member in good standing of the party’s Senate caucus means supporting cloture motions on key legislation even if a given senator intends to vote against it.

–Ed Kilgore, Closed Vote; The New Republic

Yglesias is Right

Matt Yglesias again comes down on the right side of the argument. The nut of his take:

there is one crucially important difference [between Democrats and Republicans when holding the majority power]. Democrats hand out committee chairmanships by a blind seniority rule. Republicans do not. Chairman need to rotate out of their positions after fixed terms, which then gives the caucus as a whole input over who takes over next. Consequently, the Senate leadership has some meaningful leverage over Republican Senators—even Senators from liberal states. If they’re really determined to make Snowe (and Collins) vote “no,” they have tools at their disposal to make that happen. By contrast, the Democratic leadership heads into tough fights basically disarmed with no real tools of discipline and leverage at their disposal

Yep. True discipline will only occur when some of these senior Senators face losing their beloved power-levers. You vote “No” on cloture over a keynote issue like healthcare, you should lose all seniority. Period. Furthermore, the Democrats could make serious hay by simply offering moderate Republicans like Snowe and Collins certain perks they’d never, ever get by simply party-lining it along with the rest of the GOP. Better committee, Chair of something, bigger office, whatever the hell it takes to procedurally sweeten the pot: do it. That’s how to begin, begin rebuilding anything resembling the much sought after bipartisanship that high-Broderism so values.

Let’s review: healthcare reform is and always has been a debate between liberal and conservative Democrats. To the extent that any GOP votes can be found in the Senate, those individuals should be rewarded by receiving treatment that any conservative Democrat with equal seniority might enjoy. But you can basically forget the GOP as honest negotiators or compromise partners in this debate. Not going to happen. Thus: absolute requirement that every Democrat vote for cloture. Or else.

The Grassley’s Always Greener

Emphasis added to these collected statements:

[John Kyl], the Senate Republican whip, speaking to reporters on a conference call from his home state of Arizona, said that even if the Democrats do away with a government-run insurance option, the GOP most likely won’t support the bill that’s being written in the Senate.

“I think it’s safe to say that there are a huge number of big issues that people have,” Kyl said, referring to Republican senators. “There is no way that Republicans are going to support a trillion-dollar-plus bill.”

Asked if he’d support a bill if it were deficit neutral, Kyl said Dems may find a way to pass reform without adding to the debt, “but that doesn’t mean the Republicans will support it.” Asked if he could tolerate a nonprofit insurance cooperative instead of a public option, Kyl added that a co-op is “a step towards government-run health care in this country.” The Senate Minority Whip added that “almost all Republicans” are likely to oppose reform, even if it’s the result of a bipartisan compromise.

So, let’s summarize: the GOP will not support a bill if it adds to the deficit or is deficit neutral. They will not support a bill that includes public options, co-ops, or anything like them. Kyl calls all of that a “Trojan Horse.” They furthermore will not support a bill that is the product of any bipartisan compromise. John Kyl is specifically saying that the GOP will not support a bill that they themselves create through the ongoing Baucus committee process with the Democrats.

Really, the only question left on the table is: would the GOP support a bill they themselves write? I think we all know the answer to that one. The party has repeatedly shown zero interest in governing. Even when they’re in charge of the government. So why should we expect anything to change now?

Way Down in the Hole

Chuck Grassley, when directly offered the hypothetical “Chuck, go write whatever you want into the bill” counter-factual responded thusly:

Chuck Todd asked Grassley whether he’d vote for the bill if it was a good piece of policy that he’d crafted but that couldn’t attract more than a handful of Republican votes. “Certainly not,” replied Grassley.

[…]

“I am negotiating for Republicans,” he said. “If I can’t negotiate something that gets more than four Republicans, I’m not a good negotiator.”

Implicit in this statement are two facts: a) Republicans are not going (and never planned ) to vote for health care reform, even if they write the bill, and b) Republicans are negotiating in bad faith because of (a), this meaning either they hope to kill the bill by negotiating it to death, or they just like talking to salesmen.

And yet, which party keeps on coming back up to the table, hoping this time they’ll manage to “negotiate” a bipartisan solution? Each time offering up a few more sacrificial lambs in the hope that, this time, the GOP will finally love them and offer true forgiveness? Exactly when does the GOP give up something? Exactly when do the Democrats stop giving in? (Answers visible only in the Teacher’s Edition: Never and Never.)

“Bipartisan” in the current situation means: that to which the Blue Dogs will acquiesce. Full Stop. You get those votes, you have achieved a bipartisan outcome. Period, the end. There is no bill sufficiently milquetoast to achieve a 75-80 vote margin that Grassley seems to implicitly claim is what’s required to “earn” his precious vote. To assume any health-care bill is going to achieve that kind of margin is utter lunacy. But this is the baseline at which “negotiations” are happening. Tells you a lot about the current fecklessness of the Democratic Party in the Senate.

True progress will only come when Harry Reid (and, for that matter, Rahm Emaneul) realizes this and begins to enforce fealty at cloture votes accordingly. You vote out of line on the cloture issue of a key policy initiative like this one, you lose all seniority, all committee assignments, and suddenly find yourself out working the boats with McNulty. You also find that you’re facing a well-funded primary challenge in the next round. Simple as that.

All Hands On the Bad One

And so we hear that the so-called Public Option is probably heavily weighted towards “option” and rather more lightly so toward “public.” We’ll end up with the Co-Ops, a watered down version of the already rather watery Public Option of so much debate. It’s too bad that thousands of grannies have already gone to their deaths at the behest of the various death panels that had yet to hear of these operative changes.

But I think Yglesias has it right:

Given that adding a robust public option into the mix would reduce costs, if you set up a system without a public option wouldn’t you be able to add the public option in later years as an uncontroversial application of the reconciliation process? It seems to me that doing so would count as a 100 percent legitimate deficit reduction play. The public option concept also polls substantially better than does health reform as a whole. Under the circumstances, the odds for securing 50 senate votes for adding one strike me as pretty good.

Yep. Follow the MA model more or less exactly. Get most of everyone insured, giving up cost-controls to the GOP as you go. Then you find: hey, without those cost controls, costs aren’t, uh, controlled. And you revisit cost controls because, what do you know, the program itself is damned popular. Even assuming the 60-vote majority has by then evaporated or diminished, you can ram it through on a Reconciliation basis because it’s absolutely 100% budget related and finally brings the costs under control.

Colonel Sanders

One of those quotes that needs no introduction; independent Senator Bernie Sanders:

“I think that with Al Franken coming on board, you have effectively 60 Democrats in the caucus, 58 and two Independents,” Sanders said in an interview with the Huffington Post. “I think the strategy should be to say, it doesn’t take 60 votes to pass a piece of legislation. It takes 60 votes to stop a filibuster. I think the strategy should be that every Democrat, no matter whether or not they ultimately end up voting for the final bill, is to say we are going to vote together to stop a Republican filibuster. And if somebody who votes for that ends up saying, ‘I’m not gonna vote for this bill, it’s too radical, blah, blah, blah, that’s fine.’”

Exactly. Naturally, no Democrat in the Senate will see it this way, and they’ll continue to be feckless drones to whatever the David Broders of the world seem to think constitutes “serious” opinion. Step Two: ? Step Three: Profit!