Progressives hoping the Senate will be able to pass a public option had reason to hope on Tuesday morning. The source of that hope was the Hill's Alexander Bolton, who reported:
Sen. Joe Lieberman has reached a private understanding with Majority Leader Harry Reid that he will not block a final vote on healthcare reform, according to two sources briefed on the matter .... Reid’s staff is telling liberal interest groups that Lieberman (Conn.) has assured Reid he will vote with Democrats in the necessary procedural vote to end debate, perhaps with intentions to change the bill.
Problem is, for now, both sides are denying the story.
"If you believe this story is true, you will also believe that I am replacing A-Rod in Game Six of the Series," Lieberman spokesman Marshall Wittmann said in a statement. "The suggestion reported in The Hill that Senator Lieberman has made a 'private understanding' on his votes on health care reform is absolutely not true. Senator Lieberman's clear position is that he will vote for the motion to proceed to the health care bill because he supports health care reform that will control costs and insure people who don't have it now, but will oppose cloture on a final bill if it contains a public option."
In short, what that means is what Lieberman had already said -- he will be voting with the Democrats on one procedural motion, which will bring the bill to the floor. That alone will help Reid, as it's still no sure thing that he has the votes for that. But when it comes to defeating a filibuster, Lieberman is still saying he'll vote with the Republicans if the legislation contains a public option.
Reid's office, too, has come out trying to knock down Bolton's story. "There is no such understanding. We hope to have [Lieberman's] vote in the end but we are not there yet," Reid spokesman Jim Manley told TPMDC.
Plenty of people are annoyed by the antics of Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn. But what he does is limited to the Senate -- imagine if he were going around blocking everything anyone ever tried to do in real life? Well, the same folks who brought you a look at Michael Steele's outreach to "urban-suburban hip-hop settings" have come up with a video showing what that might be like. You can watch it below. (My favorite part: "We could try to reason with him, but, uh, that usually makes things worse.")
MoveOn claims to already have raised $1 million on the backs of this very creative and frankly hysterical "Lieberman Socks" ad:
I want a pony! Good stuff....
Liberals across cyberspace cheered Thursday when Sen. Al Franken declined to give Sen. Joe Lieberman an additional two minutes to drone on about amendments to the Senate healthcare provision he is single-handledly making worse. Talking Points Memo got the video, here it is.
On "Hardball" today, Chris Matthews asked me whether I thought it was merely a procedural move -- Senate leadership released a statement saying all senators had been asked to hasten the debate -- or whether it was political. I said it was political, and it was a "satisfying" moment for liberals, since President Obama's team has spent time vilifying Howard Dean for opposing the bill, but hasn't said word one about Lieberman hijacking it. (I also say more about why I oppose Dean's call to kill the bill.) Here's the video:
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After the segment, Franken communications director Casey Aden-Wansbury e-mailed me this:
"Hi Joan, I heard you got asked about Sen. Franken's exchange with Sen. Lieberman on Hardball just now and wanted to make sure you knew what really happened: Senate leadership has been asking all presiding officers to enforce the 10-minute rule for both sides and Senator Franken was simply following the direction of leadership. "
Duly noted. (Update: My friend Josh Marshall of TPM emails to remind me that Aden-Wansbury used to be communications director for...Joe Lieberman. Small world.) But it was still a profoundly satisfying moment. Thank you, Sen. Franken! Here's the Franken video, with a cameo by an outraged John McCain:
I am beginning to see the inevitable healthcare "compromise" as the product of a political song and dance conducted by Democrats and Republicans solely to appease various constituencies within their parties -- and nothing else. Remarkably, The Onion accurately assessed the situation several months ago with the satirical essay "Congress Deadlocked Over How To Not Provide Health Care." The Onion "quotes" Nancy Pelosi in a very smart passage:
Both parties understand that the current system is broken," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Monday. "But what we can't seem to agree upon is how to best keep it broken, while still ensuring that no elected official takes any political risk whatsoever. It’s a very complicated issue
Substantial reform was possible
Although I am proudly more cynical than most commentators, many early signs pointed to the possibility of substantial healthcare reform. Even though I predicted in October 2008 that the public would not likely tolerate the introduction of major spending programs during a weakened economy, opinion poll data told another story.
During the 2008 campaigns, voters clearly supported healthcare reform. Every credible candidate in both major parties advocated healthcare reform. Also, the Democrat candidates won convincingly, and they generally proposed broad reforms, including the formation of some type of "public plan" option that would extend government-sponsored healthcare to most uninsured individuals. Insured individuals could also opt for the public plan under certain circumstances. When healthcare debates began in Congress, most opinion polls showed strong support among voters for a public plan option.
Theatrics over debate
Although voters held and continue to hold favorable opinions regarding healthcare reform, the mainstream news media has generally portrayed the public plan in very ominous terms. Also, conservatives have shamelessly distorted the terms of healthcare reform in order to scare voters -- particularly seniors.
Earlier this year, tense debates and even violence broke out at "town hall" meetings held to discuss healthcare reform. Moderate Democrats vowed to derail measures that included a public option. Liberals vowed to kill measures that did not include a public plan option. And it has become increasingly clear that Republicans will not vote for anything that the Democrats propose -- other than bills to augment war spending. More often than not, mainstream media outlets have examined the political "drama" surrounding healthcare reform instead of providing facts that would allow voters to assess the merits of the various proposals.
In the middle of this theatrical performance, the Obama Administration went into hibernation. During the month of August, the president -- who campaigned with an almost unprecedented level of high energy -- virtually disappeared from the radar screen while the media and conservatives distorted Democratic healthcare reform proposals. Obama, however, returned from his vacation to Martha's Vineyard and delivered a speech, during which he lauded and embraced a public plan option. Since that speech, however, Obama has not forcefully advocated the creation of a public plan.
Early warning signs missed?
Perhaps liberals missed the warning signs, which indicated that the moderate and conservative positions on healthcare would certainly prevail. In July 2008, for example, Maxine Waters told MSNBC that the White House was not going to punish moderate and conservative Democrats who did not suppport a robust public plan option. Waters said that Rahm Emanuel gave Blue Dog Democrats political cover because he recruited many of them to run for Congress:
[Pushing Blue Dogs] may be difficult for Rahm Emanuel, because don’t forget -- he recruited most of them. As when he was over in the Congress, in the leadership, Rahm Emanuel recruited more conservative members and based on some of the information I’m getting, they told them that they could vote the way they wanted to vote, that they would not interfere with what was considered their philosophy about some of these things. So, now the chickens have come home to roost.
Perhaps the chickens are indeed roosting -- at least according to several stories that appeared yesterday on many leading political blogs, including TPM, Huffington Post and Politico. According to these reports, Emanuel personally visited Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and demanded that he give Senator Joe Lieberman exactly what he wants regarding healthcare reform. Lieberman opposes a public plan and a buy-in option for Medicare. Lieberman has repeatedly vowed to filibuster any proposed healthcare reform legislation that contains either of these proposals. The recent reports which claim that Emanuel has told Reid to cater to Lieberman -- a claim the White House denies -- confirms the July statements of Maxine Waters.
Some careful readers will also remember that the White House intervened and allowed Lieberman to maintain his leadership positions on Senate committees, despite the fact that he ran as an Independent in 2006 and endorsed John McCain for president in 2008 during a speech he delivered at the Republican National Convention. Lieberman has threatened to kill the most important legislation that Congress has proposed in decades, and the White House continues to protect him politically and to cater to his interests.
To liberals who still believe that criticizing the Obama Administration is treasonous, I ask the following question: What must the White House do to receive legitimate criticism from the Left?
Update: An organization called the Progressive Change Campaign Committee has launched an advertisement that criticizes Rahm Emanuel's willingness to discard the public plan option. The ad is posted below:
Let me be clear: I despise what Joe Lieberman is doing to healthcare reform, in the service of his insurance industry masters and his own wounded (by the Democratic left who drove him from the party) ego. I am sad and disappointed by the prospect of a healthcare reform bill that includes neither a public option nor a Medicare buy-in for those 55-64. The bill needs both, and then some. I completely agree with Glenn Greenwald: President Obama deserves much of the blame for the debacle, for failing to fight vigourously for a public option in the first place.
But I'm also worried about the left's rush to abandon the likely healthcare reform compromise. The fight isn't over; Senate progressives should try to get a better bill; if the likely disappointing bill passes, House progressives should fight like hell to get the public option and other measures to expand insurance and cut costs back into whatever bill is on the table.
However: I have seen a cavalcade of lefty surrender in the last two days, with people who ought to know better insisting it's time to defeat the Senate bill (which means the current proposals wouldn't go to conference, to be improved by the House) rather than compromise. And I really don't get it. On MSNBC's "The Ed Show" Tuesday, Arianna Huffington argued that progressives should kill the compromised Senate bill, and I ... well, I asked what that would accomplish. And I still don't know. Some of the complaints are starting to remind me of progressives who backed Ralph Nader in 2000, because there was no difference between George W. Bush and Al Gore. (Text continues after video, below):
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I have been here on Salon since mid-summer, haranguing Obama and the Democrats to fight for meaningful reform and a robust public option. While few people were really paying attention, in July, I voiced my disappointment with Obama's failure to lay out core principles of his own healthcare reform plans. During the summer of "town hells," I repeated that lament; I think Obama's silence, rather than empowering his Democratic caucus, left them exposed and let the rowdy right define his bill with their own signature insanity: Socialist death panels and mandatory high school abortion clinics, here we come.
So Obama has much to answer for. But that's behind us. Now we have the reality of the already inadequate Senate bill needing 60 votes it won't get. And so we've got President Lieberman dictating the terms of the bill. It's disgraceful, when you look at what the Democratic base has voted for since 2006 (when Lieberman was forced to run as an independent when he lost the Democratic nomination).
I can get very stirred up by all of that. But I can also say this: The core provisions of the Senate bill -- expanding coverage to perhaps 30 million people; doing away with insurance company discrimination against those with preexisting conditions, preventing them from cruelly throwing the insured who suddenly need coverage off the rolls, and abolishing caps on insurance coverage (caps would seem to be the opposite of insurance) -- those are important accomplishments.
I admit: I'm afraid that building in an insurance mandate, but not any kind of public option that might bring down costs, could make this whole plan backfire. Maybe it will turn out to be a huge giveaway to the insurance companies, and taxpayers as well as the newly insured will rebel against Obama and the Democrats for passing it. That's a real worry. I have made that case myself in arguing for the public option over the last few months.
But I also can't look away from the possibility of helping insure another 30 million people and protecting a whole lot more from discrimination and abandonment when they need insurance most. This may be the best choice we get for a long time. And I have been challenging myself and other people to answer the question: Has there ever been a time liberals have defeated a basically liberal but disappointing set of reforms, only to be able to implement something more liberal later?
And I don't know of anything like that. When liberals and conservatives united to defeat President Nixon's guaranteed-income Family Assistance Plan, I know people like me thought they were doing the best they could to protect welfare families from possible encroachment on their benefits. But years later, a guaranteed income seems like socialism. That was before my time; but I also remember when electing Ronald Reagan, while disappointing, was going to herald an era of lefty rebellion; but that never happened either; we got George H.W. Bush and then Bill Clinton's accommodating triangulation, which hid his social democratic aspirations so well that no one could find them. And after the defeat of Clinton's healthcare reform efforts, Democrats came back even more timid this time around -- 15 years later.
I'm also not convinced by arguments that Democrats can kill the bill, and then use the failure of healthcare reform in 2010 against the Republicans. They have shown no capacity to hang the GOP with "the party of no" label it deserves. Instead, after holding the White House and Congress for the first time in almost a generation, they will have shown themselves unable to pass meaningful reform. People can argue to kill the bill on its merits, but don't try to argue that it's good politics. Obama will look like a failure.
Make no mistake: Obama is caving to Blue Dog Democrats, Joe Lieberman and the insurance lobby. But if you don't like that, then go into the districts of those faux-Democrats and work against them. Work harder for campaign finance reform. Start thinking about getting behind a genuinely progressive primary opponent for the president in 2012. (I think it's too early for that myself.) And for now, continue to lobby Congress to improve this bill. But vain boasts about how progressives can kill the bill, start over, and blame Republicans for the failure to pass reform are not convincing.
One footnote on the video: I was a little too hard on Howard Dean. I believe he's approaching this with integrity, and he may be right about a bad bill being worse than no bill at all. I still see a little bit of the Dean/Rahm Emanuel feud at work here, though, and I'm not ready for the Democrats to round up the circular firing squad quite yet.
WASHINGTON -- The surgery complete, the great doctor finally stepped back from the operating table and paused for a moment of self-congratulation.
"We've got a great health insurance reform bill here," Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., told reporters solemnly Tuesday morning, after he had forced Democrats to jerk the bill to the right yet again to buy his vote on President Obama's top domestic policy priority. "And the danger was that some of my colleagues, I think, were just trying to load it up with too much. And what happens then is that you run the risk of losing everything." Lieberman doesn't use a scalpel when he's operating on legislation, of course; he goes for brute force instead. So what if he'd bludgeoned the patient half to death in the course of the procedure?
By the time Lieberman was done with his intervention into the healthcare reform process Tuesday, two things were clear. One, it only looked like the Democrats controlled the Senate by a filibuster-proof margin. The party that's actually running the show is an obscure, regional outfit known as the Connecticut for Lieberman Party. And the guy who was elected on its ticket -- a hack who worked his way up the ranks by showing undying devotion to the party's cause, i.e., advancing the political career of its founder -- isn't really on board for all the hope and change of 2008.
And two, the end stages of the debate over healthcare reform will essentially be a mad scramble by progressives to mitigate the damage Lieberman and conservative Democrats can do to the legislation before it passes -- and to try to convince their wavering allies that the bill is still worth supporting. What started out as a sweeping effort to change the entire healthcare system looks likely to wind up as a moderately ambitious attempt to regulate the insurance market (in exchange for a promise of millions of new customers).
"We're not going to get all that we want," said Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., a leading advocate for the now-defunct public option. "But we're going to get so much more than we have." Rockefeller and most of his colleagues were singing from the same rueful hymnal. "Look at 31 million Americans who will have health insurance as a result of this bill," said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the second-ranking Senate Democrat. "How do you say to them, 'Sorry, you can't have health insurance, we think this bill could be better'? ... I'm not happy with it, I don't like the way this has happened. But at this point in time, look at where we are."
If that sounds a little like rationalization, it probably is: Chances are progressives won't be able to shift the bill back to the left much, even in a conference between the House and Senate. Keeping Lieberman on board is simply the price of doing business. Trying to pass parts of the legislation through budget reconciliation, which many liberals see as a magic bullet, might just be a fantasy. The rules of that process would mean most of the insurance reforms in the legislation get dropped. So that means Democrats need 60 votes -- and that puts Lieberman, and Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, another conservative who has refused to endorse the bill yet, in a position to exact a heavy price.
Which they've certainly done. They managed to kill not just the notion of a public health insurance option, but also the compromise Democrats had hatched just a week ago, which would have expanded Medicare a bit instead of launching a government-run insurance plan. That's not the end of the damage. To get the bill through the Senate, Democrats will probably have to fund its $900 billion price tag by taxing expensive health benefits packages, instead of with a new tax on the rich, as the House prefers. Some sort of language restricting access to abortion under the new, government-supervised insurance exchanges will be thrown in, as a sop to win Nelson's anti-choice favor. Access to Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor, won't be expanded as much as many progressives want. And yes, the bill would dole out $50 million to groups teaching abstinence-only sex education plans, which helped buy the support of Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark.
All that seems like too much to swallow for many liberals. "Honestly, the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill," former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean told Vermont Public Radio. "The Senate has somehow managed to turn the House's silk purse into a sow's ear," said Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., co-chairman of the House Progressive Caucus. "Without a public option and no hope of expanding Medicare coverage, this bill is not worth supporting," said Stephanie Taylor, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. Liberal blogs erupted with anger, and Taylor's group released a video targeting White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who many on the left think has manipulated the process in order to crush progressives' dreams.
But President Obama and Senate Democrats tried, even in the face of all that outrage, to remind their erstwhile allies of what else the bill does. "The final bill won't include everything that everybody wants," Obama said after meeting with Senate Democrats -- including Lieberman -- at the White House. "No bill can do that. But what I told my former colleagues today is that we simply cannot allow differences over individual elements of this plan to prevent us from meeting our responsibility to solve a long-standing and urgent problem for the American people. They are waiting for us to act."
The legislation would, after all, bar insurance companies from refusing coverage to people who are already sick. It would give federal subsidies to people who can't afford insurance coverage on their own. It would set up a regulated marketplace to shop for policies. It would set up some experiments in changing the way medical care is paid for, to reward outcomes instead of procedures, which could save the country billions of dollars down the line. It would at least alleviate, if not completely fix, the status quo, which left untouched would lead to continuing, rapid increases in premium costs for the middle class -- and continue the insurance industry's capricious practice of denying care just when it's most needed. Yes, the insurance companies would get millions of new customers, thanks to a new federal requirement that all individuals buy insurance. But is the point of reform to punish the insurers, or is it to expand access to what every other industrialized nation considers a basic human right?
It wasn't hard to see where the White House came down on that question. "These aren't small changes," Obama said. "These are big changes. They represent the most significant reform of our healthcare system since the passage of Medicare. They will save money. They will save families money; they will save businesses money; and they will save government money. And they're going to save lives." Joe Lieberman may have won the battle Tuesday. But the White House is determined to win the war.
Me & Joe say NO to a "Public Option"
