As discussed earlier in this space, some liberals are sounding quite happy about the new deal on healthcare reform that Senate Democrats have worked out. Not all of them, though. In fact, MoveOn.org seems to be hopping mad over the whole thing, especially the at least partial abandonment of the public option that's involved in the agreement.
From an e-mail the group sent out to its members Wednesday afternoon:
Dear MoveOn member,
How could they?
Senate Democrats have just announced a tentative health care deal that doesn't appear to include a real public health insurance option.
Instead of pulling out all the stops, they've bargained away the heart of health care reform—allowing conservative senators like Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson to hold the process hostage and protect Big Insurance.
And sure enough, the insurance companies are reportedly thrilled with these terms. "We WIN," one industry insider said during the negotiations. "No government insurance competitor."
If the health care bill doesn't include a public option, it'll be a huge giveaway to the insurance companies. But the deal isn't final yet, so we need to send an immediate message to Congress and President Obama that any health care bill without a real public health insurance option is simply unacceptable.
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford has reason to celebrate today -- a special subcomittee in the state House voted against impeaching him. By 6-1, the panel gave an impeachment bill an unfavorable report to the whole House Judiciary Committee.
The vote doesn't guarantee that Sanford will escape impeachment, but it makes that result very likely.
The news wasn't all good for the governor, though: The subcommittee did vote unanimously in favor of censure.
Fox News' Gretchen Carlson is not a dumb person -- she just plays one on TV. That's the revelation from "The Daily Show's" Jon Stewart, who devoted almost an entire segment to Carlson Tuesday night.
Like many of her colleagues on Fox, Carlson often plays dumb. In her case, that means looking up words like "ignoramus" and "czar," or at least pretending to in order to score some points against liberals -- and look anti-intellectual in the process.
Turns out, though, that Carlson is actually quite smart. She graduated from Stanford -- with honors, no less -- studied abroad at Oxford and is a classically trained violinist. In other words, she probably already knew exactly what "czar" means.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Gretchen Carlson Dumbs Down | ||||
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Some important liberals are already getting in line behind the Senate's healthcare reform deal, as Gabriel Winant noted in an earlier post. And the biggest of them all -- at least when it comes to talk of healthcare, and a certain swath of progressives -- is backing the agreement as well.
"This is what should have been done in the first place," former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean said on CBS News Wednesday morning. He also called the deal "real reform." (Video below, with a hat-tip to Political Wire.)
Not everyone's been swayed, though. Two of the liberal blogosphere's biggest names, Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos fame and Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher, are both disappointed with the deal, and with Democrats trying to play it up for donations.
Now that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has managed to produce a renegotiated healthcare deal, everyone has to figure out what to think about it. While Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., is hedging, liberals across the country are probably e-mailing each other right now, asking, “Where should we be on this?”
It’s early yet, but it’s looking like major progressive figures are feeling cautiously optimistic about the compromise Reid has crafted. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., has been a major public option advocate all along. Of the new proposal, he says, “I’ve got a smile on my face. I don't smile naturally.” However, Rockefeller’s Senate colleague Russ Feingold, D-Wis., isn’t quite as happy a camper. In a comment given to the New York Times, Feingold expressed some disapproval -- though he didn't actually promise to vote against a bill. “I do not support proposals that would replace the public option in the bill with a purely private approach,” Feingold said.
Meanwhile, among liberal political observers, it’s much the same story. The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein thinks that the deal is “better by far than what Democrats looked likely to get a week ago.” He also points out that, should political conditions favor it, the proposed policies are structured so that they can easily be scaled up in the future. Mother Jones blogger Kevin Drum writes, “For now, the prospects for healthcare reform are looking as good as they ever have.” Writing in the Nation, under the headline, “Senate Dems ditch the public option,” John Nichols offers a characterization of the reforms in the deal as “not inconsequential.” And the current most-recommended diary at liberal superblog Daily Kos is an endorsement of the deal that claims, “This will lower total medical costs for everyone folks. And it's bigger news that the small fragment public option ever was.”
It’s hard to imagine liberals killing this thing -- as they threatened to do some months ago with any bill that didn't contain a public option. That means that if Reid has indeed found a compromise that can get enough centrist and conservative votes he’s probably got something that can pass.
Senate Democrats say they have a deal on healthcare reform. They're not saying what that deal is, really, but still: They say they have a deal.
Problem is, with 60 votes needed to break a filibuster in the Senate, every single senator's vote counts. And some of them, like Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., have been very hesitant about supporting Democrats' proposals. So the question remains -- will Lieberman support this deal? Or will he vote with Republicans to filibuster it?
A statement Lieberman put out Wednesday morning seems to suggest he'll back this new deal, but it also leaves him plenty of wiggle room to go either way. The full statement:
I am encouraged by the progress toward a consensus on proposals to send to the Congressional Budget Office to review. I believe that it is important to pass legislation that expands access to the millions who do not have coverage, improves quality and lowers costs while not impeding our economic recovery or increasing the debt.
My opposition to a government-run insurance option, including any option with a trigger, has been clear for months and remains my position today.
Regarding the ‘Medicare buy-in’ proposal that is being discussed, we must remain vigilant about protecting and extending the solvency of the program, which is now in a perilous financial condition.
It is my understanding that at this point there is no legislative language so I look forward to analyzing the details of the plan and reviewing analysis from the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of the Actuary in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid.
War Room is written and edited by Alex Koppelman, with contributions from Salon reporters around the country.
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