Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nev., accompanied by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2011, to respond to Republican critics on health care and the aviation bill. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)(Credit: AP)
A Republican drive to repeal the year-old health care law ended in party-line defeat in the Senate on Wednesday, leaving the Supreme Court to render a final, unpredictable verdict on an issue steeped in political and constitutional controversy. The vote was 47-51. Moments earlier, the Senate agreed to make one relatively minor change in the law, voting to strip out a paperwork requirement for businesses.
President Barack Obama, who has vowed to veto any total repeal of his signature legislative accomplishment, has said he would accept the change. It does not directly affect health care.
Republicans conceded in advance their attempt at total repeal would fall short, but they accomplished an objective of forcing rank and file Democrats to take a position on an issue that reverberated in the 2010 campaign and may play a role in 2012.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said the vote marked an opportunity for Democrats who voted for the bill last year “to listen to those who have desperately been trying to get your attention.”
“To say, yes, maybe my vote for this bill was a mistake, and that we can do better,” McConnell said.
Democrats worked to minimize any political repercussions, a concern for a party already acutely aware it must defend 22 seats — and its shrunken Senate majority — in the 2012 elections.
Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the Republican repeal movement would “take away a child’s right to get health insurance and instead give insurance companies the right to use asthma or diabetes as an excuse to take away that care.”
“It would kick kids off their parents’ health insurance,” Reid said. “It would take away seniors’ rights to a free wellness check.”
Democrats also countered with the proposed repeal of the law’s requirement that businesses, charities, and state and local governments file income tax forms every time they purchase $600 or more in goods.
It was approved 81-17, after Republicans said it had originally been their idea.
Across the street from the Capitol, Democrats convened a Judiciary Committee hearing to solicit testimony on the constitutionality of the law they passed and Obama signed months ago.
“Many who argue the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional are the same people who condemn judicial activism,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who presided. “They are pushing the Supreme Court to strike down this law because they could not defeat it in Congress.”
Republicans were scathing in response.
“The sensible process would have been to have . held a hearing on the law’s constitutionality before the bill passed, not after,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa. “Like Alice in Wonderland, sentence first, verdict afterward.”
Two federal judges have ruled the law it is unconstitutional, partially or in its entirety, citing a requirement for individuals to purchase coverage and pay a penalty in taxes if they fail to do so. Two other judges have upheld the law.
The controversy has yet to reach the Supreme Court, but it is widely expected to, and Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., announced he would file legislation urging the justices to act quickly.
The maneuvering occurred around a law as ambitious as any in recent years, and as controversial. According to the Congressional Budget Office, it would expand coverage to tens of millions who lack it, crack down on insurance industry abuses and cut federal budget deficits. At its core, the bill would require most Americans to purchase insurance, a so-called individual mandate that has become one of the principal points of opposition among Republicans and the tea party activists who propelled them to gains last fall.
The bill’s critics argue the law gave government too large a role in the health care system, will harm Medicare and raises taxes and fees that will burden the economy. They also sharply dispute the CBO estimate that deficits will fall once the bill takes effect, arguing that the forecasts rest on spending cuts to Medicare and other programs that will not materialize.
Either way, the day’s events shaped up as the latest maneuvering in a struggle that has spanned more than two years.
Republicans said a proposal by Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., to eliminate the reporting requirement to the Internal Revenue Service was legislative pilferage, noting that Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., filed a bill to that effect last year.
The measure calls for $44 billion in spending cuts to offset the revenue loss from the change, but unlike Johanns’ earlier measure, Stabenow’s specifies that none of the funds can come from Social Security.
Under federal law, Social Security benefits are generally guaranteed. As a result, the provision Stabenow advanced assures merely that no administrative costs can be cut at the agency.
No similar protection was included for the agency that oversees Medicare.
The House approved legislation repealing the health care law last month on a party-line vote, ignoring a veto threat from Obama and Reid’s blunt statement the bill would never see the light of day in the Senate. McConnell responded quickly that he would look for an opportunity to force a vote.
The law that passed a year ago had the support of 58 Democrats and two independents aligned with them. All 40 Republicans voted against it.
Democratic ranks have been thinned since then, and their current majority is 53-47.
Of those 53 seats, 23 are on the ballot in 2012, including several that Republicans are targeting. One on the list, Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, said in advance he would oppose the Republican repeal proposal.
“There are a lot of good parts in the bill and some that I will work to improve,” Nelson told reporters in his home state. “The repealers already have health care. But they’re ready, willing and eager to take it away from hundreds of thousands of Nebraskans.”
At the same time, Nelson has said he favors replacing the individual mandate and accompanying penalties if a viable alternative can be found.
——
Associated Press writer Laurie Kellman contributed to this report.
FILE - In this Jan. 6, 2011, file photo Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington. Asked on NBC television's "Meet the Press" being aired Sunday, Jan. 9, 2011, if he believes the tea party will be a lasting political force, Reid said the movement emerged because of the country's economic problems, that the tea party will no longer exist when the economy improves, and that the economy is getting better every day. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)(Credit: Associated Press)
A reasonable and popular measure with the support of a majority of senators has quietly died for no good reason, and the Senate’s very first official legislative “day” of the new Congress has not even finished yet. (Did you know that the Senate’s been in the middle of this one legislative day since Jan. 5? It’s true!) This time, the victim was Senate rules reform, because an attempt to deal with the unintended consequences of the previous stab at rules reform was deemed to be a violation of the rights of the minority as not at all enshrined in the Constitution, which doesn’t mention filibusters.
It is actually amazing how quickly this collapsed. One month ago every single Senate Democrat signed a letter in support of reforms of the cloture rule. Tom Udall’s proposal would not have even killed the filibuster; it would’ve just forced 40 members to stay on the floor to sustain it, instead of one guy declaring filibuster and everyone pacing for 30 hours.
Chuck Schumer and Lamar Alexander now suggest that maybe just getting rid of “secret holds” will be good enough. Forty-seven Republicans are united in opposition to real reform, and Republicans will remain united in opposition to change until there are 51 Republicans senators, or 50 plus one Republican vice president.
The Washington Post story on the end of the reform push actually correctly notes that the current Senate rules date back not to the days of the Founders, but to 1975, when the rules were changed because racist Southerners kept filibustering civil rights legislation.
Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene
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U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) speaks at a news conference following the Senate Republican Annual Issues Meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, January 6, 2011. REUTERS/Jim Young (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS)(Credit: Reuters)
Exciting news! Having already wasted a day of everyone’s time pretending to repeal the Affordable Care Act in the House of Representatives, Republicans are now set to force a vote on repeal in the Senate, where purely symbolic expressions of legislative sour grapes can take weeks.
It was previously thought that Harry Reid would simply block a vote on repeal and that would be the end of it, but Minority Leader Mitch McConnell always finds a way. He could use “Rule 14″ to bring it to the floor, for example. Or — and this is what he’ll probably do — he could attach repeal as an amendment to something likely to pass the Senate.
The Heritage Foundation even has a little FAQ on how the Senate can repeal Obamacare. Of course, irony of ironies, every repeal option requires either 60 or 67 votes. “This would put many Senate Democrats in the interesting situation of voicing support for so-called ‘filibuster reform’ while at the same time using the filibuster rule to block an up or down vote on Obamacare.” An interesting situation indeed! I imagine we’ll be hearing a lot about “up or down votes” over the next two years, after having heard nothing about them, at all, from the ruling party over the last two years.
I am expecting basically weeks of make-believe repeal of Obama’s cootiecare health bill, over and over again. It just feels good, to the GOP.
Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene
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Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., talks with the Associated Press in his office on Capitol Hill in Washington Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2010.(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)(Credit: AP)
Top Senate Democrats are warning House Speaker-elect John Boehner they’ll block any Republican effort to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.
Citing better Medicare prescription coverage and other changes in the new law, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his top lieutenants say the overhaul “is too important to be treated as collateral damage in a partisan mission to repeal health care.”
The letter says repeal would have “unintended consequences” for the part of the law that gradually closes the Medicare prescription drug coverage gap, as well as for other popular consumer benefits. Also signing the letter are Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois, Charles Schumer of New York and Patty Murray of Washington.
A copy of the letter was obtained by The Associated Press.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nev., right, hugs House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., during a signing ceremony for "don't ask, don't tell" repeal legislation that would allow gays to serve openly in the military, Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2010, at the Interior Department in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)(Credit: AP)
With dozens of defeated and retiring members clearing out their offices, the 111th Congress finished work this week. Few are sad to see it go. According to a recent Gallup poll, only thirteen percent of Americans approve of the way Congress is doing its job; fully 83% disapprove, the most intense scorn for the national legislature in three decades. The Congressional leadership has fared little better: Promising to “fire” Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Republican insurgents seized control of the House last month, while Senate leader Harry Reid clung to his seat against all odds, thanks to the extreme behavior of his Nevada opponent. It seems they can’t get out of town too soon.
Yet the flurry of activity this past week completes the work of the most effective Congress in a generation, one that has passed more historic legislation and transformed the American political landscape more than any since the 1960s. Like the Great 89th, the Congress that Lyndon B. Johnson swept into office with his 1964 landslide, this session re-wrote many of the fundamental rules of American life: eliminating barriers to full participation of gays and lesbians, subjecting the financial sector to regulatory oversight, and constructing a national health insurance program. And like its celebrated Johnson-era predecessor, this Congress has received little thanks for its achievements.
In the short term, the historical record suggests, the nation recoils against far-reaching change; it’s not unusual for the most successful Congressional majorities to lose seats in the next election as the American people collectively utter a breathless, “wait a minute.” But, if the lessons of the 1960s offer any guide, the brick-by-brick accretion of significant legislation can construct enduring new features of the political system.
When the 89th Congress completed its work at the end of 1966, it left behind the most productive law-making record in American history. Lawrence O’Brien, LBJ’s chief Congressional liaison, and Domestic Policy Chief Joseph Califano proudly produced a summary of the legislative achievements for their boss (and the national press). By any standard, their list was staggering. The Voting Rights Act shredded the last vestiges of formal, legal segregation, giving rise to a generation of black officeholders (and paving the road for the eventual election of an African American president). Medicare and expanded Social Security rescued millions of older Americans from poverty and illness and became cherished pillars of American social policy (opposing “ObamaCare” last year, even Republicans railed against cutbacks in Medicare). Through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), federal dollars began flowing into public schools. And even if ESEA never became the “passport out of poverty” that LBJ imagined it would, it transformed American schools and laid the foundation for all subsequent education policy.
The Congress of 1965-66 secured not only the civil rights, health, education, and welfare measures commonly associated with Johnson’s Great Society, but a host of other reforms too. The Immigration Act of 1965 eliminated the odious quota system which first became law amidst an outburst of racist nativism in the 1920s. The national origins system, as it was called, had severely limited immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe and all but blocked arrivals from Asia. The new law banned ethnic quotas and opened the doors to a steady stream of arrivals from Asia, making possible the large migrations of Koreans, Filipinos, Japanese and Vietnamese to the United States that have contributed so much to the nation’s economic and cultural life.
The current Congress has amassed a record nearly that impressive. It passed controversial legislation to stabilize the financial sector, bail out the automotive industry, and stimulate the sluggish economy. Lawmakers enacted landmark health insurance reform, realizing a legislative goal frustrated since the 1940s, re-regulated Wall Street, compromised on a major tax bill, and passed the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. In the waning days of the lame duck session, the leadership scraped together bi-partisan majorities to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and ratify the most significant arms control treaty since the end of the Cold War. Unlike their 1960s forbears, who reserved the filibuster for extraordinary measures and did their legislative horse-trading in private, Reid and Pelosi accomplished all this against a determined opposition and in the glare of 24-hour press coverage. For better or worse, their legislative achievement is remarkable.
In 1966, Johnson’s legislative staff and the leadership on Capitol Hill took justified pride in their accomplishments. But, much like last November, the voters balked at the pace and direction of change. In the mid-term election, the Democrats lost 47 House seats; the informal liberal majority took a harder hit, as most of those losses affected progressive northerners (conservative southern Democrats, still a large part of the party’s caucus, held their own). The Democrats also lost three seats in the Senate, where renowned Illinois liberal Paul Douglas, architect of many anti-poverty programs, met defeat.
More important, popular support for government eroded badly over that two-year period. Public confidence had climbed through the early 1960s, reaching its record peak in 1964 when seventy-six percent of Americans agreed that they could “trust the government in Washington to do what is right” just about always or most of the time. The next two years witnessed a catastrophic drop in that index, the start of a long-term decline that has never fully recovered.
Of course, just as they would in 2010, developments far from Capitol Hill damaged the reputation of Congress in particular and government in general. Much like lingering unemployment and economic distress this past November, the escalating war in Vietnam and racial conflict in the nation’s cities turned voters against the politicians in power.
But despite those setbacks, the legislation of the Great 89th became part of the fabric of American public life. Medicare is virtually untouchable, almost a birthright for contemporary senior citizens. Immigration from the non-Western world has changed the face, and the faces, of the nation. Federal aid to education, and even supervision of it, wins bipartisan support. When ESEA came up for renewal, conservative Republicans were among its champions.
It’s too soon to tell, but a generation from now the work of this most unloved Congress may also have permanently altered the nation, transforming institutions and altering Americans’ basic expectations about their government. Future generations may look back on this Congress with more fondness, and certainly with more respect, than we contemporaries.
Bruce J. Schulman, the William E. Huntington Professor of History at Boston University, is the author of "The Seventies" (DaCapo Press).
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Every day, right-wing blogs and Fox News are abuzz with hysterical reports of partly or wholly invented scandals that, in their fevered imaginations, threaten to once-and-for-all destroy the Obama administration. While most of the bloggers are true believers, convinced that they’re one smoking gun away from opening everyone’s eyes to the criminality of the administration, on Fox they just run with whatever sounds good until they get bored with it or something more entertaining comes along. Once a pseudo-scandal ceases to be useful, it doesn’t really go away forever — Free Republic commenters will reference it until the end of time — but most people just sort of forget about it shortly after Megyn Kelly stops mentioning it.
So I went through the archives to help remind everyone just how many silly things the conservative press got all worked up about in the year 2010. (With a couple big items left out. Everyone stopped talking about the “Ground Zero Mosque” once summer ended, but it’s hardly been completely forgotten.)
Harry Reid said “Negro”
“Game Change,” a lengthy catalog of unimportant gossip masquerading as an account of the 2008 elections, was released to much media attention in January. While some people gravitated to the chapters about Sarah Palin or the ambitious power-crazed and insane Elizabeth Edwards, the right-wing media latched onto one silly line spoken by Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
In a private conversation, Reid said Barack Obama was “light-skinned” and had no “Negro dialect.” As I said, at the time, a 70-year-old white man saying “Negro” is embarrassing but not particularly shocking or outrageous. Any restatement of Reid’s point in more sensitive language — that Barack Obama could be president because he seems less “black”/threatening to old white people than major black politicians of the past — would’ve been mostly uncontroversial.
But Republicans have some major issues and hangups with regard to racial issues — they’ve convinced themselves that they’re a persecuted minority, basically — and so they all thought that because Trent Lott got in trouble for saying something awful a few years ago, it was only fair that Harry Reid get in trouble for saying something that they convinced themselves was just as bad, or worse. But Reid used inartful language to express a non-offensive point. Lott used perfectly polite language to express an awful argument: That America would’ve been better off with a segregationist president.
John Kyl and Michael Steele and John Cornyn — three Republicans who stood by Lott in 2002 — called on Reid to resign. He didn’t, and everyone more or less forgot about it.
Barack Obama’s uppity expression
Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds just innocently posted a picture from the White House Flickr feed, and asked his readers to “analyze the body language.” The point was clear: Obama looked smug and uppity. In case you didn’t get it, Glenn zoomed in on Obama’s face and cropped the photo to show his elitist eyes more clearly, and then quoted some reader mail: “If I really wanted to set my dad off, all I’d have to do is send him this photo.”
Once Bill O’Reilly’s done flirting with Megyn Kelly in the clip above, they both take turns purposefully misinterpreting Barack Obama’s criticism of the Citizens United decision at the State of the Union, then Megyn calls the act of criticizing the Supreme Court in the State of the Union “unprecedented.” Can you believe the nerve of this president, saying something critical of the Supreme Court while they’re sitting right there? Unprecedented! In fact, according to Megyn’s research, this had only already happened nine other times. But those other times weren’t that serious, while this was “a full-frontal assault on the justices who were sitting a stone’s throw away from him,” apparently.
Captain America hates the Tea Parties
In February, a panel in a Captain America comic book featured a bunch of protesters with Tea Party-inspired signs, and this reallypissed off a bunch of tea partiers. They even investigated the comic’s author’s Twitter, where they discovered damning evidence that he was a a liberal.My favorite response: “This seemingly innocuous Captain America comic is, in reality, a grossly effective weapon of the leftists, for it captures the hearts and minds of children.
The Missile Defense Agency logo looks Islamic!
The Defense Department’s missile-developing agency got a new logo in February, and critics (Drudge) were quick to point out that it had a crescent-ish shape in it, and crescents are also present on Islamic flags, and therefore Barack Obama loves Iran.
The Nuclear Security Summit logo also looks Islamic
Two short months later, Pamela Geller and the New York Post and Fox News all noticed that the president’s Nuclear Security Summit logo also had a mysterious circular crescent-ish shape, just like the shapes on the flags of Muslim countries. (This logo was actually based on the Bohr model of the atom, but Niels Bohr was Danish and therefore probably a socialist.)
NASA is abandoning space to coddle Muslims instead!
In an interview with al-Jazeera, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said that Barack Obama charged him with inspiring children to get into math and science, expanding international relationships and reaching out to the Muslim world.
This is all fairly uncontroversial stuff, but conservatives exploded with outrage. It’s NASA’s job to send Americans into space to conquer the moon-men, not to encourage Islamofascists!
Barack Obama told Republicans to sit in the back of the car, which is reverse-racist
Everyone got sick of the president’s car-in-the-ditch routine before the midterms, but apparently telling Republicans to sit in the backseat of a car was an endorsement of racial segregation, according to Fox & Friends and Glenn Beck and Michele Bachmann.
Barack Obama doesn’t say the word “terror” often enough
In August, First Lady Michelle Obama took a vacation to Spain, with a couple friends and her daughter Sasha. Matt Drudge claimed that this trip would cost the taxpayers millions of dollars and Mickey Kaus said this proved that the first family was fighting and Maureen Dowd just said something that made no sense about Michelle bringing Barack martinis after work. (The friends paid for their own airfare and lodging, for the record.)
The White House bribed Joe Sestak!
According to Democratic Senate candidate Joe Sestak, the White House offered him a job in exchange for not running against Arlen Specter. (Actually, Bill Clinton mentioned some sort of unpaid role doing something terribly uninteresting. But the truth doesn’t matter.) While the White House said this never happened, the right-wing press decided that this was a terrible bribe and a violation of various laws. Rep. Darrell Issa got particularly excited, asking for a special prosecutor to be appointed. Then Sestak lost and no one cared anymore.
The White House also bribed Andrew Romanoff!
Someone at the White House apparently offered Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff some sort of job in exchange for dropping out of the Senate primary. Dick Morris got all excited. But then Romanoff lost and no one cared anymore.
The White House forced Eric Massa to resign because of healthcare
Former Representative Eric Massa is, plainly, a weird, troubled guy. He was forced to resign in March because of complaints that he inappropriately touched staffers and generally created an uncomfortable work environment. But according to Massa, he was forced out because of White House dirty tricks and union thuggery. Rahm Emanuel confronted him naked in the shower and unions tried to bribe him into supporting the administration’s agenda! In Massa’s telling, his ouster was punishment for voting against cap and trade and healthcare reform.
Barack Obama’s trip to India will cost $200 million a day!
This one’s only a little more than a month old, but it had a short shelf-life because the sourcing was even dumber than usual for these sorts of things. One Indian news agency quoted an anonymous “top official” of an Indian state claiming that Obama, accompanied by 3,000 people, would spend $200 million a day during his trip to Mumbai. Rush Limbaugh, Drudge, the National Review, the Washington Times, the Daily Mail and every conservative blog under the sun ran with this incredibly dubious “report.” Then everyone shut up about it minutes after it was debunked and stopped being a useful attack.
Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene
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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nev., accompanied by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2011, to respond to Republican critics on health care and the aviation bill. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)(Credit: AP) 
FILE - In this Jan. 6, 2011, file photo Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington. Asked on NBC television's "Meet the Press" being aired Sunday, Jan. 9, 2011, if he believes the tea party will be a lasting political force, Reid said the movement emerged because of the country's economic problems, that the tea party will no longer exist when the economy improves, and that the economy is getting better every day. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)(Credit: Associated Press) 
U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) speaks at a news conference following the Senate Republican Annual Issues Meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, January 6, 2011. REUTERS/Jim Young (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS)(Credit: Reuters) 
Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., talks with the Associated Press in his office on Capitol Hill in Washington Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2010.(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)(Credit: AP) 
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nev., right, hugs House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., during a signing ceremony for "don't ask, don't tell" repeal legislation that would allow gays to serve openly in the military, Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2010, at the Interior Department in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)(Credit: AP) 
