Baucus' chickens ready for bed

by: Jay Stevens

Wed Sep 16, 2009 at 06:30:39 AM MST

Frankly, she's not the only one. Chuck Grassley says he can't support Baucus' bill because he's worried about illegal immigrants and abortion. (And just when did Grassley take the crazy turn?) Mike Enzi doesn't think states should pick up any of the tab for Medicaid expansion, and doesn't like fees imposed on insurance companies to help defray the cost of reform. (Of course, Enzi's admitted his job is to block reform.)  Ron Wyden thinks the subsidies are too low. John Kerry: "It's not going to be the bill we're going to vote on."

More importantly for the bill's future in the Senate Finance Committee, Jay Rockefeller despises the bill and claims "four to six Democrats" in the committee feel the same way. If true, Baucus will need to find four to six committee Republican votes to pass his legislation out of committee.

Nate Silver crunches the numbers and finds that Senator Baucus is the only person who supports his bill. Silver:

But let's be clear -- some of this is Baucus's chickens coming home to roost. When you make a unilateral decision to negotiate with only five other people from a 23-person committee and 100-person Senate, and two of those five people have clear electoral disincentives against supporting any plan that you might come up with, the negotiations are liable to end in failure far more often than not. The flurry of on-the-record statements against Baucus's reform plans -- not "leaks", not trial balloons -- points toward a defective process.

And that may suit Democrats just fine.

Without any Republican support, any health care bill that passes Congress now has a real chance of including effective and progressive reform. It'll be tricky dancing around a Senate filibuster, but it likely be easier than getting something out of the Senate Finance Committee with Republican support.

The Path Becomes Clearer

by: Matt Singer

Tue Sep 01, 2009 at 10:01:31 AM MST

The strange thing about all of this negotiating has always been, for me, that the rules of the Senate actually allow for far better (and more progressive) reform with fewer votes, although you may end up having to lose some good ideas along the way. The reconciliation process, for example, actually requires a stronger public option over a weaker one, in order to get the cost savings that can justify using the reconciliation process.

In other words, the main thing the teabaggers and GOP leadership are gaining by forcing people like Grassley out of the process is a good chance that whatever passes will be even more progressive.

That also means that people like Lieberman who have threatened to oppose any bill with a public option may have some incentive now to agree to vote against a filibuster to support a bill that could include health insurance exchanges, meaningful insurance regulation, etc., as well as a weaker public option, in favor of ending up with a bill lacking exchanges but containing a Medicare-like public option.

If you're not at the table, you're on the menu. The right-wing has apparently opted for being on the menu.

The thugs are carrying the day

by: Jay Stevens

Thu Aug 20, 2009 at 06:53:14 AM MST

Sen. Charles E. Grassley a key Republican negotiator in the quest for bipartisan health-care reform, said Wednesday that the outpouring of anger at town hall meetings this month has fundamentally altered the nature of the debate and convinced him that lawmakers should consider drastically scaling back the scope of the effort.

Get it? Apparently we progressives have going about reform the wrong way. You know, peacefully, and by appealing to reason. I guess we should strap on our assault rifles, push and shove whoever stands in our way, and shout down our elected representatives.

By the way, make no mistake: the traditional media has legitimized this kind of discourse with its coverage of the Tea Baggers.

Meanwhile, Baucus is still hoping for a bipartisan bill.

Meanwhile, anonymous White House sources still think that progressives will be thrilled about a health care bill in which progressive reform is gutted:

The president continues to operate under the belief that liberals will warm to the bill when presented with a goodybag that includes includes an individual mandate, community rating, guaranteed issue, and a minimum required package. There's no chance, really, that a bill WON'T feature these reforms. Quietly, to secure and keep Democrats on board, the White House is going to bargain, providing inducements, like more money for favored projects, etc., in order to secure individual votes.

The public option is the last line of defense for most progressives I know, and even that, for many, is too far. Jed Lewison:

Keeping in mind that this anonymously sourced report could be total bunk, it's worth pointing out that axeing the public option and requiring individuals to purchase coverage under a private health insurance plan would be a horrible political miscalculation. If you think we're having problems selling health care reform now, just wait until we try to explain why all adults under 65 will be required to purchase health insurance from the private sector with no public option.

Oh, you're not interested in making that argument? I didn't think so.

Seriously, who thinks, even with the community standard and other regulatory reforms, that private insurers won't find a way to wiggle out of their obligations? IMHO, even with all the reforms in the bill, without the public option and with an individual mandate and taxing health care benefits make this bill actively bad.

Update: Forward Montana is running a "smoking Grassley" campaign, urging you to contact his office and ask him to get out of our way and let us have health care reform:

Senator Charles Grassley
Washington, D.C. Office: (202) 224-3744
Or contact him on the web.

And then report your story to Forward Montana.

Maybe you should tell 'em you're carrying a gun while you're making the call.

Grassley Feeling Pressure?

by: Matt Singer

Mon Jun 08, 2009 at 08:23:03 AM MST

Grassley is one of the major obstacles to a public health insurance option right now. He also is fighting employer responsibility -- a.k.a. pay or play -- in favor of exclusively an individual mandate.

I'm not sure where Sen. Grassley is on the financing of this thing, but I know this -- every change he is proposing to the Kennedy bill, the Obama framework, and Baucus whitepaper is a change to make it less effective, less popular, and ultimately less passable.

The key metric for passage over these next several months has more to do, I believe, with the popularity of the bill and less to do with the initial level of bipartisan support. Building a bill that can be sold by the President to the American people is far more important than building one in the backroom that starts with 60 votes.

A bill that starts with 60 votes will lose them if the right-wing can convince Americans that it is a terrible bill.

I'm getting more nervous about the chances of passing healthcare reform this year. The Republicans seem to be unifying in their opposition. Liberals seem to be content to see the system fall apart if they don't get their first-choice solution. Frankly, there's little grassroots support on either side for even a bit of compromise.

That's too bad, because the vast majority of conversations I still have while street canvassing and talking to all but the most engaged activists are in favor of finding solutions to this mess, even if all we make this year are some initial steps.

What is Bipartisan?

by: Matt Singer

Fri Jun 05, 2009 at 12:37:54 PM MST

Bipartisanship is a good tactic and, often, even a good goal. It is better to pass good legislation with support from both sides of the aisle. But the bottom-line on this stuff, of course, has to be to pass good policy.

Somewhat ironically given Chuck Grassley's opposition is that Senator professes, at leastin this CNBC appearance alongside Max Baucus that "bending the curve" (e.g. reducing costs) is his top priority:

And if I could comment on that. You know, this is restructuring, as I said, and we need to have the Congressional Budget Office as an impartial person show us that over the long term, we are going to bend this curve so that this big increase doesn't come. Because if it isn't, you know, we aren't accomplishing our goal. We'd just be spending more money on a program that isn't good.

Why is that ironic? Well, contrary to conservative rhetoric, Medicare has done a better job of controlling costs than private insurance. Beyond that, the considered reforms are proposing to do even better cost containment on the Medicare side, containment strategies that could be imposed on a public plan and translated to private insurance through that magical device known as the invisible hand of competition.

But here's the other thing -- every analysis I've seen shows a public option restrains health care inflation more and the more robust and open the public option, the greater restraint on healthcare spending.

So if the Senator from Iowa is being honest, he should favor a stronger public option, not a non-existent one.

Update -- Ezra, nearly simultaneously, makes a similar point:

What you're seeing here are people who fundamentally don't want a universal health care system, and are willing to be flexible in how they argue and advocate for that goal, fighting with people who fundamentally do want a universal health care system, and are willing to be flexible in how they argue and advocate for that goal. A lot of these relatively esoteric policy disputes are simply manifestations of those two underlying impulses.

Public Health Insurance Option Has Public Support, Congressional Opposition

by: Matt Singer

Mon May 04, 2009 at 13:31:01 PM MST

This is all the more amazing because Iowa voters, for example, favor a public health insurance option.

There is good news for healthcare reform advocates. Two big pieces of good news, actually.

The first is that reconciliation is on the table. Reformers don't necessarily need any of these three Senators' votes to pass a reform plan.

The second is that even though these Senators have made opposition to a public option a cornerstone of their argument on healthcare, a group of moderate and progressive Democrats have taken the opposite stance. Senators ranging from Sherrod Brown to Jim Webb have signed on. Even more U.S. Representatives have committed themselves to a public health insurance option.

This isn't the bottom-line issue in healthcare reform. We need to figure out a bunch of other stuff. But long-term cost containment and rethinking of our healthcare delivery gets MUCH easier with a public health insurance option.

Dems Keep Reconciliation Available, Options Open -- Good News on Health Care Reform

by: Matt Singer

Sat Apr 25, 2009 at 15:30:59 PM MST

The aggressive approach reflects the big political claim that President Obama is staking on health care, and with it his willingness to face Republican wrath in order to guarantee that the Democrats, with their substantial majority in the Senate, could not be thwarted by minority tactics.

While some Democratic senators were reluctant to embrace the arrangement, Mr. Obama made clear at a White House session on Thursday afternoon that he favored it, people with knowledge of the session said.

That said, taking reconciliation off the table would be absolutely foolish. Former President Clinton said it was his biggest mistake. And taking reconciliation off the table leaves Republicans able to kill any reform bill simply by holding strong -- and they have every political incentive to kill reform.

Here's what our senior Senator had to say (in the NYT article linked above)

Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Finance Committee, said Friday that he would prefer not to pursue health legislation through the reconciliation process.

"I think it gets in the way," Mr. Baucus said, explaining that his goal was to produce a health care bill that could "get significantly more than 60 votes."

"If we jam something down somebody's throat, it's not sustainable," he said.

It is important that Republicans not be allowed to run amok on health care, especially considering their treatment of Kathleen Sebelius, the moderate Governor of Kansas nominated to head the Department of Health and Human Services. The fact that Republican Senators are proposing filibustering Sebelius is another sign of how crazy the modern GOP has become. Sebelius only got two Republican votes on the Finance Committee -- a Senator from her home state of Kansas (where Sebelius is quite popular) and Olympia Snowe, the Senate Republicans' only true moderate.

Republican Senators oppose CHIP expansion

by: Jay Stevens

Wed Jan 28, 2009 at 07:33:30 AM MST

Right?

Think again.

Partisan debate heated up on the Senate floor over coverage options for legal immigrant populations in a bill to reauthorize the State Children's Health Insurance Program. A final vote on the SCHIP bill, which seeks to extend coverage to 4 million additional uninsured, low-income children, may not take place until later this week, as Senate Republicans offered up a slew of amendments that challenged the bill's provisions on eligibility.

Several Republicans, including ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) offered amendments to curtail enrollment of legal immigrant children and pregnant women. Grassley's amendment in particular would use federal dollars for coverage of these immigrants to cover more low-income U.S. citizens instead.

Yes. You read correctly. Senate Republicans are trying to block the expansion of health insurance coverage to children currently doing without because of legal immigrants and pregnant women.

Also remember that a number of these *sshats -- and I'm thinking of Chuck Grassley specifically -- didn't think twice about giving several hundred billion dollars of your money to investment banks.

Republicans for fiscal insanity

by: Jay Stevens

Fri Dec 07, 2007 at 12:45:37 PM MST

The House bill, crafted by the Democratic leadership, would have offset the cost of the patch with a tax increase on hedge fund managers, who are currently paying tax rates lower than waitresses or school teachers. Senate Republicans countered with a proposal that would have scrapped the offset and piled on more tax cuts on dividends earnings and other revenue favoring the wealthy. The compromise bill neither makes up for the lost revenue, nor cuts additional taxes.

From the New York Times report:

"This is not my first choice on how to do so," said Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Finance Committee, before the Senate voted 88 to 5 for his proposal. "This is my best choice on how to do so."

From the AP version of the story, the Republican reaction to the Democratic version:

The Finance Committee's top Republican, Charles Grassley of Iowa, said it was time for Democrats to abandon their "PayGo obsession," referring to the "pay-as-you-go" principle that tax cuts or spending increases should be paid for so as not to add to the federal deficit. With the "clean" AMT bill, "the Senate Democratic leadership seems to realize that the AMT should not be offset," he said.

Actually, the Senate Democratic leadership realized it couldn't get a tax increase on the mega-wealthy past a Republican filibuster. (Not that the mega-wealthy are lacking for allies among Senate Democrats.)

And it's refreshing to see Senator Grassley so crassly and openly reject fiscal responsibility, calling it "an obsession." Grassley's patronizing tone aptly represents the GOP's drunken sailor act over the last decade or so. The fiscal conservatives of two decades ago would have suggested budget cuts to offset tax decreases; these guys don't give a rat's *ss about the bottom line.

More evidence that the Republican party isn't fit to govern.