I had to go back over this clip a couple times on my Tivo, but Mike Johanns does in fact argue for Stupak because it allows women to buy insurance plans on the exchange that provide abortion coverage:

JOHANNS:  Senantor Hatch, let me just interject something here because I think this is a very important point to make following up on what you just say.    Some say that a person would never want to purchase a separate rider to cover abortions.  Just won’t happen, they say.

But they misunderstand what the Stupak language actually allows, so let me be clear about this.

If a woman wants her health insurance plan to provide elective abortion services, she does have the choice to purchase a health insurance plan that provides that on the exchange — she just has to pay for it with her own money.  Am I correct in that interpretation, or have I misunderstood?

HATCH:  That’s correct.

From which we can conclude:

1. Either Johanns and Hatch don’t know what’s in Stupak, or they’re lying about it to gain support AND
2. Johanns and Hatch are okay with plans in the exchange offering elective abortion coverage as long as a woman pays for it “with her own money.”  Johanns even goes so far as to say this is an “important point.”

I guess that clears that up.

I knew Chuck was angling to get Reid out of the Majority Leader spot last year, but I didn’t know he was trying to unseat him:

A Senate Democratic aide tells me that folks aren’t too happy with the news that Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is negotiating a public option “trigger compromise with members of the caucus.

“He went on his own to talk to Landrieu about the trigger option,” the aide says. “That’s rather unseemly, especially for Schumer to have reached out to Landrieu before we had the vote. It’s very inappropriate.”

Obviously there are plenty of reasons for plenty of people to say they’re upset about this. But the fact that Schumer began these discussions before today’s vote does seem notable, given that Harry Reid was supposed to be negotiating for the votes.

The majority in the country want a public option.  The majority in the Senate want a public option.  The OVERWHELMING majority of Democrats in the Senate (and everywhere else) want a public option.

Harry Reid can use reconciliation to pass a health care bill in the Senate with a public option.

Reid has the 51 vote majority he needs. He  needs to wrest control of the Senate from the handful of corporatists trying to deliver health care reform to Blue Cross and PhRMA. If he won’t, it won’t be Ben Nelson or Mary Landrieu or Chuck Schumer who will pay the price.   There’s nobody to lay the blame on.

It’s Harry Reid’s fault.  And Mr. 38% JAR will have to wear it.

Mary Landrieu isn’t satisfied with her hundred million dollar bribe just to proceed to debate in the Senate.  She now says that triggers are inevitable:

After announcing her intent to support a health care debate this afternoon, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) told reporters she thinks Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will soon have to choose between a triggered public option and no health care bill. She also says Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY)–the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate one of its most fierce and vocal public option advocates–has been tasked as a point man on the issue.

“I believe it’s going to be very clear at some point very soon that there are not 60 votes for the current provision in the bill, and that the leader and the leadership are going to have to make a decision and I trust that they will figure out how to do that,” Landrieu told reporters.

For those just tuning in, this is how it works:

1.  Those Senators who are vulnerable in the next election look out for themselves:

• Harry Reid:   Shakes down taxpayers for Nevada pork to insure his re-election while pretending to be doing something that satisfies what 72% of the country wants.  List-builds by saying he’ll fight for the public option.
• Blanche Lincoln:   Shake down taxpayers for “abstinence only” funding to buy off Arkansas fundamentalist industrial complex, extracts promises from Obama and Biden they’ll support her in a primary challenge if she delivers for Blue Cross, continues to run to the right because the thing she fears are Republicans in the general.

2.  Those Senators aren’t vulnerable do the heavy lifting for the rest:

• Ben Nelson:  Shakes down taxpayers on behalf on insurance companies and makes them exempt from anti-trust laws to prevent competition just to proceed to debate,  and demands something that virtually none of the country wants (triggers).
• Mary Landrieu:  Shakes down taxpayers for $100 million as a price for not obstructing her own party, then demands what the White House has been saying they want since January — triggers.

Then Joe Lieberman gets some face time on TV being a dick, and the “safe” Senators deliver for the rest.  All the pundits talk about “extremists on the left” trying to “purge the party of its fiscally sensible centrists,” seemingly oblivious to the fact that they’ve just delivered to huge corporations hundreds of billions of dollars of pork for the sole purpose of preserving their own power.

In days gone by, we would’ve said “what can you do, Landrieu and Nelson aren’t up for reelection.”  Not this time.  It doesn’t matter who does the heavy lift — they’re doing the work of the vulnerable ones, and they are the ones who will absorb the blow.

Harry Reid’s kabuki won’t work.  If the public option can’t get through the Senate, he and Blanche are going to wear it.

It looks like Harry Reid is getting ready to sell out the labor unions, the progressive community, the Democratic base, and the majority of the American people. The vast majority of Americans want a public option as part of health care reform. Reid fully has it within his powers to get a health care bill passed with a public option. He could use reconciliation to pass a bill with a simple majority. He could even use the “nuclear option” to eliminate the silly filibuster, like Bill Frist threatened to do only a few years ago.

Reid will likely secure the 60 votes he needs to bring his bill to the floor, but today Blanche Lincoln and Mary Landrieu joined Joe Lieberman in threatening to filibuster the bill if it had a public option. If Reid thinks their threats are for real and actually plans to deliver on his promise to get a public option, he should not have brought the bill to the floor. Weeks of debate in regular order would be a waste of time. Reid should be using reconciliation right now.

There is only two possible conclusions:

• Reid thinks Joe Lieberman, Mary Landrieu, and Blanche Lincoln are bluffing. He believes that in the end when he stand up to them they will fold. (Given Reid’s track record I would not be holding my breath for that)
• Reid is planning to sell out the American people who overwhelming support the public option. He is planning cripple the public option with a trigger or remove it all together. He will do this all to win the vote of a handful of senators he does not need. They will be given not only veto power over health care reform, but over every issue the progressive community cares about.

If Reid is not willing to do everything in his power to stand up for the vast majority of American people who support the public option, why should the Democratic base do anything to stand up for Harry Reid?

Reid has been possibly laying the groundwork for this betrayal for a while now.

Well she talked a good game, but in the end, Blanche Lincoln blinked.  She didn’t take me up on my dare to filibuster health care.   She’ll get another chance when the cloture vote on the final bill comes up, but for now, she says she’ll allow debate to proceed.

But I get the feeling she didn’t like our ad:

Blanche threw down hard against “government run health care,” too.  I’m getting the feeling we pissed her off.

Blanche Lincoln is still deciding whether she will allow debate on the Senate bill to go forward now that she was successful in getting “abstinence only” funding inserted into the bill.  That’s not going to be much help to Arkansas resident David McDonald, who is hoping to be seen at the Olberman clinic today.  He has been in pain for two weeks because didn’t have the money to get treated.

Eve Gittelson is in Little Rock covering the event today.

The Blue Dogs have been  bellyaching about having to take a “tough vote” on immigration reform in advance of the 2010 election.  Looks like they have a friend in the White House:

Hispanic lawmakers say an old adversary, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, has his fingerprints all over a push to prohibit illegal immigrants from buying health insurance plans in a new market for people who don’t get insurance through their employers.

“A forensic study would show it all leads back to Rahm Emanuel and the White House,” said Illinois Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus who worked with Emanuel when the president’s top aide was in the House.

[]

Members of the CHC trace what they say is a harder White House line on immigrants to the night of South Carolina Republican Rep. Joe Wilson’s outburst during President Barack Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress in September.

I asked Kyle de Beausset of Citizen Orange, Dreamactivist, and promigrant.org, for his response:

Rahm Emanuel has done more violence to migrants in the name of political expediency than any other Democrat.  If there is truth to the CHC allegations that Rahm Emanuel is behind a provision in Senate health care legislation that would ban unauthorized migrants from buying health insurance, then it appears Rahm Emanuel’s nativism has infected the White House, as well.  It doesn’t make any moral, economic, public health, or political sense to ban unauthorized migrants from buying health insurance with their own money.  I feared this sort of anti-migrant political maneuvering would occur when Barack Obama appointed Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff.  It appears that this confirms it.

The White House kicked the can down the road after Sotomayor’s confirmation and said they’d have an immigration bill by the end of the year, which Congress would take up in the new year. 

I found this really hard to believe, and ran it past several members of Congress who laughed right in my face at the very idea. Since their entire world view is shaped by the upcoming 2010 election, they can’t imagine that anyone would even consider asking them to take immigration up. “They’ll understand,” they said.

Somehow I don’t think so.

8:05 – The motion passes 60-39 on a party line vote.

7:54 – We are having a vote from their desks.

7:44 – Harry Reid is closing out the debate. The vote should take place in about 10 min. Reid said they are voting at this hour at the request of Blanche Lincoln who wanted time to read the bill. He ask Republicans to join him on the right side of history. Reid is heavily focusing on the fact that this is a vote to begin debate not a vote for a bill.

7:30 – McConnell is closing out debate for the Republican side. He is going through everything he thinks is wrong with the bill. Raising taxes, slashing Medicare.

7:15 – Baucus is delivering one of the closing statements in support of reform. He was followed by Dodd. Both of them wrote their individual committees’ bills.

7:00 – Enzi interestingly seems opposes to basically every single piece of the bill. This is in spite of the fact that Enzi helped write a large part of it. I think this finally blows away the 80% agreement myth.

6:30 – Grassley and Enzi are doing the wrap up for the Republican party. Grassley is making the interesting argument that doing this would be worth than doing nothing at all. It is rare to hear a defense of the status quo in health care.

6:00 – It is the Democrats time again.

5:50 – Rationing! Rationing! Rationing! The Republican message of the hour.

5:00 – Republican hour again. They are pushing the issue that the taxes start years before the bulk of the reforms.

——

4:30 – Democrats are focusing on the lack of competition in the current health insurance marketplace.

4:00 – The Democrats have the floor back and Schumer is confident they will pass this bill.

Until the actual vote happens it looks unlikely any more real news will be made on the Senate floor. I don’t see Republicans Snowe or Collins on the schedule to speak. They are the only Republicans that might consider voting for a bill if it was strongly watered down.

ConservaDem Ben Nelson, Evan Bayh, and Joe Lieberman are also not on the schedule to speak today either.

—–

3:00 – Time for another Republican hour of complaining about the bill. The subject of this hour will be the expansion of Medicaid.

——

With Lincoln declaring that she would vote for a motion to proceed, the Democrats have now gotten commitments from all 60 members of the caucus to allow the bill to be debated on the floor. They will have the votes for the motion to proceed tonight at 8pm.

2:20 – Lincoln is the last remaining possible Democratic holdout and is speaking now. She will fight hard to make sure the bill ends up more like the Senate Finance Committee bill. There are not enough insurance options for most people. Most markets are highly concentrated. She attacks the fact that outside groups have been running so many ads in her state about her vote. She does not support the creation of a robust government administered plan. She claims to be afraid of future bailouts of the public option. (Interesting the rhetoric has quickly gone from destroying the entire private market to never being able to compete and needing bailouts. Somehow with many opponents holding both claims at once.) She will vote to proceed to debate. She wants to make it clear that she is opposed to the public option and will not vote for final cloture on the current bill as it is written. She will filibuster any bill with a government run public option.

2:00 – Its the Democrats hour now. Franken speaks in strong support of the bill. Franken points out that Minn. has on average medical loss ratio of 91%.

—–

To read more about the far reaching implications the Stupak anti-choice amendment. I recommend this here and here.

1:30 – Hatch, Brownback, and Johanns are running the all anti-abortion, pro-Stupak amendment hour. Expect this ridicules issue of the “federal funding of abortion,” to be one of the big republican attacks in the coming weeks.

1:05 – Hatch and other Republicans wants the Stupak amendment.

Politico has a rough line up for which Democrats and which Republicans are expected to speak today.

——

12:55 – Landrieu thinks something are wrong with the bill. First she thinks the tax credits for small businesses are too small and need to be expand. She wants more tax equity for those who are self-insured. She is rightly worried about the possibility of premiums going up between now and 2014. She is against the current public option. She wants a trigger, like the one promoted by Snowe. She concludes by defending the addition of Medicaid money for states that suffered from national disasters in the past few years. She is promote of it.

12:50 – Landrieu begins by praising Wyden and his efforts to create the Wyden-Bennett plan that she co-sponsored. She says she will vote to let the debate move forward, but her vote is not a vote for the underlining bill. It is only a “vote to move forward.” She said it is clear that doing nothing is no longer an option. Landrieu plans to “stay focused like a laser” on bringing down cost for small businesses. Landrieu is pro excise tax on employer provided health insurance.

12:35 – Cantwell makes a strong case for her basic health plan and says she hopes to work to expand it. It is not a public option but it is basically how the health exchange should have been designed to begin with. The state creates the design of a good health insurance plan (co-pays, benefits, deductibles, etc). Insurance companies bid to offer this insurance plan to all the people in the basic health plan program. The state approves several of the lowest bids and individuals can choose from any of these approved insurance providers. Read more about the “basic health plans” here.

—-

It is important to remember that this is not the debate about the Senate health care bill, the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” This is a debate about whether to allow the bill to come to the floor where it can be debated and amended. The Republicans are threatening to use the Senate’s unlimited debate clause to prevent the bill from coming to the floor where it then can be debated. They are threatening to never stop debating (this is what a filibuster technically is) the vote on the motion to proceed. This is how the Republicans plan to use their right of unlimited debate to actually stop any debate on health care reform. When trying to explain how the Senate has become a broken, undemocratic, unconstitutional perversion of its original self, I recommend using this as an example.

—–

The debate on whether to allow a debate on the Senate health care bill is talking place right now on C-SPAN 2. The cloture vote is expected at 8 pm. For the most part this will be a serious of senators from both sides giving speeches based their sides talking points.

The Republicans are calling the bill terrible using buzzwords like “tax increase,” “Medicare cuts,” “rationing,” “new entitlement spending,” “government takeover,” etc..

The Democrats are saying how great the bill is. They are using the talking points of “deficit reducing,” “cost containment,” consumer protects,” “expanding coverage,” “banning deny based on pre-existing conditions,” etc…

Most of the speeches are not going to be newsworthy. There are a handful of conservative Democrats and maybe two Republicans who might use this time to explain what amendments they must see adopted to gain their final vote on the bill. It is also possible, but very unlikely, that a few of the most progressives members of the Senate will draw a line in the sand about what changes they will not accept. If any of those senators make news with their speech I will bring it to you here.

Senate convening CSPAN 2.

The Republicans decided they’d rather hear themselves talk than have the bill read aloud.

What will all those teabaggers think who were waving the flyers around saying “read the bill?” Well, since most of them thought that WAS the bill, probably not too disappointed.

McConnell opens by reading from David Broder’s WaPo column entitled “A Budget-Buster in the Making.”

Reid responds: “To focus on an editorial written by a man who has been retired for many years and writes a column once in a while is not where we should be.”

We’ll be discussing in the comments.

Tomorrow at 8pm is the big vote to proceed to debate in the Senate. Landrieu is not saying how she will vote. Ben Nelson is a yes on allowing debate. The ConservaDems love their leverage.

Former President Clinton is skipping the Arkansas free clinics because he says Olbermann politicized it.

Is Reid laying the groundwork to betray progressives to gain Snowe’s vote?

Wyden got a tiny sliver of his free choice idea added to the bill.

Wall Street is against even the Senate bill.

The Catholic Church is not happy undocumented immigrants will not be allowed to buy insurance even with their own money.

The Senate bill for some unexplained reason creates two exchanges instead of one.

Because of the employer mandate, the House bill is in reality the more small “c” conservative.

The Washington Post shockingly does not really understand how to read simple government reports.

Obama officially endorsed the Senate bill–and included support for the public option in his statement.

Vote on the POP art contest!