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Today, House Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer indicated possible support for the rush strategy to pass health care reform.
House of Representatives Democratic leader Steny Hoyer said on Tuesday the U.S. Senate’s version of healthcare reform was “clearly” better than nothing and the overhaul could pass the U.S. Congress within 15 days.
Fifteen days is presumably less time than it will take Scott Brown to be seated if he actually wins the Massachusetts Senate race. The “rush” strategy would require Democrats to rush to finish all negotiations on health care and pass the new merged bill through both chambers in the small window of time before the Secretary of State of Massachusetts could officially certify Scott Brown, so (should be be elected) he can be seated.
Trying to execute this rush strategy would be sure to cause a huge partisan firestorm, and it is not clear right now if Obama could convince all the conservative Democrats in the Senate to go along with it. I’m sure the Republicans would accuse Democrats of “cheating” and playing dirty.
From my perspective, the potential political and popular blow-back from using the rush strategy would be equal to blow-back from using other hardball strategies like reconciliation or even the nuclear option to get around the filibuster. Of course, the rush strategy would have all the pain of playing hardball, but lack any of the gain. At least, with reconciliation, Democrats have a chance to win back some of their lost supporters by reviving very popular provisions like the public option and/or Medicare buy-in.
At this point, a vote on health care reform is hard enough to sell to voters. Using the rush strategy to pass it will probably not make that sales job any easier. It seems if Democrats are prepared to take the hit for playing hardball politics to pass reform, the best bet is the reconciliation “sidecar” strategy. First, it would allow Democrats to re-insert popular ideas like the public option and potentially do even more to fix problems like affordability. Second, it could help protect some vulnerable Senate Democrats. Using reconciliation for a side car bill will allow senators like Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson to vote against the measure, and legitimately distance themselves from the final health care reform product.
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My bet is on the rush strategy for this reason.
hah, you may be right, sadly
“a vote on health care reform is hard enough to sell to voters.”; and ObamaRahma can only point the finger of blame at themselves.
And if Hoyer is for something, you KNOW it’s a screwed up perspective.
Trust that they will do the stupid thing
Jon, same comment as on last thread; would love to see your reaction.
We’ve seen a lot of shit this past year in the sausage factory, that’s for sure. But if anyone thinks Pelosi is going to pass the Senate bill based on promises to do this or that, … I just don’t think she’s that stupid. It’s not going to happen. Full Stop.
Now if something can be negotiated, and then passed in the Senate first through reconciliation, such that the House can then vote on the Senate bill that has passed the Senate, AND the amendments that will have been passed via reconciliation, at the same time in one vote, then something like this might happen. I don’t know if the rules allow this.
I’m convinced that unless the Democrats reverse course and demonstrate they aren’t corporate-owned whores, the populist rage will take them down in November. It won’t matter who their opposition is. And conversely, if Obama did reverse course, use the loss of the mythical 60 as the pretext (he doesn’t really need one, but to save face), and renege on the pharma deal, renege on any insurance deal that might exist, jettison the bipartisan BS, and pass real HCR with 51 Senate votes, the Democrats would do just fine. The right would still vote against them, but independents and some progressives might join him, upon exposure of a spine.
My prediction, FWIW: Obama will try to talk a good populist game, but won’t back it up with any substantive action. The electorate will see through it, and incumbents take a beating in November, relative to the norm at least.
“it’s clearly better than nothing”
you silver tongued devil you
So for months and months Obama and the other corporatists schemed to get Baucus bill based on Obama/Baucus/Lobbyist backroom deal. When the voters have for months said “STOP!” and went so far as to send a message at the polls, the reply is “SCREW THE VOTERS! FULL SPEED AHEAD!” I don’t trust these guys and if they want a bad bill to pass, they have to pass a good bill first – No rush, no sidecar, not anything.
Could the national vs state based exchanges issue be placed in the side car or does reconciliation mean taking the Senate version.
The rest of us ought to rush to find out how we can qualify as Amish.
Why is no one talking about imitating the Amish model?
We should start calling the “side-car” strategy what it actually is: Bait and Switch.
The “Bait” is the claim that we will add positive things to the bill after its passed (you know, once those who want additions have ZERO leverage). The “Switch” is the reality that the claim is totally 100% pure BS, and other than more Kabuki, nothing will change with the bill.
I support repealing the constitutional amendment that requires Democrats to get 60 votes in the senate while the Republicans only need 51.
I can just imagine the average American traveling 20 MPH in a horse drawn buggy and chopping their own firewood.
Yeah right…
What do you believe the public option to be?
It’s shared risk. No cost of sales. No marketing overhead. No profit overhead. No executive overhead.
Obama should be asked directly why he’s opposed to Dorgan’s Amendment. Aside from Public Option, this is easily the MOST significant single HCR we could do. It has bipartisan support, has the votes to pass & yet the Administration opposes it & muscles those who have the nerve to stand up for what’s right.
And, the Dem. Party has the nerve to ask me what the Repubs have done to deserve being elected? I ask the Dem. Party, what has it done to deserve staying in office? All we have seen in a year is CORRUPTION & SELF-SERVING GREED, shame on them & shame on those of use who fall for their tripe!
What’s ironic is that the Amish buggy makers use electricity in their craft.
Not suggesting anyone joining the cult, but one might want to understand how they are able to get medical care without enriching the corporations.
Link.
Well, the public option is going nowhere, but the Amish are able to get their exemption from the mandates.
Yes, but they don’t use electricity from the grid. They use oil or gas fired generators.
They are also very big users of solar panels.
What’s really bad about this, is that if they do cram it through the House, it will make the shit sandwich even worse when the public fallout really starts. Not only did the Democrats own and push a terrible piece of lootocracy to screw the American people, but they did it like the democRATS they are; at the last minute neener neener.
I need more popcorn.
The Amish are making all the rest of us look like suckers. They are light years ahead of us with respect to health care.
“Obama should be asked directly why he’s opposed to Dorgan’s Amendment”
Obama is afraid to hold press conferences. He leaves others to take the flak or he just reads off the teleprompter at speeches.
Can you see it now, Obama up there during the State of the Union address talking about how wonderful the health care reform bill Congress passed was. How it is going to protect millions of people and force people to buy into a system that will likely be ruled unconstitutional.
I really hate both parties right now. Neither of them serve the people. The reactionary candidates that will likely get elected later this year are going to be horrible, but we all deserve this fate. We elected a corporatist Congress and a President solely owned by the companies who paid for his campaign.
Teabaggers are morons for the most part, but we deserve what we are going to get later this year.
Love watching these cockroaches scurry around with a desperate look.
Welcome to the Hope A Dope! By Obama and Rahm
The REAL target of the elite is to stop and destroy the progressive movement in the USA, and they are using Obama to do it.
What traits does the senate HCR scam bill have that says it is Progressive? Nonr
Remember this HCR scam bill is not progressive it is a profit plan for insurance companies.
If Obama wanted to be a strong progressive 2 term president:
he would have done a lot more to end the wars in Iraq and Afghan. (hello Barack the USA is in the great recession / great depression, no money to fight stupid wars)
he would have fought for single payer and at the end of the day got a strong public option
he would have fought for drug importation (Obama killed the Dorgan Drug importation bill)
Why did Obama do this?
Obama and Clinton both are corporate dems, these guys are not FDR, JFK, LBJ, etc. Obama and Clinton both want to destroy the legacy of FDR. (remember NAFTA)
What progressive need to do is find candidates that can act like conserverdems, the corporations will love them, give them money etc. and once these progressive get to washington, they need to transform into REAL PROGRESSIVES. (remember Obama ran as a strong progressive, and once he got to washington, he became a Bush Clone)
No one was listening when Obama said he wanted to be like Reagan the other great actor that live in the white house.
At the end of the day Obama and Rahm can work with Brown, they worked with Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman, etc.
As progressives we need to wake up, and realize Obama and Rahm used this 60 super majority garbage as cover. (bush pass huge tax cuts for rich people with 51 GOP votes,however to help the majority of working class americans you need 60 votes)
Obama and Rahm are trying to destroy the SPIRIT of the 2008 Progressive Movement, and we must not let them do this.
It’ll get rushed through as is. Only a dumb ass would think the Democrats are going to put months and months of hard grubby whoring at risk.
The Amish pay 0% of their health care dollars to corporate profits. If they, who don’t go to school beyond 8th grade, are able to lick the system, what does that say about the rest of us?
I can just about hear them now:
“Hey, I’ve got a way to make this thing really stupid.”
“Yeah? Well I bet I can think up some shit to make it even stupider.”
The first question to consider is whether the Senate bill is worth passing and the consensus from the left is that it is not, for a myriad of good reasons. So our interests are best served if the Senate bill is not adopted.
The only way a meaningful HCR bill can be improved is by adopting the House bill through reconciliation. Barring that it is preferable that no HCR bill pass at all. That is a relection of how bad the main provisions of the Senate bill are.
If Brown wins the Dems aren’t going to pass a rush deal, a sidecar deal or any other deal. The gutless Bluedog conservadems will be so scared shitless by the loss and they will run away from HCR as fast as their flip-floping feet will carry them. Period.
Good post.I agree with everything ur saying. Obama was a Corporatist Wolf in Sheeps clothing. The Dems. want to say they never intended to carry out what we all see as Progressive policies. The problem is they ran as Progressives and now are carrying off a bait and switch game with us. The base isn’t going for it.
Steny Hoyer confirms again that he’s dumb a sack of rocks
Brown’s running to stop HCR with the battle cry, “They’re rushing us into a catastrophe.”
Just try to jam through this piece of garbage bill before Brown takes his oath, and the board will be set for a November debacle even worse than 1994.
It’s like living in a universe where the law of unintended consequences has been repealed. The puppetmasters want this result, and will do anything to get it.
HCR might not be passed, but not because of the Blue Dogs. Keep in mind that many of the Blue Dogs are Rahm’s lap dogs who take his orders. Remember how the WH protected BDs against criticism while criticizing progressives.
Agreed, the entire legislative process has been a puke funnel, narrowing all possible options into the worst possible bill. It didn’t happen by accident, it was what they wanted all along.
It is absurd to think Dems will improve the package. Any transformation between now and the time of passage will most likely have the effect of making it even MORE craptacular.
Nonetheless many Dems are going to run away from anything calling itself HCR should Brown win. In fact the race is so tight that some of them may change their votes even if Brown looses. But should Brown win it will spell the end of HCR, for better or worse.
LBJ was a fucking pig.
He also could have repealed- or at least revised, NAFTA in some meaningful way and imposed an import tax on goods that are made overseas by US companies. Plus reinstating Glass Steagall. What’s so bad is that there’s so much he could have done. (I’m saying that “he” can do this because of this bank tax he’s talking about now)
That was the first thing I thought, ubetchaiam. But I saw the headline somewhere else & like always, I was thinking that he’s a republican.
Same problem I had with Jane.
the “sidecar” reconciliation is a bullshit idea that will never happen.
You’re basically saying have the House pass the Senate bill, and then Reconciliate all the changes we want in later.
You, Jane, all of FDL has been talking about how a “fix it later” strategy is bullshit and won’t work. I’m extremely curious as to why you think it will work now?
HCR has become a black hole, an albatross, something no one wants to touch. So you really think after passing a bill that you admit is shitty the Senate or anyone involved in politics is going to want to go back and do another round? That’s crazy talk. HCR is radioactive.
No one will want to touch HCR for another 20 years. Because if it’s been this unpopular to someone like Obama, no one has a chance. We will pass the shit bill, and then the Reconciliation will never ever happen.
“Get the Senate to promise to pass something!”
And how does one do that? How does one force the Senate to do anything?
Reconciliating the fixes in later is a shitty idea, and you know. Kill the bill, start over.
No matter how bad the democrats are, the republicans are always worse. It seems impossible for the voters to learn that lesson though. I’d a thought the last go round would have done it but apparently not. Of course the democrats are not helping by acting like junior republicans, but still…
AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…
Citizen Jon Walker and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:
Brother Jon, you are a bright guy and a fine blog-journalist but your take on “sidecar reconcilliation” is right outta Pollyanna’s erotic dreams. Why would ObamaRahma “fix” the healthcare bill, put the public option back in and tag it to Medicare when they have worked so hard to create a bill for their corporate masters that bankrupts the American people and insures that healthcare reform never gets done? The best thing that can happen for American politics is to kill this monster dead in it’s tracks and let the American people decide who is to blame at the polls in November. I guarantee you that even if the Dems lose control of the House (which is unlikely) they will never lose the Senate and the resulting purge of the Democrats in Congress will leave the Democratic Party leaner and much more progressive.
Obama will be forced to wear this defeat and progressive insurgents in the House and Senate can westle control of the DNC back like they did after 2004 and give Howard Dean enough ordnance to blow up the Republican Party and save Obama’s ass for 2012.
KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, THE OBJECTIVE IS TO WIN THE WAR NOT DECLARE VICTORY IN A BATTLE WE CAN’T WIN!!!
State of the Union 2010 Address Fill in the Blank Contest
My fellow Americans, I can report to you tonight that the state of our Union is ____________________________.
Prizes will be awarded on basis of creativity, irony and reality, which we all know is are liberal biases, and will be paid in unsecured Lehman Brother’s credit default swap contracts.
We need a Constitutional convention. The Senate has to go. A British model parliamentary system might work — certainly it could be no worse than the completely non-functional system we are currently being forced to endure.
Also, maybe we could talk to France and with luck, either purchase (or lease) Devil’s Island from them — a new home for all congressional right wingers, a new home for Fux News as well. And Rush, of course.
I wish I wasn’t serious, but ….
Nope, just two sides of the same coin. A person might prefer heads or tails but there is very little substantive difference.
The one argument I might have accepted is the need to hold social conservatives at bay but in light of what Stupak and Nelson and the other conserva-Dems have gotten away with, even that doesn’t ring true anymore.
When what we’re dealing with is two corrupt parties that work against the public interest, and an empire in the advanced stages of decay, the Amish example provides an alternative, which is to rely on our communities and ourselves. I don’t believe the substance of your question is suggesting people copy the lifestyle of the Amish, but the philosophy (?) behind it. Thanks for the question.
I also like the movement in Vermont to secede from the union, irrespective of the likelihood of its happening. I like the idea a lot.
I like your thinking, NorskeFlamethrower.
You’ll find the French of at least three minds on that one.
Liberté, égalité, fraternité (wiki)
A year ago, the majority of Americans had hope and saw the potential of being able to make significant strides for the American people. The corporate DEMS, the President included, betrayed the will of the people to serve the corporate elite. They deserve what is happening. Sadly, we don’t, having worked so hard for the chance to make change, but we are suffering for their betrayal.
“They use oil or gas fired generators.”; true but the point still is valid.
If things continue as they are…
Posted this the other day:
It’s been a rough road, and we’re still not there yet, but history was made yesterday and this country has embarked on the very change we set to achieve a little over a year ago. A big part of the YES WE CAN slogan can now be said, yes we did. I signed into law yesterday the comprehensive health care reform bill the United States has desperately needed.
No more, will insurance companies be able to deny coverage to individuals based on pre-existing conditions.
No more, will insurance companies be able to deny policies to individuals or charge them exorbitant rates just because they are unemployed.
No more, will the cost of health care cripple our nation’s economy.
No more….
Wait a minute. This is SUCH BS. How did I get here? I…..I….I’m sorry. Grandma, can you forgive me? Momma? I’m not a bad guy, really I’m not. But…Malia and Sasha…. your dad’s been making promises he never intended to keep. For your sake, I have to tell the TRUTH now. I said I would bring real change and then I went and brought in the same old establishment insiders. I made sure people who tortured and broke the law didn’t have to pay for their crimes and got to keep their jobs and continue to do evil things. I said we could dare to hope then I got into the White House and compromised everything of value with respect to health care reform away to the pharmaceutical and insurance companies. I knew I was selling snake oil. It was dishonest and WRONG and I CAN’T do it anymore. I can’t. I’m sorry. I really am.
American People, the state of your union is that it’s not yours. It hasn’t been for a long, long time. It belongs to Big Finance, Big Insurance, Big PhRMA, Big Agra, Big Energy and Big Defense. The job of the president of the United States is to rekindle inspiration in the next row of investors in the pyramid scheme, but it’s run its course. The middle class is under threat. We’ve got some tough times ahead. Get used to it. And oh yeah, don’t forget to go to the voting booth next November and push on the ESS/Diebold generated icon for your candidate of choice. That’s where your power lies (double entendre intended).
Rushing would be stupid. All we’d get would be the same pissed-off repubs (no biggie…) but also, the same shitty-to-non-existent healthcare reform.
Wait and see, then look hard at reconciliation WITH a P.O. No P.O., then fuck you, no health-care bill. Or, as Jane says, a bunch of house dems should give back the money.
Now there’s some welcomed comic relief. Thanks!
Like a thousand lawyers on the bottom of the ocean, a good start, HD.
Let’s see what the firedoglakers drag in between now and the end of the month.
When the Constitution goes up in the Bonfire of the InHannities, all that we’ll have left is our sense of humor.
Meanwhile, the biggest controversy in the nation is how NBC will recover from its 7.0 magnitude late night programming earthquake.
So, by using the “rush strategy” the whole country will be cursed with the unimproved Senate bill as punishment for Massachusetts not voting Democratic?
Oh wait, I forgot, the Senate bill is what Obama wanted all along!
This should more accurately be called the Wimpy Strategy as in “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.” What we want is Popeye, what we get is Wimpy.
Yeah, Obama, Baucus and the lobbyists. They try and come up with whatever excuse possible to bring home the pork to the corporate lobbyists.
Agreed, except that the middle class is not under threat, the middle class is dying.
Jon,
Earlier today I wondered whether the House could get the hypothetical negotiated improvements in writing before they vote on the Senate bill. Turns out (if Jeff Davis at TNR is correct) that the House CAN vote on the negotiated reconciliation improvements before they vote on the Senate bill. And if I were Pelosi, I’d insist on holding out until the Senate passed the reconciliation improvements first.
The public has sniffed this stinkburger of a bill and don’t want it. Now the Dems are going to force us to eat it? Sounds like a real winning strategy – for the Republican Party.