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A push is currently underway in the Senate to have Democrats include the public option as part of any reconciliation fix. Several Democrats have signed on to Sen. Michael Bennet’s (D-CO) letter. Some commentators like Jonathan Cohn and Ezra Klein think adding the public option would disturb some delicate balance of a potential compromise.
The problem is that there is no delicately negotiated compromise to be disturbed.
There is not some magic, perfectly designed compromise hanging on by a thread that Democrats are just waiting to spring on us. If Democrats thought they had the votes for a very modest reconciliation sidecar strategy right now, they would be doing it as we speak. There would not have been weeks of wheel spinning, and this upcoming, silly, televised, bipartisan meeting.
Even if Democrats reach an agreement in principle that can garner the votes in both chambers for a small reconciliation bill, comprised of only some tax modifications and small changes around the edges, I suspect support would disintegrate under public scrutiny and Republican attacks. This small reconciliation measure will be hard to understand, hard to sell, and even harder to justify. Knowing Democrats, they will foolishly put some sweeteners in it to win a few votes, which Republican will latch on to. The Democratic base will not rally around this weird hodgepodge of tax modifications, and the reconciliation will probably die as it makes its way through Congress. I simply can’t imagine any deal on small changes to the Senate bill holding on to enough votes after going through a full-on Republican assault.
A reconciliation bill with a public option just makes better political sense. It gives Democrats their best hope of rallying their base. The public option is an easy, two-word justification for the reconciliation measure, and will hopefully distract the media’s attention away from possibly less popular changes and special deals that might infest the reconciliation measure. The PO will doubtless be the thing that Republicans attack in the reconciliation measure, but polling has shown their months of attacking the public option has not hurt its popularity. Unlike any of the other changes a smaller reconciliation measure might make, the public option has proven that it can hold up under attack.
Worrying that the public option might ruin a non-existent compromise on a smaller reconciliation bill, one which would quickly shed support votes the second Republicans started the attacks, is misguided. The only hope for health care is a reconciliation sidecar fix, and the only hope of selling reconciliation to the American people is to use it to do something extremely popular–like add a public option. With people already tired of the debate, another bill that no one can understand is not a way forward.
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From the last thread:
OT,
According to Greg Sargent the white house will toughen employer penalties, keep the cadillac tax, and will NOT INCLUDE THE PUBLIC OPTION.
So basically the Bennett letter was a Kabuki fund raiser. Fuckin bastards.
Klein has always been against the PO or shrugged his shoulders over it. Who is this person to be getting in our way right now?
Why is the Public Option so controversial? Just put it in the bill and be done with it.
According to the CBO only about 2% of Americans would choose it anyway. What’s the big deal?
Revised lede:
A Delicate Balance–Public Option will upset Rahm’s deals with industry lobbyists.
Jon, DavidD thinks it’s kabuki.
And I wonder whether these Senators now coming out for the public option are simply covering their asses politicaally.
Ezra Klein is disturbed by the thought of Democrats appearing to be “partisan” as if everyone is gathered around tea and cookies wearing their best Sunday hat to talk reform. I think Jane Hamsher phrased this sort of thing best when she referred to fainting on the couch.
While there may not be a delicate balance in play there probably isn’t a single definition of a public option either. If public option is simply an interchangeable term for allowing Blue Cross to rake in part of the booty without strict cost oversight interventions then fighting for the PO might be not a giant check mark in the win column.
Like the song said, “You never count your chips while your sitting at the table.”
Ezra Klein that seer of seers, prognosticator of prognosticators says that “Americans want bipartisanship”.
What am I, chopped liver? Bipartisanship is just another word for centrists trying to fight for nothing.
Public option–a zombie idea that just won’t die.
Why are we continuing to pay attention to this? It’s dead. There are better ideas to focus on, like Medicare for All.
We are not the legislature. There might or might not be a need for all sorts of compromises during a final push to pass health care reform; that is not our concern. But those compromises are just that, compromises. Quit putting the cart before the horse and focus on the overall objective!
Ezra made me very angry with his ‘meh’ reaction to the Public Option letter-writing campaign. He’s been completely co-opted by the White House in order to protect their insider corporatist deals.
Democrats who want to win re-election this fall will add Public Option and, for good measure, prescription drug price negotiation and reimportation. They’ll be heroes and our majorities will expand.
What is hard to understand about this?
I agree with you on the public option, but totally disagree that they won’t be able to pass the bill. It’s done. There’s a national exchange, a minimal excise tax, and a new hike on payroll taxes over $100,000. The only slight hitch is abortion, but that won’t be a problem.
Sibelius: “Public Option? Oh hey, you know, the resident would suport that. Yeah, you know, if that’s what the senate figures they wanna do that’s fine with Obama. What? Oh now? Well we have to see what congress thinks they wanna do here, bipartisanship is a priority for the resident, so you know, we’ll just wait and see.”
Shmeckta shmeckta shmeckta.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/view/
I.m certain most of you are familiar with the above program documenting Brooksley Born’s failed efforts to regulate the Wall Street Casino in 1996. Clinton’s Democrats, Rubin, Summers, Greenspan – killed it dead.
There’s not an iota of difference between the R’s and D’s in DC other than God, guns and gays.
Thankfully being a net importer, our next major import will hopefully be a model of the mounting Greek rejection of Randian Darwinism.
Ezra Klein and Nate Silver are punk wanks. That is all.
From Greg Sargent:
Breaking: Reid Signals Support For Reconciliation Vote On Public Option
Then the congresscritters had better rebel against the WH so they don’t go down in flames with Obama.
What do you mean, no compromise? I thought they were trying to decide whether to hike rates 50% or 100% before coverage is denied. That’s compromise, isn’t it?
Ezra made me very angry with his ‘meh’ reaction to the Public Option letter-writing campaign. He’s been completely co-opted by the White House in order to protect their insider corporatist deals.
Ezra Klein is a sleazy little piece of BHO ass-kissing garbage.
maybee Obama will finally pull his finger out of Rahm’s ass and use it to test where the real winds of Change are blowing from.
it’s likely thou that he’s been simply drafted by the PTB as a closer.
All this talk about the PO is just so much election yr. yammering. The Dems. have absolutely no intention of including anything worthwhile in any health reform bill and anyone who believes other wise is just buying into their political kabuki show. They deserve whats coming in the fall. Obama wants a GOPer Congress anyway, then he can just blame them for why he has to cut SS and Medicare like Clinton made cutting poor people off welfare into a BIG deal. This is BS, Obama is BS and the Dems. can go fuck themselves. 40 yrs. I worked for, funded and voted for these lying two faced sacks of shit for what? No more!
We’re so fucking retarded we can’t appreciate the true genius of the 11-dimensional chess the White House is playing.
I’ve been avoiding most news lately until the Bayh thing dragged me kicking and screaming back in.
What’s this refer to?
Is there something going on in Greece that I missed?
How do you explain the fact that Boy Wonder Ezra has managed to ingratiate himself with Olbermann? Is it a WaPo-MSNBC business relationship? Seems like WaPo hacks show up on MSNBC with mind-deadening regularity.
Not even guns in most cases, certainly not in the western states.
Gays and the right to choose would be my defining criteria.
ping:
“Senate Democrats tentatively agreed to abandon plans to set up a full government-run insurance program in a bid to remove one of the biggest obstacles to health legislation, a person familiar with negotiations said.”
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/dec2009/db2009129_458245.htm
pong:
“A push is currently underway in the Senate to have Democrats include the public option as part of any reconciliation fix.”
call me crazy, but the continually pushed msm-meme that the majority leader’s job is to push things that he knows is supported by the majority seems to fall short of what a leader should do. ya know, lead. and to my neophytic eyes the senate dems look leaderless.
Has the CBO scored Universal Health Care?
Since The Shaman, medicine has been based on need. Available to all with some exceptions. It is a human right, right?
A child could tell you that the ocean has room for all sorts of life and that eliminating any of it diminishes that that survives. No life is more important than another.
The only rule a loving person need apply is the GOLDEN one.
If you are a spirit with a body, and thought you were a body with a spirit, how would you feel?
Threatened by the vagaries of life?
If you know that you are a spirit with a body, do you feel less temporal?
Life matters, matter does not.
This is the philosophy of all great religions and thinkers
.
We all can be in the world, not of the world, if we choose.
“Greece Imploding As Customs Workers’ Strike Reduces Exports By 18%, Fuel Stocks Dwindle”
Exports have fallen 18 percent since the beginning of the customs strike as the shipping of goods via maritime, rail and air links is paralyzed, Christina Sakellaridi, president of the Panhellenic Union of Exporters, told private Skai radio today.
Greek motorists lined up at gas stations as fuel stocks dwindled while a strike by customs workers over government austerity measures stretched into a fourth day, hurting imports and exports.
The Federation of Greek Customs Workers called a three-day strike on Feb. 16 and decided yesterday to extend the action by six days to protest government austerity measures aimed at trimming Europe’s biggest budget deficit.
Greece is once again “hostage to strikes by powerful labor union groups,” the National Federation of Greek Commerce said in an e-mailed statement. The strike is “catastrophic” for the country’s trade and industry as well as shipping, food and transport companies and the Greek consumer, said the Athens- based organization, which represents Greek commerce groups.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aYwTXaxB.8Vw
This complete saga of health care reform kabooki kabooki kaka.
And please… don’t forget that there was a few other issues, that because of the light coverage, and thinned out attention span left over, from this theatrical marvel, may involve developments, much worse, than is suspected, though not missed. That is war, creeping away of (” land of laws,”) and financial doom,and economic havic, and…( what is going to happen to us.)
So we do know by now, that, it is alot about nothing, to wit: “No single payer, before its time… ”
This cherade has all the makings of one of those great political circuses that completely dissapear from the memory when something really big all of a sudden comes on.
They need an escape, this is getting way too cumbersome.
Reid is a vote-counter…and arithmetic is just so hard. Once he gets all the way up to those really big numbers (like 51, for example) he has to go take a nap.
Good for them. Could you imagine Americans getting agitated enough to have a general strike big enough to send shock-waves through the economy?
No, me either.
Rachel Maddow claims that O. really, really wants the PO.
Trust but verify, – the only wise words uttered by St.Ronny.
The bottom line is that the promise Obama made to his health industry co-conspirators is more important to him than his oath of office. Opposing a public option at this point is not only bad politics, it is deeply immoral.
I don’t trust this guy on ANY issue.
So are you saying, some middle class white girl is about to disappear and chase everything else off the evening news?
That one is ok, no… bigger, horse flew, or somethin.
You can only strike now without fangs.
:)
unless he is counting his campaign donations from his friends in the mining industry, then he can count into the hundreds of thousands…. cha-ching!
Not the Unions as they appear to have been as infiltrated by Centrist ideology as the Dems. But after the next Wall Street crash calling for bail outs, and Obama running to save them with countless Billions, – yes I can see the American public pouring out into the streets and saying – enough!
MSNBC and WaPo/Newsweek have a ‘talent-sharing’ agreement, which we aren’t privy to. But Ezra’s new Newsweek column may explain his more frequent Countdown (and TRMS) appearances.
and might i mention the ruinous influence of govt sachs in the greek implosion…
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,676634,00.html
Yeah I saw a piece by Chris Hedges (I think) recently where he advised trying to prepare to survive the coming socio-economic-political crash.
I’m not sure he’s crazy.
as a guest I will keep it short,
my remark @28 is that: HCR is primarily a diversion, on a monumental scale, in My untrained and HO. based on what seems plain as day: nothing is the aim, which means it keeps other things.. Off the Table.”
OFF THE Table could be a new political party.
Obama and his keepers are in a full out Pillage and Burn mode, because they can read the writing on the wall. They are buying seeds, and guns, and land with water rights as we speak, – and if not, then they are not so savvy.
Whatever turd emerges from the Government bowels on healthcare, won’t make a dent in the state of indenture which is staring the American public squarely in the face.
This is MAJOR NEWS!!!
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Snark, right?
No mikesong it’s just kabuki. Why does the resident’s outline not contain a public option, per David D?
http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/02/19/health-care-draft-for-summit-looks-like-health-care-compromise-from-a-month-ago/
Because it’s not going to happen. The public option letter bullshit and Reid’s little votette is simply being done so dems will be able to say they wanted a PO when they run for re-election instead of ‘yes we caved like punks and sold you voters out’. It’s to get the heat off of them and onto Obama where it belongs because they’re tired of his little dance.
Who’s “they?”
The HCR bipartisan summit is turning out to be election night. If BO does the right thing, he could salvage many of his losses in the demoralized base, perhaps myself included. If on the other hand he continues shoveling this corporatist bipartisanship crap, the D’s are toast in November and his presidency will be a one-termer. I’m convinced it’s that simple. Still not yet convinced and am indeed pessimistic as to whether or not the WH gets it.
Progressives should be primarying every centrist Democrat working against us, because if BO screws us on the 25th, incumbents from both parties are going to get malled in November. Better to beat an incumbent centrist Democrat in the primary and have a chance in the general, than guaranteeing the incumbent D will lose by sending them to the general. 2010 could be a banner year for progressives, despite the MSM CW endlessly parroted every day, but if and only if progressive Democrats challenge non-progressive incumbent D’s in the primaries. Can someone tell me where to go to get a tally on how many centrist D’s are being primaried?
not at all
The President’s outline won’t contain the public option because it’s only an outline, not comprehensive. Obama doesn’t want to have a bipartisan summit fight about the public option, are you kidding? He wants to bring it up the next month in reconciliation and just pass it. Which is now going to happen.
they = the mainstream media. It could mean the republicans too, but I stopped listening to them long ago.
55 minutes that just might help you ween yourself off of the Obama delusion:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/view/
agreed, must see teeVee
Saw it, great program, but that’s relevant to Clinton’s financial effort, not Obama’s health care effort. Try to stay on topic, unless you are going to try to tell me that Larry Summers is going to sink the reconciliation vote on the public option because he’s still mad at Brooksley Born.
It’s about ideology, mike. But if you cannot connect the dots then you make yourself irrelevant to any objective discussion of the problems at hand.
Obama is about markets. The Healthcare industry is one of the biggest out there. Protecting the welfare of the citizens is ultimately the one and only reason that validates a democratic Government. Expansion of Medicare would have been a win-win for the public and Democrats. But it’s not about either, it’s about herding the people onto the road to serfdom.
I think we’re all aware that Obama is not FDR incarnate, unfortunately. But, back to health care, while you’re connecting theoretical dots, I’m counting actual votes. See you at the finish line.
does your finish line envision a mandate without a robust PO? – or just an under-regulated transfer of wealth?
Why do you think that this ‘reform’ has been pushed out into the future for implementation? I’ll tell you -because it will be near instantly recognized as the Ponzi scheme that it’s meant to be.
It is not false that those in power want to “thin” the population. Be aware more deaths is not a problem to the Elite. In fact, all evidence shows they are trying to escalate those numbers. Can you say “fill in the blank with any number” percent increases in the cost of insurance while the “care” diminishes. In the face of all this suffering, it’s more than a slap in the face. It’s an out and out boast of power. And the power they speak of is to decide how expendable you are.
Thank your elected leaders for helping them. Vote them OUT. At my age I have learned that understanding motives is easy when you watch what is done rather than what is said.
my finish line envisions a transfer of wealth from rich people subject to a whole host of new taxes, towards working people in the form of subsidies. and a public option. and lots of good regulations. and a shitty mandate, yes, but it will have hardship exemptions, as well as the “young invincibles” option. My ideal plan? Far from it, that would be somewhere between single payer and fully nationalized. But is the plan much better than the status quo? Indisputably.
oh yeah, I forgot – the lesser evil is in play again. Guess that putting SS on the path to privatization will be less evil than privatizing it outright.
Got it.
“my finish line envisions a transfer of wealth from rich people subject to a whole host of new taxes, towards working people in the form of subsidies. and a public option. and lots of good regulations. and a shitty mandate, yes, but it will have hardship exemptions, as well as the “young invincibles” option. ”
then you’re betting on the wrong hoss, hoss. I guess shaking off the ‘true believer syndrome’ is not only impossible for the brainwashed Reps.
I guess shaking off the unbeliever syndrome is not only impossible for the pumas, or are you one of those too?
I’ve heard that term, I don’t know what it is but by the way people with their head up their ass accuse others of it, I suspect I might be one. Whatever it is. I’m fine with that, as long as I don’t have to put my head up my ass and join their non-puma club.