We should start a massive campaign just to have Bernie Sanders offer up this amendment. If the Dems are going to kill this, I want to make them do it with their vote.

AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…

Citizen Jon Walker and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:

Great post, Brother Jon! This is the kinda information Firepups need ta carry to the water cooler, the tavern, the back fence and every other place we meet other workin poor and out of work citizens.

I don’t think the old ClintaRahma squeeze is gunna work like it did 16 years ago…increasingly, the leadership in the House is aware that they are toast after November if they don’t get reconcilliation done with a decent fix.

KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, A LITTLE BIT HERE AND A LITTLE BIT THERE AND PRETTY SOON WE GOT A LITTLE BIT!

jon, this is great stuff, we can pretty much get a few dems to guarantee they will add just such an amendment

“Senator Mark Leno said he agreed to carry the bill in part because he was impressed by what he calls “this statewide army” of advocates who believe that single-payer health care is the answer for the country and that California should show the way.

“It is one of the fastest-growing social movements in California today,” Mr. Leno said.

The dozens of groups backing the bill, including the California Nurses Association, the California Teachers Association and the Congress of California Seniors, he said, represent more than two million people.”

How would the PO affect a growing push for a Canadian-style health plan in California, if at all?

I like this. It also gives (more or less) real-time visibility to those DINOs who are opposing for whatever stupid reason.

Yep, I think it’ll get a vote. Whether it will get 50 is the question.

If the state single payer people are serious they should be pushing for a different change to the bill. Changing the language on State wavier would make state singlepayer more possible.

Sadly I have not seen the dedicated effort to get the roughly 10 words changed in the bill you would need but If anyone has heard of it I’m all ears.

Thanks, Jon. Great stuff.

Senate can’t be trusted to pass healthcare reconciliation fixes so here’s what the House needs to do .

Before the House votes for the Senate bill they should demand that the Senate:

1. Prepare and release the exact Senate legislative language of all the “fixes” that will be proposed in a Senate reconciliation bill.

2. Ask for a ruling from the Senate parliamentarian of what, if any, “fixes” of a proposed Senate reconciliation bill would not be in compliance with Senate budget reconciliation rules.

3. Have at least 51 Senators publicly sign a pledge to vote in favor of the complete reconciliation package.

I would think those should be the minimum demands of the House leadership.

Will the House make those and perhaps other demands on the Senate before they bring the Senate bill before the House for a vote or will they just “trust” the Senate to possibly pass unspecified House proposals via reconciliation at some time in the future?

Im not so sure that it will even be brought up, one or two senators might get squirrely but even if it does come to a vote, they will not get enough votes because of some gentleman’s agreement not to bring it to the floor. This is unless like the 30 senators that are publicaly in favor all come out for it, then who knows.

It is important to point out if it is not brought up people like Bennet and Gilibrand care more about their senate buddies than following through on their word.

It will come up if and only if there are enough votes to pass it since the Dems don’t want to expose anyone to actually having to vote against it. The one other, unlikely possibility is that a small group of the almost progressive Senators put their foot down finally and say: “None of this is going forward unless we get the PO”. I doubt they will do that though.

If Democrats use reconciliation to pass a health care bill and even one Senate Democrat actually supports the public option, or one Senate Republican thinks it makes political sense to force a vote on the matter, there will likely be a vote on a standalone amendment to add a public option.

And if not even ONE D Senator does do that, then IMO that’s proof positive that it’s the entire party that doesn’t want the PO and wants the current mess, rather than just those darn conservadems.

I hope the public option gets through the reconciliation but I don’t see it happening. Courtesy of the White House that never favored such option to begin with. Of course talk is cheap. Good post.

The Public Option as configured now (in the House version) isn’t anything to be proud of anyway. IF (and that is a big IF) they do pass something, I’m sure it will be a PO in name only, as the insurance industry will once again pull the strings of their puppets and have it be setup so that the PO takes all the sick people off the for-profit companies books, so they can make even more profits by only insuring the healthy.

Anyone wanna bet on that little scenario?

Pass a great public option by emphasizing the backroom nature of Obama’s deal with the hospital association to kill the public option and the duplicity in letting us move foreward, thinking we could still have a public option. The “backroom” deal for pharma blew up. So can this deal. We can still have a great public option. Keep fighting for it and shedding light on Obama’s backroom deal.

We’ve long grown weary reading about health care reform yet we are drawn to it again and again like gawkers passing a car wreck, at once titillated and appalled.
To mix metaphors, we keep hoping in the final seconds of the game our team will come through with the three from downtown, or the no look pass to the open man underneath and come out on top of a game we’ve where we’ve trailed throughout.
Truth is, we’re more than a little cynical about the whole thing. Health has been a commodity in this country for too long, and those who make a living betting on the life and death of others are too well entrenched in the financial statements of both parties to allow it to suddenly become a public good.

And yet, we can turn car companies into government owned entities in the blink of an eye.

I’ve been a loyal Democrat – but enough is enough – get this done with a Public Option and/or a Medicare Buy-In Option.

There will be no reconciliation. It is all a con to get the House to pass the Senate Bill.

Jon, I don’t trust Harkin or Reid on any of this. They want their version of the Senate bill -or nothing.

Harkin was just on The Ed Show claiming “Pelosi says” the PO cannot pass. Don’t believe that for a minute. But then he flipped when Ed asked him why he, big supposed champion of the PO, didn’t sign the letter – Harkin said he wouldn’t sign it because it may doom the whole bill.
The double talk and b.s. from him was surprising, although I’ve had the sense he’s not been forthcoming and is protecting something -maybe hidden in the language of his share of the Senate bill??

Something smells reeeally bad in the Senate -still. So beware.

A P.S. on Harkin.
Just got an email from him on how urgent it is to get ‘something’ to the President to sign.

There’s that “something is better than nothing” slogan we almost thought was behind us. Well here we go again..

Jon, this is great research/reporting. But Conrad just gave Sargent some more details on his thinking on reconciliation, and I wonder how, if it pans out, it would affect a vote on the public option.

Here’s what he said:

Conrad also explained in new detail why he believes that the House must pass the Senate bill first, a view that has been denounced by some critics who want the Senate to pass its fix before the House acts.
Conrad said that under Congressional rules, for a reconciliation fix to be “scored,” it’s not necessary that it become law, but it is necessary for it to have passed both houses of Congress before getting fixed. “For the scoring to change it has to have passed Congress, and that means both houses,” he said.
“The only thing that works here is the House has to pass the Senate bill,” Conrad continued. “Then the House can initiate a reconciliation measure that would deal with a limited number of issues that score for budget purposes.” After that, the Senate would pass the same reconciliation fix, Conrad explained, because even on the fix itself the House must go first because the lower chamber must initiate “revenue bills.”

Honestly, I don’t understand what Conrad is saying in the first part, about the scoring and the fixing. It doesn’t seem to track to me.

But the second part is clearer. He’s saying that the House must pass the Senate bill, and then their own version of a sidecar fix. They have to pass the fix first, Conrad asserts, because the fix, a “revenue bill,” must be initiated by the House.

Now, I’m not sure he is being entirely forthcoming here. I’ve read recently that the Senate could simply strip out the entirety of an existing “revenue bill” that has passed the House, and is currently languishing in the Senate, and insert the new “fix” language. Is that possible?

And would that come with its own problems, namely, the House would then be obligated to reconcile the new “fix” language with the original language of the House bill, whatever that was? If so, stripping an existing bill may be a nonstarter.

In any case, let’s suppose Conrad’s view prevails, and the House does have to pass the Senate HCR bill, and then initiate and pass the sidecar fix.

That would mean the House would have to take a completely new vote on a completely new version of the Public Option–all over again, for the 291st time trusting that the Senate will vote on a bill they pass.

In this scenario, the Public Option, if it survives the House vote, would be incorporated into the main bill the Senate considers, and would not be introduced via amendment. So that would mean it could be watered down again, or even stripped, by a simple up-or-down vote on an amendment, wouldn’t it?

The alternative is that the House pass a sidecar fix without a Public Option, and then the Senate adds it in via amendment, and then, finally, the House passes it again, with the P.O.

Either of these scenarios seem like a much more dangerous path for the Public Option than what you describe. Please shoot holes in my conjectures.

You’re posing a great question, but I would rephrase it. The question should not be, “How will the PO affect the single-payer movement in CA and other states?” The question should be a two-part question, as follows:

(1) “Will the dinky little PO in the House bill, or, should it be exhumed, the slightly dinkier PO in the old Senate HELP committee bill, serve as a fig leaf that allows Democrats to vote for the god-awful insurance industry bailout which is the centerpiece of both the House and Senate bills?”

(2) “Will the insurance industry bailout (by which I mean the individual mandate and the subsidies) pre-empt state laws creating single-payer systems at the state level?”

Re question 1: It’s clear to me that the “option” is serving as a fig leaf to permit members of Congress (a) to vote for an insurance industry bailout and then (b)sleep at night. My criticism of the PO is not that it will directly cause bad things to happen (snuff out the state single-payer movement; enrich an industry that can only make money if it harms patients and which will NOT be regulated into behaving; enrich the industry most zealously opposed to single-payer; waste money, etc.). Those awful outcomes will be caused by the bailout, not the sad little PO.

My principle criticism of the little PO is that all the ridiculous claims made for it will induce Democratic legislators who should know better to think it’s ok to vote for the bailout BECAUSE they are also voting for a PO that will force the insurance industry to behave — that it will “hold the insurance industry accountable” and “keep the insurance industry honest,” to quote some of the most popular palaver from PO advocates.

Re question 2: I discussed the issue of whether the bailout would pre-empt state single-payer legislation in a live blog at http://www.correntewire.com/kip_sullivan_stopping_health_care_bailout. In my opening statement for that live blog, I focused on an awful provision in the Senate bill — Section 1332. That section is supposed to give state single-payer legislation some protection, but it doesn’t. It is totally worthless to the single-payer movement and to legislatures that seek to enact single-payer bills.

Here in a nutshell is the problem. The US Constitution has a “supremacy clause” that says laws passed by Congress supersede laws passed by state legislatures. Sometimes laws passed by Congress pre-empt state laws under the Supremacy Clause because Congress explicitly says so. But other times Congress is silent on this pre-emption issue, and the question winds up being settled by federal courts. Neither the Senate nor House health care “reform” bills explicitly pre-empt state single-payer bills or other state legislation designed to achieve universal coverage or lower health care costs.

Long story short: The question of whether the Dems’ bailout will pre-empt state single-payer legislation is impossible to answer with certainty because it will depend on how federal courts interpret previous pre-emption cases, but it’s a good bet that federal courts (especially the Roberts Supreme Court) would find that the Democrats’ bailout pre-empts state single-payer legislation.

Jon Walker asks here why the single-payer movement has not mounted a “dedicated effort” to persuade the Democrats in charge of writing the “reform” bills to insert clear language protecting state single-payer legislation from pre-emption. I have a question for Walker and a comment.

Question: Why does Jon think the responsibility for protecting state single-payer legislation from the Democrats’ “reform” bill belongs entirely to the single-payer movement? Jon and the other PO advocates, along with the insurance industry, have brought us to the brink of a massive insurance industry bailout. Do the PO advocates bear no responsibility for ensuring that the bailout doesn’t snuff out the state single-payer movement?

Comment: In fact the single-payer movement has tried to persuade the Democratic leadership to insert language in both the House and the Senate bills to protect state single-payer legislation from pre-emption. To my knowledge we got absolutely no help from HCAN and other leaders in the PO campaign. I would gladly stand corrected if someone could post evidence to the contrary.

The single-payer movement generated considerable public support for the Kucinich amendment last summer. The amendment made it into the legislation reported out by one of the three House committees with jurisdiction (it was Energy and Commerce as I recall), but Pelosi and the House leadership pulled it out of the final House bill.

I have heard third-hand that single-payer supporters asked Sen. Bernie Sanders to add generic protective language to the Senate bill (that is, language protecting all sorts of state initiatives, not just single-payer bills) and what he gave us was the awful Section 1332. I have heard furthermore that when Sanders was asked by single-payer advocates why he produced such an awful provision, his answer is that he couldn’t get the Democratic leadership (I assume that means at least Baucus and maybe Reid) to accept anything stronger because they were already afraid of a revolt by state legislatures against the individual mandate. In short, to make sure the individual mandate got shoved down the nation’s throat and stayed shoved, Baucus et al. made it impossible for Sanders to get truly protective language inserted into the Senate bill.

I repeat: I have heard all this third hand. I have never seen it published. If anyone has information embellishing on or rebutting the preceding paragraph, please post it.

It’s high time the PO campaign admitted their role in promoting the massive insurance industry bailout that Obama and the Democrats now propose to enact. Once they have done that, they should then admit that the bailout they’ve worked so hard for threatens state-level single-payer legislation. Then they should tell us what they have done to protect states from pre-emption by their bailout. I believe they will have to report they haven’t lifted a finger to protect state-level single-payer legislation.

Kip Sullivan

While setting up a vote on the PO is easy – Biden need only rule it passes Byrd and then a vote is mandatory, I would not hold my breath.

Obama does not want it and will kill it – somehow.

Obama is not for progressive change. Pelosi said Obama Wed willcome out for less than there is in either the Senate or House Health Reform Bill, this after single payer became the public option, then no public option, then last weeks “concepts”.

On jobs the base’s second stimulus became $165 billion of extended unemployment benefits and aid to states and locales, then $15 billion of tax breaks for businesses that make new hires.

The base felt that financial regulation with excise taxes and no tax deduction for excessive Wall Street compensation – and we got GM salary control that was waived, and we didn’t get those real increases in capital requirements, with heavy regulation/banning/trade only on an exchange rules for derivatives/swaps, nor did we get a resurrection of the Glass-Steagall Act with non-bank financial institutions also regulated and controlled. Now our consumer financial protection agency is becoming a minor department in the Treasury with no real authority but with a minor rearrangement of ability to suggest changes between some seats in that department is not unexpected.

Our global warming carbon tax became a cap-and-trade carbon auction, then large polluters had exemptions and offsets if not exempt, and now Obama has the Senate doing carbon permits – or something – by industry so each industry can be milked for contributions.

Obama is not as strong a progressive – or leader – as Hillary and we’ll not see a progressive push – ever. Indeed with Obama we will not see a progressive push on any topic – ever.

As I wrote in the Huffington Post last week, the real reason Democrats won’t allow an up or down vote on the public option is not because it would lose but because it would win. However, the White House made a deal with the for-profit hospital lobby, similar to its deal with big pharma, that there would be no public option.
For the original New York Times article documenting this deal, click here
Jon, you should feature information on this story in your blog. The wider this White House deal gets publicized, the better chance there is of Congressional Democrats not recognizing this deal and allowing an up or down vote on the public option.