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Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) spent most of the year claiming he was a champion of the public option. Now that there is a possibility of getting a public option with a simple majority using reconciliation, Harkin has made clear that he will actively work to kill the public option, while tying himself in incoherent, illogical knots trying to justify his actions–while still trying to claim he supports the public option. Via The Hill:
“If we have a bill sent to us from the House that does not have the public option here, if we were to add it here, it would sink the whole bill.,” Harkin said during an interview on MSNBC, adding that he would not vote to revive the public option “if it meant that it would sink the whole healthcare reform bill.”
The logical problem is that the push is on for the House to first pass the comprehensive Senate health care bill, and then pass the changes through reconciliation. This is what Kent Conrad (D-ND) is demanding, and the likely path forward indicated by a new leaked memo to Inside Health Policy (via Politico). If the House passes the comprehensive Senate bill and then moves on to the reconciliation sidecar, what happens to the reconciliation measure is relatively unimportant from Harkin’s perspective. If the reconciliation measure goes down because a public option was added in the Senate, the original Senate health care bill Harkin supported would still be law. It would not “sink the whole healthcare bill,” just some modifications to the bill.
Of course, Harkin is expecting supporters to believe that he will magically find a spine to fight for the public option at some distant point in the future when Democrats are assured to have fewer seats in the House and Senate. But, Harkin is clear: we definitely should not fight for the public option now, when it is basically guaranteed to get an up or down vote in the Senate. Via The Hill:
“This bill is not the 10 Commandments carved in stone for all eternity,” he said. “I’ll tell you this: If the public option is not in this bill…that means we’ll be back on it again, maybe this year, maybe the next.”
Democrats are right now working to fix some of the problems with the current Senate bill using reconciliation. It is an insult to the progressive community’s intelligence to ask them to pin their hopes for a public option on Democrats taking up another health care reconciliation package to pass the public option later this year or next if it is presupposed Senate “supporters” are going to work against its inclusion in the current bill.
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Thanks Jon.
Gee, Tom, some would say yours is a somewhat spineless and chickenshit attitude.
A major disfunction within the Democratic Party on naked display…It may well be a net positive to see most of Congress swept away in 2010 if Progressives can get their own people in to fill that void.
Whatever passes (if anything) will not take effect for years. This whole thing is making me sick.
Oh, wait. I might need some health care. FAIL.
I trust Harkin. During his interview on the Ed show. Ed challenged Harkin and his lack of support for the “public option” at this time. Harkin responded in a rational way. He said that he believes totally in a “single payer” program. He supports the “public option” But as he explained that Speaker Pelosi does not have the votes for the “public option” and does not want the legislation to go down.
That the “public option” will be revisited.
Charlie Cook from the Cook report basically told House Dems, the best way forward is for you to run against the White House and the Senate, this will increase your chance of winning in November.
Harkin went to the same school Rockfellar went to, let us say we are for the public option when we know it has no chance of being pass so we can make the Progressives Happy.
Oh No! Harkin and Rockfellar say “the Public Option now only needs 50 votes, it has a chance of passing let try to kill the Public Option.”
House Dems better read between the lines, the Senate and White House think you all are a bunch of idiots.
the “idiots” just raised hundreds of thousands in a 24 hour period to support Bill Halter against Lincoln.
Ds in the House of Reps raised money for Halter? Link? I hadn’t seen that.
“House Dems better read between the lines, the Senate and White House think you all are a bunch of idiots”
the way I take who jedi “you all” is referring to is the progressive folks.
“Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) spent most of the year claiming he was a champion for the public option”
I am glad I wasn’t the only one thinking how strange it was to see people who were advocating for the PO now decide that ….let’s not fight for it now.
This was always a scam orchestrated by the WH.
So, part of the point for pushing for the House to go first is to enable weasels like Harkin to make a procedural argument for why Senate Democrats couldn’t pass any crumb of real health care reform?
Do they really think the American people are that stupid? And House Democrats are stupid enough to go along with it?
The obvious question is why they aren’t coming up with a way to use the process to make sure a public option passes rather than going out of their way to use the process to make sure a public option won’t pass?
Harkin, you’re not scoring any points for yourself or for the sellouts and enablers among the Democratic Party.
Well jedi can clarify, but with House Dems, WH & senate in the same sentence, it looks like jedi meant the House of Reps.
Can we kill this Corporate give-away, already?!
Medicare for all would have been easily understood by all and able to pass in no time. Instead we get Obamacare; a bill to enhance the profitability of ‘savvy businessmen”.
Kill the Bill!
Suzanne Kosmas voted against HCR the first time around angering her Central Florida Democratic constituents and appeasing and perplexing the Republican blok. From her first day in office, Kosmas’s central focus was to save the Space Program that Obama recently axed. Her Republican opponent (a genuine creep) who had dropped out has reentered the mid-term race.
Some of them aren’t very astute. The tea baggers are going to elect the Republican. Suzanne is toast. She toasted herself.
isnt time these bastions of “progressive fervor”are retired to NURSING HOMES
OLD GRAY MEN IN NEW GRAY SUITS…….go retire already sheeeeeeeez
I have given up on the Feds. I am going to concentrate on my state. We may have idiots in charge but we do have one thing going for us, we can pass laws with an up or down vote of the voters and bypass the government altogether.
http://californiaonecare.org/
No one would call Harkin a Blue Dog. Problem is when someone dangles agribiz $$$ in front of him he prances around like a trained poodle. And to successfully whore for those $$$ he has to help Schumer whore for his Goldman Sachs $$$, help Lincoln whore for her Wal-Mart $$$, etc. So he winds up being just another Senate whore helping all the other whores, like he’s doing now.
We really need to come up with another word for these assholes. This is offensive to the real “working girls.”
Just another fucking monster, err… heavily-bribed, corrupt scumbag. Calling these people whores demeans prostitutes. Prostitutes are far more respectable than any of these assholes.
Robert Kuttner in some recent article declared that the bill sucks big time but we should pass it anyway because we don’t want to hand the Reps a win. WTF!!!
AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…
Citizen JonWalker and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:
Another great post, Brother Jon…but a sad one to see and hear another example of Tom Harkin’s degeneration into a combination mindless intellectual goo and spineless Jello. Let’s force the vote on the floor of the Senate and make ‘im go hide back in the cornfields…he’s gettin’ ta look like the Humphrey “liberal” representative of Cargil that he’s always been. But my question is: where has Sherrod Brown been the last few weeks? There is a group of real progressives includin Brown and Al Franken who have been bustin their butts behind the scenes and there are 30 signatures to “the letter” as a result.
There seems ta be a game of chicken goin on and ObamaRahma’s last ditch seems to be to give Harry Reid cover to not bring the public option to the floor during reconcilliation because he doesn’t have the votes. I’m seein’ the prints of The Tiny Dancer all over this…am I wrong?
KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, BUT DON’T SHOOT THE FRIENDLIES!!
What will all these buttheads think when they are kicked out because of low democratic voter turnout in November? It’s gonna happen, and we’ll see crocodile tears the size of Victoria Falls, along with much gnashing of teeth, beating of chests and rending of garments. And I won’t feel sorry for a single one of them. Asshats.
That was pretty well debunked on yesterday’s threads.
Yer WELL behind the FDL Breaking News Curve, hoss . . .
Why do the constituents of some of these lawmakers allow them to continue obstructiion? Do they think that people are going to let them kill their family and friends?
I wonder if 538 has a chart going yet on congress persons that no longer go back to their districts? No despot has a friend, because that friend would be their most likely enemy. Imagine the hatred of most of the people that live in your district?
No, they won’t be going home again. The behavior of the senate and house is criminal activity to most of us. Some of our representatives seem to be working for us. But then we find that they were making deals in the background to kill us or take from us the last of what we had.
Realistic financial experts expect the market to crash shortly. Will it be for the last time?
True liberals should help to kill this monster Corporate/centrist scam, and as you suggest; put their efforts behind the California push for a single payer health care system.
Greenwald is right about the Democrats, there’s no denying it.
The Kabuki on Kabuki on Kabuki Stageplay for some time was pointing towards this D Party implosion on doing anything more than what the Obama WH clearly had outlined six months,nine months or indeed twelve months ago. Give AHIP everything it wanted and not anything it did not want.
If one could summon the required outrage in enough Americans to travel to WashingtonDC and light some torches and thrust some pitchforks in the air this would be the moment for it. 535 Americans in Congress and the the American in the WH need to have the Bejeezuz scared into them.
Blaming this D Party implosion on any real HCR getting done on the R Party has been a big part of the Kabuki HCR Play to be sure. Pelosis,Reid and quite a few of the Fake Democrats in the U.S.Senate really have earned getting fired with no unemployment benefits and the retirement sugar packages they give themselves taken away and kept away. These Americans need to taste some reality as seen by millions of Americans here in 2010.
Glenn Greenwald describes what the D Party is doing as villain rotation which is a reasonable and accurate overview I think.
Barack Obama has not displayed the courage required to do what needed to take place with this AHIP run American health regime and clearly Tom Harkin is not going to find the courage either.
A pox on both the R and D Parties.
but they have the SOUTH of FRANCE…and the worlds their oyster
“Two faces have I, one to laugh and one to lie…” Just sing along with Senator Harkin.
ever so slightly o/t:
The Post Office should be supported with government money and we should return to 7-day/week delivery, not cut it to 5-days/week. Americans need jobs, good jobs preferably; the US unemployment rate is 10% to 20%, depending on how you count it. Postal delivery jobs are good jobs, that can’t be outsourced to overseas locations by Republican-controlled corporations. Pres. Obama and the Dems also need to set up a real USA jobs program to restore our crumbling infrastructure, like FDR did back in the 1930s in the depths of the Great Depression. Fund 7-day/week mail delivery with some of these job funds.
i can not understand why this was not done……wtf
Since I still have no idea what in the world the public option is supposed to be I’ll settle for being against this bill and the incompetent looking theater being done by the Ds for other reasons.
I’ll support the problems with the mandate when “mandate” means the same thing as single payer with regulators controlling health care costs which drop insurance premiums.
The one thing we can learn from the unfortunate rule of Bush the lessor, we just need the right dictionary of terms.
Rethugs want to
privatizedestroy the USPS, giving it to UPS. I wonderifhow UPS is subsidized by taxpayers already.And very likely more skilled and adept in their craft than politicians, too.
“There is a group of real progressives includin Brown and Al Franken who have been bustin their butts behind the scenes and there are 30 signatures to “the letter” as a result.”
I don’t think those signatures mean what I want them to mean . . .*G*
As to the rest of your comment, yep, it’s Tiny Dancer’s size 16 steel toed ballet slippers gouging up the wooden sprung dance floor again . . . . yer gettin pretty good at this stuff ya know . . *G*
Now that you have TIME and all, a few diaries, perchance, so you can ‘stretch out’ a bit? *G*
Thanks again Jon Walker for another great read, and my bad but down below thanks David Dayen for yet MORE breaking news I crave but can’t really get in a FULL SIZED dose at other sources.
You guys rawhk!
Mail hasn’t been delivered on Sunday since 1912. Other than providing work for mail carriers why would we return to that?
From what I’ve read UPS wants no part of it.
Unless my most deep seated, fervent and desperate words to the gods are answered I’m afraid you are right, the November Election is looking like a slaughter for dem’s, and I’m not sure how badly that will set our nation back, but it WILL be bad.
My hope is the election pressure from ’10 AND ’12 is gonna ultimately break the grip of corps on our elected offals (not the WH, too entrenched unless Obama does 180 and fires Rahm and 70% of his staff and goes FDR Galt on us) and FORCE the dem’s to play Robust Public Option Hardball with medicare buy in’s and all the other ponies we were promised to improve care and reduce costs (not to mention strike a death blow to the private insurance companies).
However, my hope wavers and wains daily like a yo yo on a string, like a dem on the news, like a rotating villain changes their mask . . . like a . . . well, you get the point . . . *G*
Holding fast to hope, but going batshit crazy at all the dem posturings day by day . . . sadly, it’s too early for Merlot this morning . . . ;-)
That’s been the mind set that created the problem,just passing anything & calling it a win.It came straight out of Rahm & the WH.
This is not a game.Peoples lives are involve.But it shows how despicable their reasoning has been.
Ya know, the longer this all stretches out the closer to MY hope we get, yet the closer to YOUR POV I get, also.
We ain’t so fat apart anymore on this one . . . if fact, I’d give up my hope NOW, to KILL THE BILL!
And let REAL election pressure be felt in the remaining time till November with NO healthcare reforms at all on the table!!!
Were is the obtuseness of people that can’t seem to understand the idiocy in Harkins position. It could not be more clear that what he is saying is mere nonsense. It’s like he’s saying I can’t get out of my room because it’s locked from the inside, even though I am inside my room.
The sequence is that the current Senate bill which has no PO will be passed by the House and sent back to the Senate with modifications for a simple Senate majority vote. If that House-modified Senate bill comes back to the Senate with a PO then Harkin will vote against it on that basis, presumably even if his were the determining vote. Is his position at all confusing?
Well given that scenario, what the House ought to do is exactly return its modified version of the Senate bill back to the Senate with a PO and then let the Democratic Senators like Harkin, Conradand others vote it down on that basis. And then let them justify their votes as they have to face a primary challenge. The same goes for Obama let him omit the PO from his now revised proposal to be unveile tomorrow,his position re the PO will be made absolutely clear.
It has to be stressed over again that a public plan to challenge profiteering by insurers is not a bargaining chip, it is essential for meaningful reform. It alone allows for health care cost measures to then be addressed. You first have to deal with eliminating the vast amount of profiteering and exclusion by insurers to then be able to reign in the redundancy and elevated cost associated with delivering health care by providers.
But first things first.
Aside from Obama’s Courage having NOTHING to do with reality (he’s bought and sold as are all our elected offals and paid to do the bidding of AHIP) I completely agree with your entire comment. Well said, too.
I must humbly admit that poor Kael at Senator Harkin’s was on the receiving end of one of my better Rants as I proceeded to call a Senator for whom I’ve voted since forever that he was a weasel and unfit to walk in Teddy Kennedy’s shoes.
Asshole will never get my vote again,dammit.
Government funded, government paid and government run work projects, including the one you outline, are the ONLY way we will restore any jobs to replace the 30 million or more lost since ’03.
But I don’t think that’s the goal of the corporate/government thumb we are now living under.
Because the LAST thing the corps/government want is a working, thriving and robust middle class.
Where you been on this issue? Class war. Welcome to the foxholes!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100302/ap_on_bi_ge/us_health_care_overhaul
I’ll admit the term ‘public option’ has many definitions depending on who’s slinging it.
But I think FDL and it’s Pups have pretty much detailed what it SHOULD mean in order to really achieve change and benefit we the people.
That said, KILL THE BILL is lookin good (aside from my paltry hope I hold).
Who is running the Democratic Party?
What Happens the Day After Health Care Passes?
Who is going cheer for this? Well Point, Blue Cross Blue Sheild, Aetna, etc.
Are Dems going to run against the Health Care Bill they just pass in the fall?
Will Obama switch parties? maybe he already has,
The idea of so many congress people committing political suicide is facinating. This will be political suicide for all who vote for it.
Passing this HCR scam bill is going to re-energize the bases of both parties in a very negative way, both parties will be screaming kick them all out! For years.
Insurance companies, Lobbyist, Banks, beaware, pass this bill and the pitchforks are coming, and they will be coming in droves.
FDR understood one simple thing about a great depression, you either talk about jobs or Hell comes to Washington DC.
The elites as usual are making a huge mistake!
Brown or FedEx? FedEx has stores in Kinko’s copy shops already . . . in Sacto, CA.
Does Brown have any storefronts?
Course, if they GOT the contract, they’d have the existing USPS centers and post offices to use, I guess . .
Nebbah mine my thoughts . . . lol
To create jobs!!!
‘Simple Answers, Redoux.’
*G*
Interesting! Thanks!
Obama/Rahm bargained away the public option a year ago. They won’t break their promise to business. Screw the electorate. Nothing else explains the theater and lies surrounding this option, poor as it is.
The deal is done. All else is posturing and nonsense.
“Were is the obtuseness of people that can’t seem to understand the idiocy in Harkins position.”
Dude, choir here, we know . . . *G*
Heysoos effin marimbas, yet MORE AHIP benefits touted by Feckless Leader!!!
I can get behind Medicaid payment increases, but the other three are pure poison.
Le Sigh, thanks for sharing that one . .
Should I be concerned about the PO in fact inhibiting States like California from implementing it’s own “publicly financed health insurance system that provides full coverage, for all, for less.” ?
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.
I watched Harkin–the spineless, slippery coward–on the Ed Show last night making the same ridiculous claims, and I was so furious I wanted to chuck the TV out the window.
Senators like Harkin should be targeted for primaries. They are THE PROBLEM.
Tom Harkin is a pathetic pussy and is the classic example of a slimy, career politician. Anybody in Congress as long as he’s been there is thoroughly corrupted.
Yep, I’ve read a bit of that before but my concern, is about being snookered. “Look you wanted a public option and I gave you one. It just happened to have death penalty provision.” What it should mean is not what the folks in DC probably mean and their definition might have more significance in this particular case.
I’ve been in the “kill the bill” camp for quite a while because of the mandate as it is currently defined and the excise tax. Change the definition of the mandate, as I suggested above and then pull the plug on the excise and I’d probably have a few other minor quibbles. Since the excise would have no meaning if something that approximated my definition for the mandate were applied then it wouldn’t be needed to bend the cost curve.
Dude why don’t you tend to your own entries. Are you the self- selected recipient of all entries or some compulsive busy body that can’t mind his own fucking business.
Better yet proof read your own entries and see if you can learn the English language.
Dude.
You know at this point I just want the Democrats to vote on a public option bill (one with an honest public option) so all of us can actually see who is for the public option and who isn’t. I know they don’t really want the public option and I can live with that, but what I can no longer tolerate is the deception surrounding it. I’m sick of peeling off layer after layer after layer of lies. Americans have a right to know how their representatives intend to govern. It’s pathetic watching Harkin twist so many lies. I honestly don’t know how he can look himself in the mirror. Americans will die for lack of health care, but at least they can remind themselves that they’re not as bankrupt and immoral as Tom Harkin.
Yeah, Congress will fix the countless problems in the Senate HC bill the same way they fixed the countless problems in NAFTA. They take the public for such fools.
I want to see that vote too.
Some of these comments are just loony.
Harkin has been fighting the progressive battles in Washington before many of these uninformed posters were even born. His record is just superb.
Jon, I think you are taking a single teevee interview and just twisting it all out of shape.
and Obama was, once upon a time. a community organizer yet now he works exclusively to transfer more hard earned american wages into the pockets of his “savvy businessmen ” Base (btw, same as Shrub’s base).
Smell the coffee and burned tortillas: http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2010/02/round-midnight.html
The man intends to vote against a public plan if given the opportunity according to his own admission and consequently will vote to defeat a HCR effort that contains that provision. Yet he says supports a public plan as part of HCR.
Well which is it?
If you support something, then you fight for it. If you’re not fighting for it, you never really did support it, just pretended to the whole time.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/02/23/democrats/index.html
- Tom
Indeed, once he was a community organizer. Now he is President of the United States.
And he can no more remake America overnight than could Ronal Reagan or George Bush.
He COULD, however, take a particular side on issues, and he does.
He has, at EVERY opportunity, taken the side of big business, wall street, the military industrial complex, and the national security state. At. Every. Opportunity.
Not only NOT the change I/we voted for, but he’s shat upon the Constitution now in a way that would make W blush, and this health care bill is strictly for the insurance industry. Not for the uninsured, underinsured, or even the budget deficit. The day after he signs this health care bill watch the insurance industry stocks.
From the FISA bullshit, to the “we’re going to return the rule of law to the White House” COMPLETE BULLSHIT (you can’t HAVE any rule of law if you refuse to hold those that violate it accountable, which is what he’s chosen) he’s been One. Constant. Letdown. After. Another.
The man is a Republican, or would be and wanted to be I guess until the Republican Party turned into a complete insane asylam. He’s governed to the right of Nixon.
mmm…I can agree with that, in general.
I voted for him, but expectations were not that high.
It’s not just Harkin.
None of the senators who have recently come out in favor of passing a public option via reconciliation are actually prepared to vote for such a bill, in my opinion. Not one.
I believe every single Democratic senator would cast the deciding vote AGAINST a public option if it came to that. That’s how little faith I have in even the most progressive Dem senator. I just don’t believe them. Remember how we tried to get some to say they’d support a filibuster against a bill that did NOT have a public option? Remember how well that went?
At bottom, even the most progressive dem senator is more beholden to corporate contributors than to his or her constituents. They’re a worthless lot. Even the best of them.
it is not spineless or chichen shit. this is how all prostitutes act when they have been bought and paid for. It is unbelievable what the health insurance industry thinks Tom is worth. If we can get rid of Spitzer for buying prostitutes, why is it we can’t get rid of the prostitutes in our senate? Where is the outrage?
I supported Harkin’s ’92 presidential campaign. I always thought he was one of the good ones — that if there were more Democrats like him, I’d become a Democrat again.
Now this.
* Sigh *
you got that. Klobacher says she will vote for it in reconciliation and then you have Harkin telling us it will never get there. Thats a big commitment for our gutless senator Amy. Shouldn’t senators be leaders and not just mindless people who go along to have friends in the senate?
When I first realized his sell out, I checked out his funding at open secrets and surprise, surprise. bought by health lobbyists. Huge disappointment. He was one of the good guys and obviously thinks he can continue to fool people.
And Mn.. support john Marty for governor. he authored the single payer bill in mn and is our best chance of getting it. If elected and of course he is having the same problems as other real democrats because the establishment corporate dems can’t have that. Someone representing the people.
I remember watching Harkin on the Ed Show on one occasion after Lieberman had stated the WH had not discussed the public option issue with Lieberman. Harkin stated that he was unaware that the WH had not broached the PO issue with Lieberman. I thought, Harkin doesn’t know that and he supposedly is in the forefront of the Health Care reform legislation. Ha, Ha.
It reinforced in me that most of the tv stuff is bull, trying to placate their base. The reality is that by the time, they eat, appear on shows, drive, park, make calls for campaign money, that they have very little time to be prepared on anything. Their knowledge is what is fed to them by their leadership (who mimics their backers)or campaign contributors. Government by the corporation and for the corporation would be the motto of many of these representatives, senators and presidents, of course, that motto would be said under their lips, as they don’t have very much courage.
I just love how cute Amy is when she goes on MSNBC. She is a good little team player. Her signing the petition is no doubt proof that the Dems have put the last stake into the heart of the pitiful little PO they finally voted for in the House. I blame the supposed progressives in congress for this insulting HCR effort.