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When health care reform was passed, we were told by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) it was only a “starter home” that would be improved later. We were also offered vague promises from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) that we would get a vote on a public option in the months following the passage of the new law. Obviously this hasn’t happened.
But there is no reason why Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid couldn’t bring up the public option for an up or down vote next week.
As David Waldman explains, there is a very strong case that the reconciliation instructions for the latest budget are still active and could be used for another bill.
With everyone wondering what to do — and whether or not it can be done — in the remaining few weeks of the 111th Congress, I’m just going to throw this out there: the reconciliation instructions adopted as part of the fiscal year 2010 budget resolution are still valid. That is, the Congress may still technically entitled to use them to pass another reconciliation bill, though no one expects they’d really try it.
The reconciliation instructions were for legislation that would reduce the federal deficit through reforms to health care. A public option has already been scored by the CBO as reducing the deficit and is clearly health care related. Even the Catfood Commission reluctantly admitted a public option was a viable way to reduce our long-term deficit. There is every reason to believe a public option or Medicare buy-in bill could be passed in the lame duck session with a simple majority.
Reconciliation bills have a set time limit in the Senate, so that means a public option bill couldn’t be filibustered to death by Republicans, or even used to significantly eat up the remaining floor time left until the end of the year. It couldn’t even be held hostage by the GOP blanket filibuster until the tax cuts are extended.
Of course, I don’t expect Harry Reid and the rest of the Democrats to keep their vague promises to fight on for the public option after health reform care passed. President Obama promised the hospitals he would kill the public option, and he has constantly shown more loyalty to his secret backroom deals with corporations than he has ever to his campaign promises to his supporters. I just think it is important with the Democrats about to lose control of the House that we acknowledge what is sure to be the last real chance for public option we are likely to have for a long time is quickly slipping away without fanfare.
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It’s always nice at this time of the year to have some wishful thinking.
It’s a slow morning, so firepups might want to check out this Krugman blog post from early this morning. One of the comments over there by mickeyrad (no. 13 at 8:44 am) had a helpful cost-benefit analysis of the latest WH cave-in to the uber-rich. With some good politics thrown in. I just wanted to steal this clip:
Dude,
REALLY? Are you serious? What on earth have you been smoking? Do you think Mitch, Kentucky Fried Chicken-neck McConnell will allow a public option to pass anytime during this eternity? Methinks that you have way too much time on your hands…………………..
By the way, the House rank-and-filers are revolting. If Betty McCollum’s willing to slap Obama’s face over this — and she’s as go-along-to-get-along as any representative you can imagine — this is DOA.
Re-Con-Cil-I-A-Tion.
Miss McConnell can’t do a damned thing about it.
Is there some way to search the House web server to find more press releases like McCollum’s? It’s gonna take 218 more House members like her to stop this. Over in the Senate, it could only take one. But I don’t trust any of the loud-talkers we have heard from so far to actually conduct a filibuster in the Senate. What would Feingold do? What about Voinovich? He came out against the taxcut bonuses for the uber-rich on Sunday before the crappy WH deal was announced Monday night.
nobody on Krugman’s blog replied to this estimate by mickeyrad, at least not as of noon. Looking at his numbers again, it does seem clear that he arrived at a five percent figure for the benefits to the uber-wealthy because their income tax rates will stay at 35% instead of rising 4.6% to 39.6% under current law. But the 2% figure for wage earners might relate only to the payroll tax holiday (cutting the FICA rate from 6.xx% down to 4.xx%). Wage earners will also benefit from the lower marginal rates being extended, i.e., what they pay on their tax returns after the year is over, so mickeyrad might be undercounting the “benefits” to workers and the middle class. It’s a crappy deal no matter how you run the numbers, because it gives away twenty percent (20%) on estate taxes to the uber-rich after they are dead. Gratuitous insult to the rest of us still alive trying to deal with this carnage.
The Senate, of course, is another matter.
That is the point he has zero power of reconciliation
Dems could still pass….zzzzzzzzz.
I don’t see the Dems passing anything except gas and stinky breath.
Sorry, but I’m just not excited about anything they might be able to do with “might” being the operable word.
Obama would veto it. In a hot second.
I’m sorry but Waldman holds zero credibility with me. Obama criticism has never been welcome or allowed at congressmatters and I’ve not been back.
Oh, he’d be torn. On the one hand, he’d love to veto it. On the other hand, he’d make it crystal-clear, so obvious Helen Keller could see it, who he really serves, and he’s been loath to be quite so blatant — not when he can make it look like other people are doing the true dirty work.
Is that Waldman or the Boosties? Like most DK FPs, he’s not a true Booster Clubber. (And that club’s getting smaller by the day.)
Hmmm… Seems like a perfectly good bargaining chip to toss away to get Republican support for something like gutting Social Security or, maybe, bombing Iran.
Never let a good opportunity come to fruition.
Yep. Even the Orange Apologist has come late to the party but come they have.
oh that is a good one
Hey, lets look on the bright side of things. The repugs got their tax cuts for the wealthy, so we should have jobs showing up everywhere now. They don’t need to hold back on biz because there is no tax issue to keep them from it. /s
Amazing Jon, that you can still muster fight, KNOWING Obama passed the plan he wanted. Are you actually calling for an independent Congress to (on its own) to put law on Obama’s desk for a signature? How novel, Cheney would roll over on the thought.
Wait, Congress is allowed to act independently of the administrative branch of government? Are you sure?
Yeah, and I could grow hair on my balding head again.
Put the pipe down.
the Mighty Kos himself likened POTUS to Neville Chamberlain today
honestly, this is a waste of time. The tax/unemployment thing is the only thing that can be worked on now.
Edit: Musta had you confused with someone else.
Put the pipe down,, that is a classic,,,,,and I do agree
No no no … since they are temporary, the business climate is still uncertain, and they can’t possibly risk their
stolenhard earned money on job creation.I can’t blame folks for not putting the pipe down. Seems like a rational way to deal with this fucked up reality we’re living in to me.
Neville Chamberlain or Aaron Neville?
The New Deal Democrats are waiting in Heaven to kick these Democrats’ asses.
Popular theology would indicate they won’t get the opportunity. These asshats are going to hell.
I think the “starter home” has been foreclosed on.
And still flogging the fake marketing ploy known as the public option.
Every loyal rank and file democrat I’ve ever met has vehemently denied that Obama has made a deal with the big industry to kill the public option. They chalked it up to media lies. They said the same thing about news published quotes from senators Lieberman and Lincoln that Obama never approached them regarding their opposition to the health care bill when the public option was there. They call all of it ‘lies’.
The cognitive dissonance displayed by dabbling ‘liberals’ and ‘progressives’ loyal to Obama and the democrat establishment is as amazing to me as the cognitive dissonance displayed by America’s right wingers.
I can’t point to a case where they’ve actually done it, but ….
It’s good thinking. The Democrats better take advantage of their last chance (for many years to come) to use Reconciliation on something important in the next few weeks. I’ve been recommending using it for pushing through middle class tax breaks (with unemployment extension)- because they know they have the majority vote in the House and Senate.
The Public Option is also a brilliant place to use it. Obama will definitely sign it. His secret deal with HiPA to keep the PO off the table,as reported summer 09 in the NYT, was certainly betrayed by HiPa’s slush funding against Obamacare in the 2010 election. He owes HiPA nothing now. Publicly Obama’s always pretended to support it, saying the PO just did not have the votes to include it in his bill. So he really would have to sign it if it passes in reconciliation.
The next few weeks are even more crucial for maintaining the integrity and identity of the Democratic Party than they are for Obama’s presidency. And passing the public option would be the most fiscally responsible, deficit cutting, humane, popular and useful accomplishment the Dems could achieve “on their way out.”
I say Obama should send in another “team” to deal with the Republican’s on this tax extension issue. Not Mr Wall Street Tool (Geithner) but someone who’s head is with the “Lower 98%”…how about sending Howard Dean in to “negotiate” with Mitch McConnell.
Public option? Obama would probably veto it.
And most of his remaining fans would probably still make excuses for him.
The silent majority at dkos has turned against him. Most people don’t comment or make diaries – they just rec and vote. Most polls on that site showed people very upset about the pay freeze and this tax deal. A sea change is at hand – that is why Obama acted the way he did during his presser.
Hasn’t there been a change (even if not a sea change) here at FDL also? I doubt I’m the only formerly dormant but newly vocal account here.
Whoa! Do you have a link to the Daily Kos page with the Neville Chamberlain comparison?
Yes, I quite agree as the Brits say.
It’s about time!
Pelosi attaches language to any budget bill so that it allows reconciliation (doable), gets House to pass it (harder but still doable), and then the Senate does the public option (impossible without Obama support – and Obama does not want it – see he made this promise to the rich and corporate).
Yep it could happen – but not until we get a Democrat in the Whitehouse.
STOP!! Yer’ killin’ me! I haven’t laughed this hard since my ex-wife went bankrupt.