Apparently the latest optionbeing considered is for the Senate bill to pass without changes in the House and then pass a separate bill under reconciliation rules with the changes that the House wants.
There is also the issueof when Brown gets sworn in and until when Kirk gets to vote in the Senate.
And then of course we don’t know if the votes in the House will still be there if Brown wins.
My head is beginning to hurt. It’s hard to believe that after all this time and drama there is still a final twist and a possibility that health care might not pass. I can’t even imagine what’s going on in the White House and Congress at the moment. I bet Obama is still calm while everyone around him is freaking out.
If Brown wins then a lot Dems get VERY nervous about being able to hold their seats if they vote for this thing. I think there will be enough defections to kill this bill should Brown win.
If they pass something, they can campaign on it. If they appear weak and ineffectual by not getting anything done, that is what will screw them. Look at what happened in 1994. The Democrats were geared up to pass health reform, and then they chickened out. Did that strategy save them? No. They lost the House to the GOP for the next 12 years.
As a colluding group, yes. But how would you feel if you were a Blue Dog whose arse was on the line, and you see that people Really Don’t Want the bill?
Brown is specifically campaigning on this issue. He’s out on the stump saying, “Vote for me if you want the health care bill killed.” He’s also saying, “Don’t vote for me just as another Senator, vote for me as the 41st Republican Senator, who will take away the Democrat’s lock on the Senate.”
So yes, I think it’s fair to say that a win for Brown will be evidence of a refutation of HCR, as well as a refutation of the direction the Democrats have generally gone in.
If the Democrats ignore the clearly expressed will of the people and go ahead and find some tricky way to pass a health care bill that has 38% support of the people of the U.S., they will pay a heavy price. The blue dogs know this. If they vote for and pass a health care bill under reconciliation, they’ll be booted out on their asses in the next election.
You don’t even have the luxury of saying, “Well, the people hate it now, but they’ll love it after it passes.” The reason you can’t say that is because the Democrats set up the system so that no one will really see any benefits from it for 3 or 4 years, but they’ll start paying the taxes on it almost immediately. This was more fiscal trickery to get an acceptable CBO score on the plan, but it means no one will be seeing anything good out of whatever reform passes until well after the next election.
I trust you were very angry that the interstates were being paid for before you could dive across the country on them? It costs time and money to set things up. Welcome to Earth.
Aside from that there are many, many benefits that happen immediately.
Pass it anyway. And not simply to be a “Profile in Courage” either. People are less afraid of actualities than potentialities. How many people are campaigning to abolish Medicare these days? Not very many. But there were quite a few in the 60s before it passed.
Do you have a cite for that? He might be trying to raise money from out of state on it, but here in Massachusetts, he doesn’t seem to be playing up that angle all that much. Then again, he seems to be willing to be an empty suit that anyone can hang any Republican talking point on. He puts Tea Party rally clips of himself on his website, but claims not to be familiar with the organization, for example. As far as I can tell, his actual record is left of Dede Scozzafava, who was seen as a radical leftist by the Tea Party crowd.
My guess is that if Brown wins the House ping-pongs the bill and they pass nothing additional by reconciliation. Ping-ponging the bill is procedural trickery on a level that no one will understand or care about, and the House Progressives will cave (and rightly so). The GOP will cry to high heaven about procedural trickery, but no swing voter will care about whether they by-passed the conference committee if both chambers passed the bill by a normal vote.
Support for the bill will greatly increase after passage. Perhaps even before the mid-terms. Even now, the polling is pretty clear that people have no idea what’s actually in the bill. If they pass it before the State of the Union, that will go a long way toward curing that problem. Plus, it will benefit from the same trend as Medicare over the long-term (e.g. Reagan says it’s evil socialism and a decade later it’s a beloved program).
We can only hope and pray that he gets elected and gets into the Senate in time to kill the bill. It is a bad piece of legislation and we, the people, do NOT need it. Nor do we want it.
From people of one state. Who, ironically, already have a state-wide universal healthcare provision which goes further than the bill that Brown is running in such dire opposition to.
Minor fact, the state healthcare system has near supermajority approval ratings. And even this conservative travesty of a health care bill has majority support in in MA.
Well, I’m all in favor of the national health insurance program I currently enjoy as a foreign resident in Taiwan. If some sort of similar system could be convincingly implemented back home (in the US), I’d vote for it too.
But this incredibly ugly political theater in the arena of a one-party government makes me sick to my stomach. Just because a goal is laudable doesn’t mean that it can’t fall victim to crippingly incompetent planning and execution. I also (as a voter) don’t much care for being patronized. They’re sure I’ll love the result of all these back room negotiations, but I can’t be trusted to listen in on the clandestine wheeling and dealing (via CSPAN) without soiling my drawers, presumably. No thanks.
In answer to the OP, I’m guessing that a lot of Democratic congresspeople will look on a Brown election as a heaven-sent gift, as they’re given a plausible cover story to let the thing die and finally extricate themselves from this mess.
First of all there is nothing particularly “tricky” about the House passing the Senate bill which has already received 60 votes. Both chambers have already passed the health bill after a very long debate. Secondly it would be very naive for any blue dogs who have already voted for the bill to believe they will get protection by voting against it now. They will be attacked for the vote anyway and saying " I voted against it after I voted for it" won’t help them in the least. Thirdly failure to pass a bill is going to be utterly disastrous for the Democrats and will hurt the members who are most vulnerable who naturally tend to fall in moderate districts.
I doubt the bill is going to be unpopular in the long run anyway. First of most current polls don’t distinguish between people who oppose it from the left and right. For example in December there was a CNN poll which found 44% supported the bill, 39% opposed it for being too liberal and 13% opposed it for not being liberal enough. It’s unlikely the latter group will vote against the Democrats if they pass the bill and many of them will prefer it to nothing. Secondly a lot of the polling just reflects the economy anyway. Just like Reagan in 81-82, Obama has taken ownership of the economy and seen his popularity drop and it’s not surprising that numbers have dropped for his biggest issue as well.
So I think it’s clearly in the interest of the Democrats to pass this bill; the interesting issue is how they will go about doing this if Brown wins.