Step Two
5279 Dead, 412 since 1/20/09
On a journey of unknown length
© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
November 22nd 2009
So we're at step two: The Senate has decided to debate the issue of
health care reform.
If that seems like a pretty small step, it is. All the Senate did was
vote to at least discuss the issue. The vote was 60-39, and every single
Republican except Ohio's Voinovich, who was absent, voted against even
talking about it.
That's right: the same party that, just a few years ago, was all for the
nuclear option banning the filibuster and demanding “simple up-or-down
votes” was using the filibuster to try to prevent the idea from even
being aired.
Interesting thing about the “simple up or down” party: in the three years
since they lost control of Congress, they've used the filibuster more
than both major parties over the previous 230 years.
It wasn't much different in the House, where only one Republican voted
for the Health Care Reform bill.
So the Republicans play no tactical role in the upcoming debate. The only
thing that matters is whether Harry Reid can keep his caucus unanimous,
and at what cost.
It's fashionable for people around the political spectrum to sneer at
Reid as a weak Majority Leader, but he really does have one of the most
challenging roles in the history of the Senate.
You see, the Republicans have pretty much abdicated their role as a
spectrum of opinion in a deliberate body. They are there to only cross
their arms, purse their lips at the ground, and shout “no!” “No!” to
everything. Anything. They aren't there to deliberate. They are there to
refuse.
That leaves the Senate with one deliberative section, the 58 Democrats
and two Independents, and as the Republicans have moved out of the realm
of American style political party and more along the lines of a cult, all
the moderates and moderate conservatives that used to be part of the GOP
have crowded in under the big tent of the Democrats.
In effect, this means the range of opinion that the Senate used to have
back in the more normal times before Nixon poisoned his party is not
restricted to the one Party, and Harry has the thankless task of trying
to get unanimous results from that full spectrum.
Until a few years ago, on a major vote, the Majority Leader could often
work with some votes from the other side. That's why, even when the
Senate was nearly evenly split by party, it was relatively easy to beat
down a filibuster.
In those days, a Majority Leader might have 40 votes in his pocket, 30
where there wasn't much hope of convincing them to reconsider (although
it was usually at least worth trying), and 30 votes in play, and the
majority leader could go in and do a little horsetrading. It resulted in
a system that, if imperfect, at least worked.
Imagine if in 1861, instead of leaving for their home states in the CSA,
the Confederate Senators had all stayed to vote against anything Lincoln
and the Republicans wanted. That's pretty much the situation we're in
now. The GOP have all but left the country, leaving only the votes of
empty Representatives behind them.
Harry Reid has a situation where he has about 45 votes in his pocket, 10
that he can negotiate, and 5 that probably won't budge. And he needs all
sixty to get passage of the bill.
The one thing to his advantage is that he doesn't need to waste any time
talking to any Republican Senators. They've taken themselves out of the
game.
There's never been a Majority Leader before who had to get unanimity out
of the full spectrum of opinion in the Senate. So cut Harry a little
slack. He can't win. He can barely break even.
So don't expect much from the Senate. Anything that can pass cloture will
probably be so watered down that as health care reform it will make
things worse, rather than better.
Not that it's much now. The public option has been so watered down that
it will only cover about 4% of the population. And the insurance
companies will fight like hell to get that eliminated, because that's
what they fear more than anything: competition. So the parasites who get
bonuses of millions of dollars a year will be telling us most earnestly
that it's unfair to make them compete with a non-profit entity.
It's a bit like arguing that we shouldn't have an honest police force,
because if they go out and bust the Mafia and all the Mexican drug
cartels and what-not, it will cause unemployment among mafiosi and drug
dealers and affiliated scum. In fact, California has three initiatives on
next spring's ballot to legalise marijuana, and you can bet your bottom
dollar the most money to defeat the initiatives won't be coming from
police or churches, but from the drug gangs. They might have to go out
and get real jobs if everyone could grow their own without risk.
Serving the public interest is bad for business if the business involved
is exploiting the public interest. So the insurance companies and their
elected sockpuppets will be anxious to argue what is in the interests of
the insurance companies, and pretend that you somehow have shared
interests. You don't.
The Senate has already shot down the provision that would break up what
are effectively state oligarchies. In most states, only two or three
health insurance companies are allowed to “compete,” with the result that
one company can have as much as 85% of the available insurance policies.
Contrary to what libertarians think, you don't foster competition by
eliminating it, any more than public option eliminates competition by
providing it.
And of course, the blob squad are there to try to prevent any one from
getting procedures their little tin gawd tells them is bad, such as
abortion, gender surgery, or anything else they decide goes against the
laws of the universe. By the time the blue dogs are done, the bill will
probably make things WORSE, not better.
This Senate isn't going to produce anything that is worth a shit. A
legislative body can't function when you require a unanimous vote to get
anything done.
So if health care reform is defeated in the Senate just before the
Christmas break on a vote of 55-45, we might actually be better off.
Next year is an election year. And health care reform—preferably single
payer—should be the number one issue in every race above the level of dog
catcher. Every Democrat running should be running on a platform of real
health care reform, and any Democrat not willing do do so should be
knocked off in the primaries by a challenger who WILL promise to fight
for universal health care.
The insurance companies succeeded in preventing so much as a vote on
health care back in 1993, and as a result, it's been 16 years, during
which time health care in America has gone from flawed to fucking
disgraceful.
In 1993, Americans were in the top five in what they paid for health
care, behind the French and the British. Care was a lot closer to
universal then, and hundreds of thousands weren't going bankrupt because
of inadequate coverage. If your insurance company cheated you, you could
threaten to sue the bastards (now you have to go to a company-appointed
arbitration board, and lose there without any appeal). That kept them
honest. Nobody could imagine how bad it would be just 16 short years
later.
Now, Canada, with 100% coverage of all citizens, has the second-most
expensive health care system in the world, next only to the US, at 64%
per capita cost. Forty five million Americans – half again the population
of Canada—have no coverage. “Tort reform” has given insurance companies
the ability to balance their profits against your coverage, and your
vanishingly small ability to fight for what you've been paying for.
That's just in 16 years. If the Democrats merely slink away defeated,
another 15 or 25 years might go by, and things will just get worse until
we reach the point where health coverage is a rich man's toy, and the
vast majority of Americans will have no health care at all.
Top target is all Republicans holding office. They are a deeply diseased
party, completely divorced from everything America stands for. If they
get a shattering defeat next fall, not only is there a good chance at
meaningful health care reform, but it will force the party to either
rejoin the Great American Dream, or die. Personally, I don't care which,
since either would be an improvement over the pack of mindless neo-
fascist whores that make up the GOP now.
The real fight for health care reform won't be this year. The special
interests opposed to the public good have seen to that.
But we can see to it the fight continues next year, instead of making the
mistakes of the DLC in the 90s and letting 15 years go by.
--
Slavery: The belief that people can be property
Corporatism: The belief that property can be people.
Steve
<de...@dead.com> wrote:
>Step Two
>On a journey of unknown length
>
>
>� Bryan Zepp Jamieson
>November 22nd 2009
>
>
>So we're at step two: The Senate has decided to debate the issue of
>health care reform.
<Chuckle> The Senate version won't pass the House and the House
version won't pass the Senate. The Senate version, as it stands,
won't even pass the Senate, and the House version, as it stands, won't
even pass the House..
The public option is DOA and the whole thing may well die.. even
though there are enough Democrats in both houses to pass the thing..