After Massachusetts: Where are we, and where do we go from here?
Karin
Last week, our party suffered a massive setback by losing the
Massachusetts Senate special election.
http://obamalondon.blogspot.com/2010/01/last-night-martha-coakley-democratic.html
Although the Senate seat in question was universally described as “Ted
Kennedy’s” seat, the truth is that Teddy himself never took it for
granted: he worked his tail off every year, and campaigned fiercely in
every election, for the people of Massachusetts.
Whether the Republican Scott Brown will be the kind of Senator who
lives up to Ted Kennedy’s ideal of hard-working service remains to be
seen. But he has not made a good start with his position that the
moderate, bipartisan universal health care system currently operating
in Massachusetts is good for citizens there, but would be bad for the
rest of America. Scott Brown has vowed to reject comprehensive health
care reform, leaving Democrats without the 60 votes that current
Senate protocol expects for any legislation.*
So, has health care reform been defeated?
NONSENSE.
We have passed comprehensive health reform through both houses of
Congress. No one has ever gotten this far before – and it means we’re
inches away from the finish line. If we have the will to step over
it.
The simplest route to passage of a comprehensive health care reform
package would be for the US House of Representatives to pass without
amendment the bill passed in the Senate. If House Democrats were
willing to do this, we could literally have a bill on the President’s
desk tomorrow for signature.
Is the Senate bill everything I would hope for? No. But it is a giant
step forward towards real reform. It instantly ends the most offensive
and unfair practices of the insurance industry (rescission, denial for
pre-existing conditions, and lifetime caps on coverage, for instance)
while establishing in law for the first time the principle that every
American must have insurance. It creates a national health care
exchange that for the first time creates nationwide competition free
from our broken system of state by state regulation. It offers tiered
subsidies that fill the gap between the rich and the poor, levelling
the playing field for the middle class. It’s a start. A very good
start.
But House Democrats are rumoured to be saying that they won’t support
it.
By holding out for better, House Democrats would almost certain wind
up with nothing at all. And that’s not good enough. Not this time. We
just can’t afford another generation of delay before we get serious
about solving the health care crisis.
WHAT CAN WE DO
I suggest** the following:
Each and every one of us should call our Congressional Representatives
THIS WEEK. We should give them the following message:
• We expect them to deliver comprehensive health care reform. We’ll be
very disappointed and upset if they surrender at this point.
• We understand that they may be nervous about their own personal
prospects for re-election this year.
• But if they do deliver this key promise, they will have our
unrelenting support. We will raise money. We will call voters. We will
tell all of our friends and family how proud we are of what our
congressperson has accomplished.
• In short, if you have our backs, we will have yours.
Please call your Representative today, and please e-mail me back to
let me know what they say.
The American people need our leaders to have the courage of their own
convictions. And each and every one of us needs to get busy making
that happen. Break’s over.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZvgSgpjkWU
Thank you!
Karin J. Robinson
* Whether this supermajority standard is reasonable in the first place
is the subject of another message for another day, but these are the
rules under which the current bills were passed, and for the purposes
of this exercise we need to assume that it will not change during the
current health care debate.
** Please note, as always this e-mail is sent in a personal capacity
and not on behalf of Democrats Abroad, the Obama administration or the
Democratic Party as a whole. I am asking this of you as a citizen and
passionate supporter of this Administration who wants it to succeed.