Tough Going Getting Votes for Health Care Reform

Re:  Robert Reich: It’s Time to Enact Health Care Reform With 51 Senate Votes, Robert Reich, Former Secretary of Labor, Professor at Berkeley Posted: February 21, 2010 04:59 PM

This week the president is hosting a bipartisan gab-fest at the White House to try to tease out some Republican votes for health care reform. It’s a total waste of time. If Obama thinks he’s going to get a single Republican vote at this stage of the game, he’s fooling himself (or the American people). Many months ago, you may recall, the White House and Democratic party leaders in the Senate threatened to pass health care with 51 votes — using a process called “reconciliation” that allows tax and spending bills to be enacted without filibuster — unless Republicans came on board. It’s time to pull the trigger.

Why haven’t the President and Senate Democrats pulled the reconciliation trigger before now? I haven’t spoken directly with the President or with Harry Reid but I’ve spent the last several weeks sounding out contacts on the Hill and in the White House to find an answer. Here are the theories. None of them justifies waiting any longer.

Robert Reich is asking a pertinent question. Why, indeed, hasn’t the Senate Democratic Leadership pushed to use the reconciliation process for health reform?

The answer is, of course, that a health care reform bill has already been passed in the Senate. What we are looking at now is getting a compromise bill passed in both houses. Mr. Obama wants to mold a compromise bill that will appeal to everyone, including the progressive caucus in the House, and then (don’t laugh) garner enough Republican votes in the Senate to overcome the cloture threshold – 60 votes. Tall order.

Robert Reich has run around the Senate asking the primordial question, “Why can’t Democrats pass something with 51 votes?” He posted the responses:

1. Reconciliation is too extreme a measure to use on a piece of legislation so important.
2. Use of reconciliation would infuriate Senate Republicans.
3. Obama needs Republican votes on military policy so he doesn’t dare antagonize them on health care.
4. Reid fears he can’t even get 51 votes in the Senate now, after Scott Brown’s win.
5. House and Senate Democrats are telling Obama they don’t want to take another vote on health care or even enact it before November’s midterms because they’re afraid it will jeopardize their chances of being reelected and may threaten their control over the House and Senate.

I doubt that the responses were as simplistic as he has stated, but I have no argument with them other than they are silly. The one that I want to focus on is number 4:

4. Reid fears he can’t even get 51 votes in the Senate now, after Scott Brown’s win. Reid counts noses better than I do, but if Senate Democrats can’t come up with even 51 votes for the health care reforms they enacted weeks ago they give new definition to the term “spineless.” Besides, if this is the case, Obama ought to be banging Senate heads together. A president has huge bargaining leverage because he presides over an almost infinite list of future deals. Lyndon Johnson wasn’t afraid to use his power to the fullest to get Medicare enacted. If Obama can’t get 51 Senate votes out of 58 or 59 Dems and Independents, he definitely won’t be able to get 51 Senate votes after November. Inevitably, the Senate will lose some Democrats. Now’s his last opportunity.

Reich calls the Senate Democrats “spineless” if they cannot come up with 51 votes and then goes on to compare Obama to Johnson, who somehow arm wrestled the Senate and passed Medicare by glaring hard under his eyebrows. The folks on the hill told Reich that there was not 51 Democratic votes for certain compromises, and I think this is true. There are many conservative Democrats and Independents who depend on large donations from big Pharma and the insurance industry to survive their campaigns back home. There are at least 14 “conservadems” if I may quote a term from Rachel Maddow, and their votes on health care reform aren’t guaranteed. The group of conservative Dems include but are not limited to:

Evan Bayh (IN)
Tom Carper (DE)
Blanche Lincoln (AR)
Ben Nelson (NE)
Bill Nelson (FL)
Mark Udall (CO)
Claire McCaskill (MO)
Mary Landrieu (LA)
Kay Hagan (NC)
Mark Begich (AK)
Joe Lieberman (CT)
Herb Kohl (WI)
Jeanne Shaheen (NH)
Mark Warner (VA)

What Reich is not saying here is that the Democrats aren’t considering reconciliation for the public option. He asked staffers and anybody else he could find about reconciliation for health care reform, not the public option. Sadly, have to speak in terms of reconciliation to pass any health care reform, never mind the public option.

But all is not lost. There is a push going on right now among progressive Senators to gather enough votes to pass the public option through reconciliation. Senator Michael Bennet (CO) has written a letter to Harry Reid demanding that the public option be passed separately using the reconciliation process. There is a movement by MoveOn and some other groups including Credo to have us voters urge our Senators to become signatories on the letter. So far, 20 Senators have signed the letter, and that includes the support by Reid.

But here’s the even sadder sad part. They still need another 31 Senators and it is very unlikely they will get them for reasons mentioned above about the “conservadems”. The public option is dead in the Senate, and now it appears it is also dead at the White House.

It is the conservative Democrats who are holding up everything from health care reform to the newly proposed “Consumer Protection Agency”. So the answer to Reich’s question is not in the process, the reconciliation versus the supermajority, but in the attitude of certain Democratic Senators and what it takes for them to get reelected. No, Mr. Reich there is not 51 votes for reconciliation, but not because of the reasons you posted.

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