Massachusetts Senatorial Candidates Scott Brown and Martha Coakley
A week ago I wrote about today’s special election in Massachusetts to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat:
[…] Would it be heresy to suggest that a short term Dem loss there would actually be a long term Dem gain, especially as it concerns the pending health care reform bill?
For instance, losing their filibuster proof 60 vote margin would enable them to tell the Nelson, Landrieux, LIEberman, Lincoln medical industrial complex shill block to go fuck themselves. This would put the reconciliation 50+1 vote formula front and center and allow the party to pass budget related provisions like a robust public option immediately. Other vital insurance company reforms like rescission, preexisting conditions, and the industry’s anti-trust exemption could be dealt with in separate bills.
Personally, I would love to put these Dems in a position where they would have to vote up or down on reforms like those.
Seems that the heresy is spreading. In a post today at The Lake titled Martha Coakley and “Sidecar” Reconciliation: The Public Option Lives Again, Jane Hamsher writes:
[…] So what option do they have to fix the health care bill that doesn’t require 60 votes in the Senate?
Well, Chris Van Hollen is now using the “R” word — reconciliation. It’s interesting that the head of the DCCC, whose job it is to get Democrats elected in 2010, is the one who recognizes the need to rescue the health care bill from the Senate corporatists like Joe Lieberman who would take the entire party down to give Aetna a big payday…
What would “Sidecar” Reconciliation look like?
Jon Walker sketched it out:
Passing the Senate bill first, and then fixing it with reconciliation, could also create strong political and policy pressure for reviving the public option or Medicare buy-in. Probably the only way they could jam the Senate bill “as is” through the House would be to get labor on board. To get labor, you need to promise to fix the excise tax, and probably the only way to do that is by using reconciliation. The unions agreed to a “fix” of the excise tax that would cost $60 billion. That money needs to be recouped through other tax increases or cost-cutting measures. Even a weak, “level playing field” public option would save $25 billion, and increasing Medicaid from 133% to 150% FPL should save another several billion.
The steps to get through “sidecar” reconciliation:
1. House passes the Senate bill
2. House and Senate pass a “fix” to the excise tax that they’ve negotiated
3. Find a way to pay for the “fix,” which costs $60 billion. The best way to pay for it without raising taxes means putting in a public option, expanding Medicare, passing Dorgan’s drug reimportation amendment, or some combination of the above.
4. House and Senate then pass the “fix” through reconciliation, which requires a simple majority. 51 Senators have said they’d vote for Schumer’s “level playing field” public option, while 51 voted for Dorgan’s drug reimportation amendment.
Sounds good to me.
“Firing Rahm, Summers, and Geithner would be a good start.”
Agreed.
Another consequence of losing the super majority is that it will lessen the need for doing politically damaging deals with the likes of Nelson, Landrieu, and LIEberman that play right into the Rethugs’ 2010 corrupt, anti-government narrative (them being authorities on the subject, and all) .
As I wrote in early December:
One would hope that the Democrats realize that “populist rage” is likely to be the determinative issue of the 2010 and 2012 elections.
And wrote in the month before that:
It would be the irony of all ironies if the Rethuglicans, who engineered this mess, succeed in grabbing the populist mantle from the Dems and become identified in the public mind as fiscally responsible agents of change.
From his back room deals with the medical industrial complex; to his bailout out of Wall Street at the expense of Main Street; to his lackluster efforts to date to produce good paying jobs for the millions of unemployed; to his doubling down in Afghanistan; and, according to Politifact his breaking of some 15 campaign promises in just his first year, Obama’s best days may be behind him.
I look forward to his State of the Union address next week. It may be his last chance to turn things around, to rescue his presidency. For that, he’s going to have stop tilting at bipartisan windmills, to convince his progressive base that he doesn’t take them for granted.
Firing Rahm, Summers, and Geithner would be a good start.
Maybe there is a silver lining in that huge storm cloud after all. We counted heads as 60 in the senate but we really never had 60.
Hopefully Obama will get the message and stop being so fucking bi-partison. He needs to open up some whoop ass on the Blue Dogs.
If he gets some HCR passed AND enacted before the polls open again, we just might get some real Democrats elected. By reconciliation, if HCR gets started as soon as possible, it would give a lot of relief to Americans. And I don’t think the GOP is that stupid. No. Even though they won’t vote for it, they’ll sure as hell take credit for it. And they won’t let it expire like the tax cuts for the wealthy should.