I want a thread for all of this debate to be central. A place to share news stories and updates about the progress if a bill in congress.
Things are about to get very real come Wednesday, when Obama addresses congress. There are rumors of the White House drafting their own bill. The Republicans opposing the bill don’t seem to be bringing their own option to the table.
Here is a quote from a CNN article that I found very interesting
Republicans warn that approving the bills through reconciliation – which requires 51 Senate votes rather than the 60 needed to avoid a filibuster – would be a declaration of political war.
This is complete and utter Bullshit. They are already waging a war on Obama under the guise of this Healthcare bill. The only way he is going to win is when the bill is passed, and all of the opponents see that no matter what kind of muck they rake, and how much they lie to their constituents and mislead their fellow americans, that politics can still be done.
Some people dislike having a central thread, but I hate searching through about 20 threads to get links and news and the current debate. Let’s do it here.
Also, if you have any good links to info/the debates… please let me know and I will add them.
I know… but at least the Senate will get to vote on it. I would really rather have the bill come from the house/senate… but it doesn’t look like they are going to/don’t want to reach a consensus. This bill needs to be a vast change and a sweeping change for the better, and a half assed hackneyed bill picked apart by both sides might not be what we need right now.
The Executive branch cannot initiate bills that require funding. All the things that Obama did for the economy from the White House did not require funding. Congress is the only US government body which can allocate money. None of the healthcare initiatives being discussed are free (except for none of the above) so therefore they all must be initiated through Congress.
It’ll be political war like suicide is murder - the Democrats cannot force a bill through reconciliation, first off because they can’t get a lot of the stuff they need that way unless they suspend the rules, and second because if they do something big and aggressive and obviously partisan and this thing doesn’t work exactly right (hint: it won’t - it’ll cost a hell of a lot more money than they allocate to it because that’s just how these things work and even in the best of cases we’re going to have to pay more money in taxes to get more services for more people; I just don’t understand why they don’t own up to it and make an argument that it’s worth higher taxes on the merits) the blowback hits them exclusively. The reconciliation option is just something the shrieking left is hopping up and down over that isn’t really a practical option but it lets them feel like they’ve got big balls when they talk about it, sort of like when neo-cons would talk about invading North Korea or Iran or some other patently insane location.
Honestly, I think we’d be better off if Lindsay Lohan got caught giving a Tijuana donkey show or something and both sides could get some kind of reconciliation behind closed doors and present a compromise. Public plan is probably dead. Co-ops are fifty fifty. Eligibility and coverage reform are a given. Some sort of mandate will show up. Possibly there will be multiple bills (if there’s no public plan and I was a Democrat, I would want that - it means that we can pass “the health care bill” in the future and we haven’t used up our “the health care bill” on a bunch of reforms that aren’t what I really want), but I wouldn’t bet on it. No matter what the program will be under funded because ever since CIA Bush lost his election taxes have been some kind of radical third rail. There will be some improvement but both sides will be disappointed to find that the world neither ends nor does everybody spontaneously become completely healthy and in his second term Obama will end up signing significant tax increases on the upper 5% to try to get back to some kind of balanced budget.
Okay. So if my track record is any indication, given these predictions, tomorrow we will be living in a communist nation.
Civil and to the point. Sounds like it was excellent. As much as people like to think that small farming towns are just a bunch of redneck hicks… it just isn’t true. No bias in the article, and from all I have heard, it was a very civil proceeding.
A reconciliation would be a declaration of political war on moderate democrats. Say goodbye to immigration reform, gay marriage, and pretty much the slew of Obama’s plans. Blaming the GOP for the trainwreck the healthcare reform initiative is becoming is myopic at best. This speech tomorrow is a last-ditch effort to put a positive spin on what will be a (typically Obaman) milquetoast resolution. Beware of setting the goalposts too far back, as it’s clear we’ll be lucky to get a field goal at this point.
NWJ, the Republicans aren’t going to vote for those things anyway, so why not force it? It’s not like they’ve been interested in the slightest in compromise. I say fuck 'em.
And I’m saying the GOP is the least of your problems right now (although they’re making the most noise). There are serious obstacles right now to getting 60 democratic votes on most of the bills floating in the senate. Force them down the moderates’ throats and you’ll have hell to pay for the next two years as the democrats replace their standard ineffectiveness with outright revolt, trying to save as many seats as they can by resisting the “socialist” policies Obama will be proposing.
Despite their howls against Obama, Republicans employed the same procedure to pass major Bush agenda items (which were supported by all four aforementioned Senators):
[INDENT]– The 2001 Bush Tax Cuts [HR 1836, 3/26/01]
– The 2003 Bush Tax Cuts [HR 2, 3/23/03]
– Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005 [HR 4297, 5/11/06]
– The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 [H. Con Res. 95, 12/21/05]
[/INDENT] As ThinkProgress has noted, Gregg defended using the reconciliation procedure to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for domestic drilling in 2005, arguing, “The president asked for it, and we’re trying to do what the president asked for.” Evidently, Gregg has lost the same sense of patriotic duty.
That’s swell, I wonder what it has to do with my post (I don’t wonder that, really). Anyway, if you think moderate democrats aren’t blocking, among other things, a public option, you’re nutso. I agree with leaving the GOP behind, but it’s kind of tough when you’re so used to being there yourself you just can’t help but let it happen again.
The media insists that reconciliation is some terrible end-of-democracy option; they also insist that moderate Democrats are ideologically opposed to the public option and would retaliate by basically siding with the GOP. The first is clearly, easily checked bullshit - what do you think about the second? The moderate Democrats are putting up a fight because they’re in hock to their corporate donors; if you roll over them they’ll pop right back up again, not take their ball and go home.
I don’t care what the media is saying, really. Do you?
I’M saying moderate democrats are scared democrats. And scared democrats like to cave, and cave, and cave. I’m trying to think of when they’ve ever popped back up again.
