No kidding. You can afford to be all lovey-dovey and bipartisan once you’ve won and shown that you’ll act with or without the Republicans if they negotiate in bad faith. Once you’ve stomped on them a few times by passing legislation they hate, you earn their respect. Hell, that’s what they do.
Athryn
1842
I dunno if it’s been brought up in the thread before, but I got a thing in the mail from Kaiser about health insurance. While I was reading through it, I noticed that they charge almost twice as much for covering a woman as they do a man. That seems … a little wrong to me.
jeffd
1843
Once again, a good Ezra Klein post. This is about how Democrats screwed up the process of HCR, rather than the politics or the policy itself.
So, this Health Care thing… anything happening?
Which is for the best, now they can start over and come up with a plan that wont make things worse and might actually do something about the real problem, the cost of health care.
Flowers
1847
Goddamnit you fucking son of a bitch you’re more than half right.
Nope. Not going to happen. The GOP have successfully poisoned the well to the point that even mentioning healthcare reform is going to be met with massive backlash for either side. Nice going.
jeffd
1849
It’s not dead, but it’s on life support. Apparently there’s behind the scenes negotiations happening between the House and Senate regarding the so-called sidecar option.
Basically the “sidecar” process looks like this:
- House and Senate agree on a set of amendments to the Senate HCR bill.
- Senate passes the amendments via reconciliation (which is not subject to a filibuster, thus evading GOP obstruction).
- Once the Senate does this, the House passes both the Senate bill and its own version of the sidecar. The House will not act until the Senate does; Democrats in the House feel (somewhat rightfully) that they’ve been rolled the whole way; they’re not sticking their necks out any further until the Senate gets its shit together.
- President signs the HCR bill, then the sidecar amendment bill.
Right now the problem is that a lot of Democrats in the Senate are spooked, and others have bizarre objections to using reconciliation. Reid is trying to whip votes to get to 50 (which gets him the win).
10 people are stopping the process to give 30 million health care. Jesus Christ.
jeffd
1851
That’s the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body™ for you!
Well, they’d better get it done, because if they have nothing to point to in November it’s going to be 1994 all over again and progress on anything will be dead for another decade or more.
jeffd
1853
Yeah right now the problem is that the House doesn’t trust the Senate enough to pass the bill and wait for the sidecar, and the Senate is shitty.
If they try and push it through with reconciliation they will get destroyed in November. And I dont buy that nothing can get done on health care for a decade, there are things both sides agree on that can be done, they should concentrate on those things now.
Sez you, Brett. If that’s the case, you should be jumping for joy at the prospect of another “Republican Revolution” and hoping the Dems do have the cojones* to get it done and damn the torpedoes, Republican-style. Passing HCR is their only hope of NOT getting destroyed.
*to everyone: PLEASE note the spelling. If I see it misspelled “cajones” (which means “crates” or “big boxes” BTW) one more time I’m going to have a conniption.
jeffd
1857
I wish people wouldn’t reply to Brettmcd. I hate being reminded of how clueless he is.
Pogo
1858
Bullshit. Glenn Beck, whose nuts rest so often on your chin that your lower lip has rugburn, has pretty much mobilized your base to the point where any mention of the term is analogous to socialism.
Fuck you, motherfucker.
JeffL
1859
But who cares??? They have no power, only the power the Democrats give them. Again - this is 100% in the Democrats court. 100%. They can pass the HCR if they want to. Or they can use all kinds of excuses to not pass it. Now we get to see what the Democrats really stand for.
Reconciliation isn’t on the table, it’s for matters relating to budgets that are passed in October, not for broad-based mandates. This bill just isn’t that popular, or well crafted for that matter. Dare I say it, but the Dems might have trouble getting 51 Senate votes at this point. It has enough negative sentiment with the majority of folks (along with the Presidents approval rating and congress) don’t want this passed.
