That’s a question that’s been posed by commenter Standard Mischief, among others. The answer? Maybe, depending on just how it’s done, but it’s not entirely clear. And the only constitutional way to do it would be a way that doesn’t give the House the political cover it’s looking for. Jack Balkin has the skinny.
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Kevin
tgirsch
Kevin T. Keith
Judd
Naive question:
If the House does this, sends a reconciliation bill to the Senate and the Senate is somehow unable to pass it then can the unvoted on but “deemed passed” unamended Senate bill be signed into law by the president?
Judd:
No, because the “deemed passed” clause is triggered by the Senate passage of the reconciliation bill. No Senate passage of reconciliation = no “deemed passed” of original Senate bill by the House.
.-= tgirsch´s last blog ..Is “Deem-and-Pass” Constitutional? =-.
I don’t believe the Senate votes on the reconciliation bill. I don’t think I have the knowledge to say whether it is constitutional, but I can say that whatever they’re doing, it’s shady, rhetoric will be used by the guys who voted for the various forms of the reform bill to shrug off their responsibility to their constituents, and nothing about the whole process this bill has gone through en route to Obama’s signature makes me believe I should trust that this is somehow “doing the right thing.”
.-= Shoothouse Barbie´s last blog ..Why should I should trust that this is a good idea? =-.
Barbie:
What it boils down to is a lack of trust between House Democrats and Senate Democrats. What the House is saying with this tactic is, “We’ll pass your bill if and only if you also pass these changes via reconciliation.” Their fear (a legitimate one, I’d suggest) is that they pass the Senate bill as-is, the Senate punts on reconciliation, and they’re stuck with a bill they don’t like.
Because the GOP has maintained 100% party discipline and decided to oppose anything and everything the Democrats do, they don’t have any other options. They don’t have the votes to overcome a filibuster, which is inevitable. The GOP has made it abundantly clear that there’s simply no room for bipartisan compromise (unless you think “bipartisan compromise” means “give the GOP everything they want without asking them to sacrifice anything in return”).
So this leaves the Democrats with just two choices: proceed in a filibuster-proof way, or fail completely to pass any sort of health care reform. As politically unappealing as the first choice is, the second choice looks far, far worse to most of them. So that means passing the Senate bill, and fixing some of its more egregious problems via reconciliation. If you can trust the Senate Democrats to actually pass such reconciliation. Clearly, the House Democrats don’t have that level of trust.
As I noted above, by going the “deem-and-pass” route, the House Democrats are attempting to make the passage of the reconciliation fixes a necessary condition for the passage of the main Senate bill.
.-= tgirsch´s last blog ..Is “Deem-and-Pass” Constitutional? =-.
Barbie:
I disagree re: the morality of Senators. The Senate soon-to-be-toast Democrats are, well, soon-to-be-toast and even amongst them there’s not enough to stop a reconcilation bill (and some like Harry Reid are willing to fall on the sword even if it costs them their careers). As you move down the heirarchy of electoral vulnerability from the Reids and the Lincolns and get down to the senators who could potentially face tough challenges in the fall but aren’t in hip-deep shit yet, they’re from California, Wisconsin, New York and Washington. Obamacare isn’t toxic in those places so I’m not so sure they’re filling out their own political death warrants by signing on to a shady bill.
Judd:
At least in the case of Wisconsin’s Senator (Feingold), I’d be surprised if he didn’t support a reconciliation bill. Especially considering that the main thing the reconciliation bill would do is eliminate a bunch of the pork (the “Cornhusker Kickback,” etc.). But Feingold’s pretty popular up in WI. I’d be surprised if he’s actually as vulnerable as some are claiming.
Meanwhile, from a purely political perspective, you have to look at their range of possible options. They’re already voted for the Senate bill, which is going to be hung around their necks no matter what they do from here. How is it to their advantage to leave that bill as is rather than trying to approve it through reconciliation? I don’t get it. If health care is the loser for them that you say it is, then the worst thing they could do is leave things right where they are: they’d have a divisive vote, which their opponents will beat them with mercilessly, and they’ll have no legislative accomplishment to show for it.
It doesn’t appear that the House is going to pass the Senate bill as-is without strong assurances that there will be a rider attached through reconciliation, so from a Senate perspective, “leave the passed bill as-is and drop it” doesn’t seem to be a viable option. And even if it turns out to be, there’s the matter of those kickbacks, so I don’t see how it’s better for them to leave it as-is, even if they could. I’m sure the original plan was to clean a lot of that stuff up in conference, but as noted above with Brown’s win in January, conference was removed from the table, so reconciliation is now the only way forward.
I know it’s your belief that they should change the subject away from health care as quickly as possible, but again, I ask you: to what? And how? Health care is literally their only hope of getting anything done between now and November. If you think they can get anything else meaningful through the Senate, then by all means, I’d love to hear what you think that might be.
.-= tgirsch´s last blog ..Is “Deem-and-Pass” Constitutional? =-.
Hypothetical for Barbie:
Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that you genuinely and truly believed that passing comprehensive health care reform now really is the “right thing to do.” I know that’s completely unrealistic, but work with me for a minute. Given that belief, and given the knowledge that the opposing party has vowed to use every obstructionist tactic available to make sure you don’t pass anything before November, what would you have them do?
.-= tgirsch´s last blog ..Is “Deem-and-Pass” Constitutional? =-.
Seeing as how I’ve only ever flown over the state a couple times far be it from me to question the political inner workings of Wisconsin. I’m just going off the polls I’ve seen on a hypothetical Feingold matchup with Tommy Thompson, as well as a story (at Politico, IIRC) that Thompson was testing the waters. I won’t go so far as to say Feingold would start out behind but I think Thompson would certainly be a formidable challenger.
Correct me if I’m wrong but apart from Brown’s victory I think DeMint objected to the appointment of the conferees and that forced the House into accepting the Senate bill or starting from scratch and it was Brown’s victory that made the latter a near-impossibility.
My position hasn’t changed; the vulnerable Democrats up for re-election this fall should find whomever it was that decided to do health care this year, take them out back behind the Capitol building and beat them with sticks. Really, the current strategy reminds me of the ending of that old classic Simpsons episode where Homer forms the vigilante group to catch the Springfield cat burglar. At the end the captured cat burglar tricks the entire town into going to dig up his career’s worth of loot, thus leaving him time to escape from jail. After finding the end of the wild goose chase they’d been sent on the townspeople begin to dig to find the burglar’s buried treasure. The final shot of the episode has a crowd at the bottom of a 40- or 50- foot deep hole with shovels still in hand. At that point one of them asks “How are we going to get out of here?” to which Homer responds “We’ll dig our way out!” and shoveling recommences. That is the Democrats on health care.
I still draw a distinction between what’s good for the party as a whole and what’s good for individual members. I agree that politically, passage of any bill called “health care reform” is a good thing for the Democrats as a group. It’s horrible for certain members though and 1994 gave at least some indication that it’s very possible for conservative Democrats in Republican districts to survive a tsunami if they’ve not gone along with a liberal agenda but it’s an act of self-immolation to go in lockstep with the administration and against your district. “Something” is NOT better than “nothing” if “something” makes your constituents light their torches and sharpen their pitchforks. “Nothing” is death for the party for not for every member.
Whether or not health care is their last chance to get anything done before November is something I don’t know for sure. If it is though then the rank-and-file need to hold the party leadership to account for making it the case.
Judd keeps talking about Democrats who think it’s best for themselves to vote against what the rest of the Democrats were elected to do. It just makes me wonder why the DNC (or whoever) doesn’t simply say “Okay, so you’re voting Republican? See if you can get reelected as a Republican; have a nice day.” It seems like it would have exactly the same effect on votes, but would allow the Democratic party to afford to run Democratic candidates in the next election.
Judd:
If, in your opinion, the Democrats shouldn’t have taken up health care reform now, then I have two questions for you:
1) When were they ever going to have a better shot at getting it done?
2) What else should they have taken up and made their signature issue instead?
And that leads us to a follow-up to question 2: What makes you think that issue (whatever it is) would have ended up any differently? The GOP would still have played the demagogue-and-obstruct game, and the Democratic leadership would still have done lousy messaging — it’s what they’re terrible at, after all.
As to the individual members for whom health care reform is ostensibly bad, my point has always been this: if HCR is bad for them, then they’re toast no matter what they do. So the political calculus for them holds true even more than for the Democratic party as a whole: their only hope is that health care reform passes, and that provisions of it wind up being popular. If it passes, they’re going to get blamed for it whether they voted for it or not, by simple virtue of the D after their names. And if it fails, the voters in their district who support reform will be apathetic, while the voters who oppose reform will vote for a Republican to prevent even a chance of the issue coming up again. If they’re truly in the no-win scenario that you say they are, then why not vote for what they actually want? Where’s the downside?
In any case, you still haven’t answered the question, which is what the Democrats SHOULD do, that they CAN get done given the current Senate makeup.
I do think I’m picking up on part of our disconnect here. You think the Democrats are in a bad position because they’ve taken up unpopular issues. But that’s not true. The idea of health care reform remains very popular, and most of the provisions of the Senate bill are popular. The Democrats, as always, have simply lost the messaging war. Further, they’re in a bad position not because of their stances on the issues, but because they’re perceived (rightly, in my estimation) as wimps. I mean, look at the two parties. The GOP has held firm, uncompromisingly saying “no” to pretty much everything that has come along. The Democrats have negotiated and compromised at every turn, given away a ton of concessions, and gotten nothing in return, all the while showing no willingness to stand up and fight for, well, everything. They should be demagoguing the holy shit out of this at every turn, and they’re not doing it. So with the two parties, you’ve got a bully and a wimp, and nobody really respects a wimp. There, in a nutshell, is the problem.
The above in short form: the Democrats aren’t losing because health care reform is unpopular. Health care reform is unpopular because the Democrats are losing.
Dan M:
For better or for worse, the Democratic Party has a much higher tolerance for DINOs than the GOP has for RINOs. This gets you seats that you may not otherwise have had, but those seats are (to steal a phrase from Judd) as useless as tits on a boar hog. I mean, what benefit have the Democrats gotten out of letting Lieberman keep his chairmanships, rather than booting his ass out of the caucus?
.-= tgirsch´s last blog ..Is “Deem-and-Pass” Constitutional? =-.
Don’t overanalyze things; half the country feels strongly that competition produces the best products.
Dan:
I think you’re getting at one of the core problems facing the Democrats.
I honestly don’t believe Democrats were elected to reform health care (or whatever other piece of social legislation is up for debate at the moment). Democrats were elected because the economy imploded six weeks before election day and because Bush sucked. They had a mandate to a) fix the economy, and b) not be Republicans. You’re managing the latter well enough but you’ve all but punted on the former. And by ignoring what in poll after poll is held up as the most important issue facing the nation, they themselves dusted off that old meme that Democrats can’t govern and could somehow manage to emerge from two years with nearly 60% majorities in both the House and the Senate plus a popular, charismatic president with nothing to show for it.
T:
I got called away from writing in the middle of my response to Dan so your latest hadn’t popped up when I started in and I think yours will require a longer post. It’s coming but it might take me awhile.
Judd, you talk like health care reform has nothing to do with the economy. Have you been paying any attention at all to one of the major reasons for economic insecurity?
Also, my point is that the Democrats are currently wavering about doing anything about (a) specifically because they by and large have failed to do (b).
Given that belief, and given the knowledge that the opposing party has vowed to use every obstructionist tactic available to make sure you don’t pass anything before November, what would you have them do?
Well, if you truly believe that the more people know about the bill, the more they like it, you could always, you know, let people read the bill, and then wait until there is enough support, and then pass the damn thing. If you really have the support you think you have, passing it just before midterms would be a boon, right? (Ever notice that April 15 is almost exactly 6 months from the November elections, either way around?)
If that’s not the case, you can try to cram it through as fast as possible, with as little transparency as you can get away with, and have the leader in the White House continue to issue “deadlines”, dated from this week, all the way back to last year, in an effort to create a sense of urgency.
If you manage to pass a tax that goes into effect now, and does not deliver anything until after the next Presidential election, you can shore up the deficit spending and maybe eek things out for a few more years.
How far would your own personal domestic agenda go on without exploding if you only took in a third of what you actually spent, and borrowed the rest, and borrowed money to actually service debt that you already took on?
SM:
You really and truly think the way to build broad support for a complex piece of legislation is to let people read it? You really think that the American people would, in large numbers, go read the bill and say “gee, turns out there aren’t any death panels in there,” or that the people who are currently lying about the death panels would have sufficient fear of that outcome to stop lying in that manner?
(Then again, if you’re that hell-bent on reading the Senate bill, what’s stopping you? It’s not that hard to find.)
Dude, most people can’t even be bothered to read Supreme Court decisions before making judgments about how they feel about them — and those are much shorter, generally more down-to-earth in their language, and readily publicly available. Sorry, but while doing that might satisfy a few wonks, it’s going to do next to nothing to move public opinion.
Regarding debt and spending, Greece is trying to do what you say we should be doing. How’s that working out for them? You think HCR is unpopular, try installing some genuine austerity measures right now, and see how public opinion goes.
Dan M:
Judd’s point all along has been that the Democrats never should have brought up health care reform in the first place. He argues that they should have delayed bringing it up until some nameless “later” in the future, a future where the timing was better and they’d have had a better chance to pass it (and where everyone gets a pony, and the Gosselins shut the hell up, and where American politicians actually have honest, good-faith debates about, well, anything… as long as he’s dreaming).
.-= tgirsch´s last blog ..More on the Self-Executing Rule =-.
A couple points of correction:
(1) The consensus – and it stands to reason – appears to be that reconciliation cannot be taken up in the Senate except to correct existing law. Consequently, under the Slaughter Solution, the House would vote on its “fix-it” bill and deem the Senate health care bill passed in the House. The Senate health care bill would then have to be presented to the president and signed into law before the Senate acts on the House’s proposed fix-it bill through reconciliation. In other words, as much as House Democrats want to make their vote on the Senate bill conditional on the Senate adopting the House’s fix-it bill, they simply can’t. Once enacted into law, the Senate Democrats have little incentive to adopt any of the House corrections, aside from maybe the Cornhusker Kickback, because individual Senate Democrats are opposed to many of the likely “fixes”.
(2) By any reasonable reading of Art. I Sec. 7, the “deem and pass” is unconstitutional – regardless of how many times it’s been done in the past and by whom. The simple fact is that Congress is not, in fact, voting on the Senate health care bill. Rather, they are voting on a separate bill.
A general observation:
Too many times, here and in the national debate, one side ascribes good intentions and necessity to its proponents and dismisses its opponents as motivated by bad intentions. Yet there are honest policy differences in this issue and many others facing our country. Neither side is made up of angels, nor of demons.
matt:
On point 1, there’s still disagreement on that. The president must sign the main law first before he can sign the reconciliation act that fixes it, that much is true; and he clearly can’t sign the reconciliation bill without the main bill. But it’s not clear that the main bill must be signed into law before the reconciliation can even be begun.
As for the “deem and pass” strategy, I fail to see how it’s fundamentally different than amending the bill and sending it back to the Senate. In either case, the House is saying “we won’t pass this without these changes.”
As to your general observation, I appreciate it and generally agree with it, but it’s hard to see how anyone can think that the GOP is arguing in good faith here. They’ve openly admitted that they’re willing to do anything they can to kill the bill outright, and that there’s no compromise that would satisfy them. It seems to me that the only choices available to the Democrats right now are “do health care reform without any GOP involvement” and “don’t do health care reform at all.” Do you think that’s an unfair assessment?
.-= tgirsch´s last blog ..More on the Self-Executing Rule =-.
T:
I don’t pretend to know the Senate rules on reconciliation, but at least the Senate parliamentarian has indicated there must be existing law in order to change that law through reconciliation.
“As for the “deem and pass” strategy, I fail to see how it’s fundamentally different than amending the bill and sending it back to the Senate.”
It’s completely different. In the latter case, the House actually amends the bill presented to it, votes on it, and sends it back to the Senate for action. The Senate can either accept the bill as amended by the House and vote to approve it, it can further amend it and send it back to the House for further action, or it can vote against it. (Of course, at any stage it can be sent to a conference committee for the differences to be ironed out and a final bill produced.)
In the former case, the House is attempting to vote only on its amendments without ever voting on the Senate bill.
On your last point, arguing in bad faith means that one is presenting a specious argument that conceals an improper motive. Stating you oppose the bill for reasons x and y and promising to do everything you can to defeat the bill is not bad faith – there simply is no concealed motive and the argument itself is based upon firmly held beliefs. (That doesn’t meant that all of the methods used to oppose the bill are justified or proper.) Bad faith would imply something along the lines of the Republicans actually favoring the reforms but arguing against them as a means of politically defeating the president.
Finally, while I’m dubious of what kind of compromise could currently be reached here, the Republicans have offered a potentially doable compromise: scrap the current bill and work together to enact the individual changes on which there is more likely to be agreement. To borrow a metaphor, most if not all Republicans see the current Democratic health care proposal as a recipe for poop brownies. Unless the Democrats are willing to take the poop out of the recipe, mixing in a little extra sugar in the form of some Republican proposals isn’t going to change the fact that the Republicans still won’t want any poop brownies.
(And this poop brownie metaphor relates to some of the polling results you’ve often cited to suggest Americans are just being misinformed about the Democratic health care proposals and really do favor them. The polls you’re citing reference the apparent (at least on their face) positives of the proposals (no denial of preexisting conditions, etc.); they address just the chocolate and sugar. If polled on other aspects, such as the cost or the individual mandate necessary to address the requirement of coverage of preexisting conditions (the poop, so to speak), Americans would not respond so favorably. In other words, you can like some of the ingredients of poop brownies and really have an aversion to the final product.)
“Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that you genuinely and truly believed that passing comprehensive health care reform now really is the “right thing to do.” I know that’s completely unrealistic, but work with me for a minute. Given that belief, and given the knowledge that the opposing party has vowed to use every obstructionist tactic available to make sure you don’t pass anything before November, what would you have them do?”
T, I understand perfectly well *why* they’re doing it.
But if this bill – not the simply put “comprehensive reform” that you state – but this particular bill really was the right thing to do, wouldn’t it have more support, and wouldn’t the congresscritters then have more “courage” to support it?
I mean, even the Iraq war got more support than this. I know it’s apples to oranges, but the war split the country down the middle, just like this healthcare issue. I’m wary that a bill which has zero bipartisan support is all that they’re saying it is.
I also understand that if they don’t pass this bill now, they wont get another chance at it. My question for you is why do you support ramming this particular bill through right now in light of the fact that even Democrats are shy about supporting it? What evidence have you that this is the right thing to do? It looks to me like they’ve crafted a lousy bill because they simply must get something passed – anything at all – just to say that they did it. So, really, beyond all political gaming (a.k.a. aside from the impact on the democratic party), why do you trust this measure needs to be passed right now for the good of your healthcare?
.-= Shoothouse Barbie´s last blog ..Why should I should trust that this is a good idea? =-.
T:
First off I want to address a comment you made to Dan. Either side should have a varying degree of tolerance for DINOs and DIABLOs (Democrats In All But Label Only, it’s Charles Krauthammer’s term and I LOVE it). Someone like Ben Nelson or Olympia Snowe should be given a pretty wide berth because, from the perspective of the party to which either of those two ostensibly belongs, their state could do much, much worse. People like Lindsey Graham or Joe Lieberman though aren’t nearly living up to the potential of their home state and deserve a quick and unceremonious drop out on their asses.
Now on to your larger point.
Assuming they believe themselves capable of running the government and addressing the nation’s troubles (I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume they do believe that) I think it would have been politically expedient for the Democrats to begin work on health care reform in January of 2011. As I said to Dan, Democrats were elected to fix the economy and not be Republicans. As the compiled poll results linked in my last post indicate, around half the nation believe the economy is the single biggest issue we have to deal with right now. What have you, the Democrats, done to address the people’s #1 concern? Really, all they have to point to is the stimulus package. Now if what I’ve read on this blog is any indication the overall size of the stimulus was too small to do any real good, and too much of it was wasted on frivolous tax cuts that don’t really do much of anything at all to help us escape our current malaise. If you knew the stimulus was a poorly-crafted disaster designed to attract the small amount of Republican support that was necessary for passage at the time then as soon as Senator Smalley was sworn into office and you got your 60th vote you should have done it right. If they’d have expended every bit of the political capital on the bill that fixed the economy and pulled us out of Bush’s mess you’ve have demonstrated your party has the solutions to fix America’s problems and the electorate would follow you anywhere. But you punted on that and instead opted to chase a social agenda full of big programs no one outside the Democrat base really cares about.
Why do I say you should have waited until 2011? Simple: Senate math. The Senate class that’s up in November hasn’t seen a net gain of seats for the Democrats since 1986. 2004 you lost four, and in both 1998 and 1992 it was all even so just that’s at least semi-indicative that there should probably be a couple pickup opportunities. You’ve got a Carnahan running in Missouri against a House Republican leader, someone with a (D) next to their name in New Hampshire, and a Bush budget director to run against in Ohio. The Democrats should have been able to sleepwalk to wins in those races. That would give you 63, plus Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins to work with. Richard Burr is not now nor has he ever been popular, David Vitter’s a hypocritical weirdo and you’ve got at least a few semi-decent candidates in Kentucky so +3 certainly was no ceiling. The deck was stacked in your favor to get a much more liberal Senate after this coming election cycle and at that point ignoring the Republicans and even some of the recalcitrant conservative Democrats would suddenly be an option. That’s when you go for your truly liberal health reform package.
It certainly isn’t without historical precedent. After gaining 100 House seats in the 1932 election and picking off 13 Republican Senators when FDR swept into office, in the 1934 cycle the Democrats gained more House seats and wiped out another nine Republican Senators. We weren’t nearly out of the economic hole by the 1934 midterms but, right or wrong, Roosevelt was at least trying to do something about it. The current leadership? Not so much. I realize the math is different now but the 1934 elections do at least indicate a recovering-but-not-recovered economy can give the majority party a boost.
Seeing as how I’m opposed to most everything he’s doing, I’m fine with having all Barack Obama’s political capital go up in smoke but that doesn’t stop me from stepping back every now and then to marvel at the opportunity he squandered.
T:
“All that said, polls on complicated issues are of limited usefulness, as they assume a level of detailed knowledge that is not safe to assume.”
Agreed, but that cuts both ways.
“And, as I mentioned to Barbie (and as you yourself have argued), right and wrong isn’t a popularity contest.”
Agreed. I think the proper role of an elected representative is to listen to their constituents and then cast their vote on their own best judgment. For those in the Democratic Party who believe greater government involvement in health care is the way to go, then they should vote their conscience rather than the polls. One of the reasons I have respected Sen. Feingold and former Sen. Wellstone is that I felt they truly believed in, stated, and defended their principles. I thought they were [are] often wrong, but they were [are] not shy about stating their positions.
In this case, the president and many of his allies have purposely concealed their principles and intentions in order to appeal to a broader portion of the electorate. The gimmickry of the Senate health care bill in order to game the CBO scoring is just one example among many. The demonizing of the insurance industry, while the White House deals with big PHARMA for their support and ad campaign, is just another.
On poop brownies:
You appear to have missed the point of the metaphor. Simply stated, you have to consider the entire product, not just the individual elements, good and bad. In some cases, as in poop brownies, one bad element is so bad as to render all the good things a bad trade-off. For me, the current Democratic health care proposals are poop brownies. The only way to make it at all palatable is to remove the poop – something the Democrats are not willing to do.
On “deem and pass:
“In both cases, the House is saying ‘we will accept this bill with these changes, but not without these changes.’”
That is not at all the case with the Slaughter Solution. In that case, the House is actually approving the Senate bill without ever voting on it. Once approved in this manner and signed into law by the president, it is the law of the land regardless of what happens to the “fix-it” bill the House sends to the Senate to pass through reconciliation. If the Senate refuses to take action on the fix-it bill, or amends it in some way, the Senate health care bill still remains law, warts and all. Adopting an amendment, on the other hand, changes the underlying bill and it is the amended bill which is passed by the House, sent to the Senate for action, and ultimately presented to the president for signature or veto.
“Honestly, I’d prefer that they go through the normal process and resolve everything through conference. But the GOP has taken that option off the table. Just because the GOP legislators (and, frankly, a fair number of Democrats) have put their own electoral interests ahead of the welfare of their constituents, doesn’t mean I have to think that’s the right thing to do.”
This is precisely the point I addressed above. You choose to assume that the Republican and Democratic members of the House who oppose this bill are simply putting their own electoral interests ahead of the welfare of their constituents. Could it be they have real philosophical disagreement with the proposed reforms? I have no electoral interest, yet I oppose the bill. Am I also somehow arguing in bad faith? Is it bad faith for me to conclude doing nothing is far better than doing what President Obama proposes? To mix metaphors, many of us believe the current Democratic proposals take us farther down the wrong road toward the washed out bridge. We’re proposing turning around and getting back to the right road; the one that will take us over the raging river rather than into it.
“If the Democratic Party has an opportunity to get around GOP obstructionism by using a parliamentary tactic that the GOP has used numerous times in the past, I don’t see why they shouldn’t do so. They’ve had a history of bringing knives to gunfights in the past, and it hasn’t served them well. It’s about time they got tough.”
Are you arguing that wrongful Democratic actions are excused by the past wrongful actions of Republicans? Does the Bush policy of enhanced interrogation justify current use of enhanced interrogation? This is nothing but the argument, “You did it first, so there!”
Finally, the reason there is not some health care reform already enacted into law is because Democrats, with significant and filibuster proof margins in Congress, could not agree on a bill. Thus far, any compromises Democrats have made have been to get Democrats on board.
matt:
On legislators with integrity, I tend to agree: they’re few and far between. That said, politics is an ugly game, and people who play nice rarely get anywhere.
On the poop brownie analogy, I didn’t miss the point, so much as I stated my counter-point poorly. The problem with your analogy is that it assumes people who claim to support or oppose the whole package actually understand what’s in it, and have made a rational decision to oppose or support the measure on its merits. I claim that this is not a safe assumption to make. I also claim that this is more true of the opposition side, as a better understanding of what’s actually in the bill tends to correspond to a higher level of support.
What we need are questions that actually ask about specific combinations. Right now, even the most detailed polls just ask things like “do you support an end to denials of coverage for preexisting conditions,” (most do); and “do you support an end to rescission of coverage,” (most do); and “do you support subsidies to help lower-income families afford coverage,” (most do); and “do you support requiring individuals to have coverage,” (most do not); and “do you support a small tax increase in order to pay for reform,” (roughly even split). They need to take it a step further, and ask “would you support a plan that does those three things you said you like, if it also did the two things you weren’t so hot on?” But somehow, they rarely actually do that.
On those rare cases when they do, the answers often come back surprising. For example, if you ask people if they support a tax cut, they’ll overwhelmingly say yes. Whereas if you ask them if they support a tax cut if cutting taxes means, say, cutting Medicare benefits, or throwing the budget further out of balance, then they’re about 2-to-1 against.
But again, public opinion shouldn’t be our primary driver here. Anybody with a solid understanding of economics knows that prohibiting pre-existing condition denials and rescission without also passing some form of mandate would cause insurance rates to skyrocket, and very likely lead to a death spiral. In other words, passing the popular parts without passing the less-popular or unpopular parts would be disastrous, and likely worse than doing nothing at all.
That is not at all the case with the Slaughter Solution. In that case, the House is actually approving the Senate bill without ever voting on it. Once approved in this manner and signed into law by the president, it is the law of the land regardless of what happens to the “fix-it” bill the House sends to the Senate to pass through reconciliation. If the Senate refuses to take action on the fix-it bill, or amends it in some way, the Senate health care bill still remains law, warts and all.
That’s not how I understand it. The whole point of the self-executing rule, as I understand it, is that it makes the House passage of the original Senate bill contingent upon the Senate’s passage of the fixes. That’s the “self-executing” part: it only executes (passing the Senate bill) when the other criteria (fix bill passes) have been met. My understanding is that if the Senate fails to pass the reconciliation bill, then the original Senate bill is not “deemed” passed by the House, and nothing goes to the president for a signature. Now that I read more about this, I’ve seen conflicting reports of whether that’s possible or whether it can actually work that way, so I’ll freely admit that I could be wrong about that. As I look at various takes, it appears that you may very well be right about that.
All that said, constitutional dubiousness aside, it’s a method that’s been used many, many times in the past, by both parties, so it’s hardly unprecedented, and has never been held to be unconstitutional before. And in any case, the self-executing rule was originally designed “to expedite House action in disposing of Senate amendments to House-passed bills,” which is pretty much what’s going on here (recall that the Senate bill is the result of a series of amendments made by the Senate to the bill that passed the House), plus the addition of further amendments in this case. (The linked PDF lists six previous examples of the use of the self-executing rule, five of them by a GOP-controlled House.)
You choose to assume that the Republican and Democratic members of the House who oppose this bill are simply putting their own electoral interests ahead of the welfare of their constituents. Could it be they have real philosophical disagreement with the proposed reforms?
In some cases, sure. And, in fact, in the case of most GOP members (and a fair number of Blue Dogs), they have a real philosophical disagreement with the very idea of reform; but they know that even among their conservative-leaning constituents, reform of some sort are popular. So they give lip service to reform while opposing any actual reforms that come along. Cynical? Absolutely, but that doesn’t mean it’s inaccurate.
Am I also somehow arguing in bad faith? Is it bad faith for me to conclude doing nothing is far better than doing what President Obama proposes?
Not at all. But then, you’re not pretending to support reform in general. You’re not pretending that there’s some other set of reforms that could be proposed that you would support. You oppose health care reform, period, not just health care reform that happens to have been proposed by Democrats.
Are you arguing that wrongful Democratic actions are excused by the past wrongful actions of Republicans?
Well, first of all, I don’t believe I’ve ever said that I think using a self-executing rule is “wrongful” behavior. That Republicans have used the same strategy in the past says nothing about its rightness or wrongness, but says a lot about there credibility (or lack thereof) when they complain about it now. (And the same criticism goes to Democrats who complained in the past and are now considering using it.) If the rules allow it, and nobody is harmed, I don’t see how it’s “wrong.” Who is harmed in the process?
All I’m saying here is that I expect the Democrats to do whatever they can within their chamber’s rules to get it done. Are there nicer ways of going about it? Sure, but those have been taken off the table. Had the Democrats started off with this proposal, without extending any opportunity for the GOP to join the process, I’d say that’s indeed wrong. But the GOP has had plenty of opportunities to get involved, and they’ve rejected almost every one. The Democrats didn’t start from a “go it alone” position; they came to that position after more than a year of GOP obstruction.
Thus far, any compromises Democrats have made have been to get Democrats on board.
That’s mostly true, actually. A side effect of the Democratic party being much more diverse than the GOP. That said, what was the whole “gang of six” thing about, then?
Judd:
There are two big problems I see with your argument. First, I think you vastly overestimate the Democrats’ chances of picking up seats in the Senate in 2010. Second, and more importantly, you’re still reasoning as if the Democratic party is really just one party, rather than the loose coalition it actually is. Take a survey, from the most liberal Democratic senator to the most conservative Democratic senator. Now do the same thing for the Republicans. The spread is much wider on the Democratic side. As a result, as matt points out, you’ve got a highly dysfunctional beast, even within the one party.
If you can name a GOP senator who’s anywhere near as far left of his party’s center as, say, Kent Conrad is to the right of his party’s senator, that will surprise me.
Now, you could argue that the GOP is made up of two wings, the social-conservative wing and the libertarian wing, but there’s tremendous overlap at least within the party establishment between those wings, and you and I both know that the GOP doesn’t do much other than lip service and the occasional abortion thing to appease the social-conservative wing.
As to the stimulus, I’ve repeatedly argued that it was too small and that too much money was sent to non-stimulative things like tax cuts, but I’ve never argued that it didn’t do any good. Quite the contrary, actually. What I have argued is that it could have done a whole lot more good if it had been bigger and more wisely directed. But what we got was all that was politically possible at the time, and it was, in fact, considerably better than nothing, as multiple independent analyses have concluded.
On the whole, I do understand that you oppose the Democrats’ domestic agenda. (Of course you do! [cheap shot] You’re a libertarian, so you view Haiti’s earthquake readiness as a model of how we should do things here. [/cheap shot]) But with that stipulation aside, I don’t see where you say what, specifically, the Democrats should have done differently in order to improve the economy, or how you think that was actually politically possible or would have ended differently.
T:
“But then, you’re not pretending to support reform in general. You’re not pretending that there’s some other set of reforms that could be proposed that you would support. You oppose health care reform, period, not just health care reform that happens to have been proposed by Democrats.”
That’s not the case at all. I’ve consistently argued for reforms that limit the role of the third-party payer and increase real market competition: e.g. identical tax treatment of individual and employer plans; elimination of the barriers to purchasing insurance across state lines; eliminating community rating and guaranteed issue (at the state level); and making Health Savings Accounts (HSA) more accessible). I would also favor some types of tort reform at the state level, but believe tort reform likely would have a limited impact on costs.
Look, we can argue until we’re blue in the face as to whether Democrats truly ever welcomed Republican input into the process. You cite the Senate six person working group as evidence of seeking compromise, while my take on that is that it was evidence of seeking political cover. The fact is, Democrats thought they were arguing from a position of strength (both houses of Congress, a Democratic president, and a filibuster proof majority in the Senate) and didn’t see any reason to entertain anything but cosmetic changes to their overall plan. That may have been reasonable enough, but it ultimately proved to be imprudent when the electorate rebelled, town hall meetings got hot, and reliably blue Massachusetts sent a Republican to the Senate who vowed to be the 41st vote against the Democrat’s health care reform proposal.
“A side effect of the Democratic party being much more diverse than the GOP.”
What is your evidence of this? This doesn’t advance the debate and again just assumes the opposing side is somehow illegitimate.
matt:
Fair enough. Some of the disconnect is probably rooted in our incompatible ideas of what constitutes “reform.” With the exception of the HSA expansion (which I could actually join you in supporting), you’re mostly arguing for deregulation. I guess we could try that. After all, it worked so well for banking and finance!
And that’s the larger problem here: Democrats and Republicans have fundamentally different ideas concerning how to address health care reform. Democrats have the majority in both chambers, which means that the GOP had two choices: either try to make adjustments to Democratic policies to make them more palatable to conservatives, or oppose at all costs. We know what they’ve chosen. Let’s neither one of us pretend that anything else is actually going on here — it’s beneath us both.
What is your evidence of [the Democratic party being more diverse than the GOP]?
Channeling Barney Frank for a moment, I’ll answer your question with a question. Which two GOP Senators are as ideologically as far apart as say, Sheldon Whitehouse and Kent Conrad? Or Sherrod Brown and Evan Bayh? According to the National Journal’s Rankings (which were touted as gospel by conservatives and libertarians back when they ranked Obama “most liberal”), on a scale from 1 to 100, with 1 being perfectly conservative and 100 being perfectly liberal,
the spread from one extreme to the other of the Republican party was from 1 (Enzi) to 42 (Snowe), a 41 point spread. On the Democratic side, it’s 39 (Bayh) to 94 (5 tied). There are eight Democratic Senators on the “conservative” side of 50 (plus one more right at 50), and zero Republicans on the liberal side of 50 (or, indeed, even within 7 points of 50). That’s certainly evidence that there’s a much wider spread on the Democratic side than there is on the GOP side.[NOTE: I read the chart incorrectly, and am presently formulating a correct response.]
Now some of this is a side effect of the fact that the GOP has spent the last few election cycles chasing the moderates out of the party, and I’m afraid the Democrats will soon start doing the same thing (as if we’re not yet polarized enough). But any way you slice it, I think it’s clear that there’s a lot more diversity of view on the D side than on the R side, coupled with much less party discipline.
Dingy Harry has a couple ethics issues dogging him but outside of that there isn’t anyone on the Democrat side who’s got any striking negatives. Blanche Lincoln survived easily in 2004 even with Bush’s coattails dragging her opponent. Dorgan and Bayh would probably be running for reelection if things hadn’t gotten ugly for your party. I strongly suspect Mike Castle would be running for re-election to the House and Beau Biden would have gone after his dad’s old seat if things hadn’t gotten so ugly for the Democrats. Ditto Mark Kirk. And even with a strong wind at the Republican’s backs Roy Blunt and Bob Portman aren’t way ahead. Why do you think picking up seats would have been tough this go around?
I acknowledge the gap between Jim DeMint and Olympia Snowe is narrower than the one between Ben Nelson and Stewart Smalley but that’s what the expanded majority is for and why I think it’s better to wait until 2011. If you just picked off Ohio, New Hampshire and Missouri you’ve got 63 seats so you can tell Ben Nelson, Kent Conrad and Joe Lieberman all to go fuck themselves and pass whatever you like.
Part of the reason for your intraparty ideological gap is there are 19 Democrat senators (Begich, Lincoln, Pryor, Nelson, other Nelson, Bayh, Landreiu, McCaskill, Baucus, Tester, Hagan, Dorgan, Conrad, Brown, Johnson, Webb, Warner, Rockefeller and Byrd) representing states Cook rates as Republican but only six Republican senators (Snowe, Collins, Brown, Grassley, Ensign and Gregg) from blue states. If you’d like to swap and get a more homogeneous party I’m sure the GOP would be all for it.
My argument on the stimulus still stands. Yes you got the biggest thing you could in February because at that time you held 58 seats in the Senate. When Specter switched parties and Smalley assumed office that dynamic changed and the most that was possible in February was not the most that was possible in July. If the Democrats had been serious about a Keynesian-style plan of the appropriate scale to address our economic woes then they should have gone for it last summer with a second bill when their power was at its peak.
matt:
Trying again with correct numbers:
According to the National Journal’s Rankings (which were touted as gospel by conservatives and libertarians back when they ranked Obama “most liberal”), the most conservative Senator (Inhofe) is 95.8% conservative; the least conservative (Snowe) is 58.8% conservative, a 39.7 point spread. On the Democratic side, 5 are tied with the most liberal ranking, 88% liberal, while the least liberal Senator (Bayh) is just 40.7% liberal, a 47.3 point spread. To put it another way, the most conservative Democrat is more conservative than the least conservative Republican. There are five Democratic Senators on the “conservative” side of 50 (more conservative than liberal), and zero Republicans on the “liberal” side.
In the House the differences are even more stark. The spread among Republicans is 36.2 points, while it’s 57.7 points among Democrats.
Anyway you slice it, there’s a lot more diversity of position/opinion among Democrats than their is among Republicans. When trying to build a coalition that maintains party unity, the Democrats have a much tougher task.
T:
Knock yourself out on the chart of the National Journal’s rankings but there’s little you could say to make me take seriously those rankings which must of necessity be based upon subjective definitions of “conservative” and “liberal” and subjective measurements of the degree to which someone matches those definitions. In short, I don’t see the usefulness of such an exercise.
As far as deregulation vs. regulation, I might just as easily say, “you’re mostly arguing for regulation. I guess we could try that. After all, it worked so well for banking and finance!”
matt:
Sure, you COULD say that, but I can point to regulations that were repealed in the 1980s and 1990s that would have lessened the blow of the housing bubble. I don’t think you can point to any government regulations that actually worsened it. (Pardon me while I preemptively laugh my ass off in case you suggest the CRA. Even the much maligned Fannie and Freddie turn out to have a much lower rate of default than their less-well-regulated counterparts.)
In other words, unlike you, I can back up that argument.
Judd:
If you just picked off Ohio, New Hampshire and Missouri you’ve got 63 seats so you can tell Ben Nelson, Kent Conrad and Joe Lieberman all to go fuck themselves and pass whatever you like.
If we “just” picked off those three seats without losing any other seats. That means successfully defending 18 seats and picking up three more. Treating that as anything close to a given would, in my estimation, be folly.
I simply don’t believe the Democrats could have done anything to make enough of a difference in the economy to count on that kind of November performance. The GOP would still be harping on the (inevitably even larger) deficit, and the Democrats could very well be victims of their own success — making the unrealistic assumption that their more robust economic recovery package would have taken unemployment back down into the 6-7% range, the GOP would argue that the downturn lasted less than a year, and that the economy would have recovered anyway. And enough of the electorate is dumb enough to believe that.
The advantage FDR had was timing. Things had been so bad for so long, the full scope of the downturn had been abundantly clear for quite some time, and things were finally starting to trend upward almost from the moment he walked (wheeled?) in through the door. Obama had no such advantages. The economic shit didn’t really hit the fan until barely a month before his election.
And I’ll pass on your swap, thanks.
You’re right that there are more Republican states than Democratic states. With the exception of Texas, they also happen to be states that don’t have any people in them. Which is why the Senate is a curse to anyone who wants to get anything important done, and a blessing to those who oppose progress. 
Judd:
I would argue that the mistake the Democrats actually made was believing they actually had a majority in the Senate (never mind a super-majority). That majority was always an illusion.
Do you really and truly think the way for congress to solve problems the right way is solely by complex pieces of legislation that no one can read, that you need two lawyers to decode, and that we can’t honestly verify haven’t changes as they pass through the layers of protocol on their way to the President? (because, remember, their creators used computers to aid them in drafting these instruments, but they do their very damndest to deny me the right to use computers to analyse their standard mischief)
It seems like I make this point on every single thread. You know, it’s not like the President didn’t campaign on Hope, Change and Transparency.
Clearly, with the “empty gestures” President, there’s no hope he’ll change on his current practice about being dishonest about transparency.
SM:
I really and truly think that complex problems cannot be effectively solved using language that’s both brief and written in language that’s easily understandable by the typical person. If they could, then there would be no need for representative government, and we could do everything by direct democracy. The devil, as they say, is in the details, and the details get very complex and very legalistic very quickly. Even more so as the issues in question become more complex.
As for transparency, sure, the current administration leaves a lot to be desired, but they’re a hell of a lot better than the one that came before them. And anyway, how much more transparency do you want? It’s not like the latest version of the bill has been out there for people to read if they want to since fucking December or anything; oh, wait.
If making a PDF available for public download constitutes “do[ing] their very damnedest” to prevent you from analyzing it, then I’m not sure what could ever satisfy you.
matt:
I’ve done more reading on the self-executing rule, and my understanding was incorrect. Your representation is correct: In passing the two-for-one vote via the self-executing rule, the House does, in fact, pass the Senate bill as-is, along with the reconciliation package. If the Senate declines to take up the reconciliation package or fails to pass it, the main Senate bill is still passed.
Mea culpa. That also means that this is, in fact, more about political cover than about a “you go first” strategy, as I had incorrectly surmised. So double mea culpa.
I was also reading elsewhere that should the House choose to do it as a separate vote and pass the Senate bill by itself, the Speaker could, at her prerogative, delay sending the passed bill to the president for a signature. Basically, even though it would have passed both chambers, she could hold the bill hostage for an extended period of time, and NOT send it to the president until after the Senate acts on reconciliation. I doubt she’d do it (and I don’t think she’ll have the votes without the political cover of the self-executing rule), but the option is apparently there.
TG, re transparency:
Actually, svn or darcs server of .tex files would be just about infinitely better than publishing individual pdf’s. In fact, if it was a git repro that was served, you’d also get sha1′s of all commits.
And yes, I also want a pony.
… Okay, for those who aren’t computer weenies, let me translate that.
Rather than rarely publishing rendered text is a file format that’s difficult to compare different versions of, it would be better to use open standards to publish not only individual files, but how those files change over time, in a widely-used format that makes looking at differences easy. Some systems for such things also allow strong crypto signatures on each version.
There are good technical solutions that would address this problem, and as much as I think SM is missing your point, it would be a huge improvement to actually make this available to the technically competent. I have a suspicion that politicians are opposed to that level of real transparency, but I also can’t rule out the possibility than not a single one of them knows how to attach a secure-but-public time machine to their series of toobs.
T:
Kudos on the mea culpa. I owe you at least a tentative one as well on the subsidy issue on the other thread – you made some good points there. I’ll try and get to that one but this current thread has occupied my time. Briefly though, I do not now, nor do I recall ever having in the past, supported vouchers (at least in their commonly understood form).
I also read about Pelosi’s thought of holding the bill hostage until the Senate acted on reconciliation. That plan apparently evaporated when the Senate parliamentarian indicated the bill would have to be law before reconciliation action occurred.
matt:
Not sure just how much this will reassure you, but from what I’ve been reading, in order for the “fix” package to qualify for the reconciliation process, the CBO must judge not only that it reduce the deficit over the next 10 years, but also over the ten years after that. And it must do so as compared to if the unaltered legislation went into effect alone (i.e., not as compared to now). So unless the CBO says the reconciliation package will improve the budget outlook over the next two decades over the existing bill, reconciliation cannot be used.
T:
Then we’re at the root of our disagreement as to whether or not health care was a good idea to tackle in this Congressional term and that difference appears to be irreconcilable. I’ll throw it on the pile with the others.
The Senate’s not totally the curse you make it out to be. Cook counts 27 red states and 23 blue ones and folks do love it when Big Government empties its pockets into their back yard and there’s no better way to make sure that happens than to send a Democrat to DC to represent you (see: Byrd, Robert).
I do actually agree with you as to what the mood of the public would be if a second, larger stimulus package had been enacted but my agreement comes from that fact I think Keynesian economic policies are stupid and doomed to failure.
If those policies were capable of a quick turnaround then the problem solves itself and if not, hey, [snark]there are people working in Washington right now who managed to convince 53% of the American people that Barack Obama was qualified to be President of the United States. You give enough time to bullshitters of that caliber and by this November you could have probably convinced a majority that 500,000,000 Americans would be losing their jobs every month if not for the Democratic Party.[/snark]
Defending 18 incumbents while gaining seats has been done in the past. The most recent example would be 2006 when the Democrats defended all 18 seats they held (counting the Independents who would caucus with the Dems) and gained six. All six were races where incumbents were defeated, too, as opposed to the three open seats I suggested the Democrats might have been able to pick up this year. Though in fairness, the Dems did have a lot of help from the White House to make the gains they did. And the word “macaca”, whatever that means.
Re: Defending 18 seats and picking up three more, I’m not saying it couldn’t be done, I’m saying that it’s folly to count on it.
As to the bullshitters who convinced the American public, all they really convinced them of was that Obama was better suited for the job than his opponents, and the person who did more to advance that notion than anyone else was, in fact, his opponent.
Besides, compared to the White House’s previous occupant, Obama sure looks qualified, even today.
On pork, you’re right that Byrd’s #1, but 2-5 are all Republicans (six of the top ten). Richard Shelby is chewing on Byrd’s heels, not at all far behind him. So I don’t think it’s fair to say that Democrats are any better at it than Republicans.
As to your opinion of Keynesian economic policies, you can take pride in knowing that your views are shared by lots and lots of people who took Economics 101 and then stopped, feeling that they’d learned everything they needed to know about economics. :p Snark aside, I have some standing questions about how exactly we SHOULD be recovering the economy and how that’s supposed to work (most of them addressed to Matt rather than to you) if you’d care to take a stab at them.
The MSM I listen to on the AM drive admits that the current House mischief might be finalized today (for a vote this weekend). I keep saying that they need to fix Thomas.gov before they need to fix healthcare. If they somehow make it available today, and as plain text instead of something I’ll need to OCR, I will be impressed. That just does happen. Ever.
As for deliberate obfuscation, here’s a small segment of a bill I’ve decoded for the state of Virginia:
Sweet. The 1990 census was not online, because the 2000 one was. I had to travel to the library and find every city that fit the above mention, and then google up the two in the whole state that matched to find out specifically which flea market was being protected from the heavy handed regulation.
from a few threads back (Quote of the Day, 2010-02-24 – might have slipped down the memory hole with the move, I found it in google cache) :
T:
“I have some standing questions about how exactly we SHOULD be recovering the economy and how that’s supposed to work (most of them addressed to Matt rather than to you) if you’d care to take a stab at them.”
I assume you’re referring to the discussion here: http://leanleft.com/2010/03/05/thanks-obama/#comments. I responded some time ago and gave you the last word. You haven’t yet responded – likely because of all the action on these more recent threads and the changeover to WordPress.
Regarding debt and spending, Greece is trying to do what you say we should be doing. How’s that working out for them?
What exactly are you talking about here? As I recall, Greece hid a lot of it’s debt with “off balance sheet instruments” to make themselves look less debt ridden than they actually were so they could join the EU.
So what is Greece trying to do that I said that we should be doing?
SM:
The reconciliation package hasn’t been put up yet because it’s still being worked out. Pelosi has vowed to have it on-line for 72 hours before a vote, but even I’ll be surprised if she keeps that full window, given the delays in CBO scoring.
matt:
When I referred to them as open questions, I didn’t mean to imply that you hadn’t answered them (and you’re right, I haven’t gotten to your responses yet). What I meant is that they’re questions I have open to anyone who wants to take a crack at answering why, for example, any business in its right mind would expand production when nobody’s even buying what it has already produced.
SM, you don’t need to fucking OCR PDF! Good grief!
Random musing:
Does anyone wonder what the Senate thinks of the House ripping their bill to shreds? Are they willing to just bend over, grab the ankles and say “Drill, baby, drill!” when/if something arrives from the House with a command to “Reconcile this!”?
SM, you don’t need to fucking OCR PDF! Good grief!
fail!
That depends entirely on how the PDF was created. I’ve scanned in enough crappy faded hardcopy to know what the hell I’m talking about.
(people also frequently fail at <a href="http://hackaday.com/2009/02/12/pdf-redaction-still-not-working/"PDF redaction!)
Well, of course PDF can contain images instead of text, but you were talking about publishing the bill online. It would require active malice, technical competence and effort, and some completely stupid misguided priorities for Congress to produced a text-less PDF.
I’m sorry for having misread your comment the first time to mean that you thought you’d always need to OCR something published as PDF; rereading it I see you were just being snide.
Dan:
Are you suggesting Congress is above active malice, technical incompetence and stupid, misguided priorities?
No, you missed an important syllable. You need competence to turn a text PDF into an image one. I’m suggesting that when Congress is actually trying to get something done (maliciously), they’re pretty good at the malice part (and would get their priorities right) and pretty bad at the technical part.
Judd:
Given that the House reconciliation bill is the result of long hours of negotiations with Senate leaders (and the parliamentarian), that doesn’t seem likely to me. It may not survive completely unscathed, but I don’t think it will go through any major changes. The parliamentarian’s ruling has tied their hands in a lot of ways anyway.
I’m holding out for some last second heel-dragging, then an assload of court work. I see now though that Krauthammer’s resigned himself to passage and when he starts making public statements like that it’s not looking good.
I, however, am a positive person and I refuse to let this get me down. Yes it’s bad right now but whenever the GOP reassumes the reigns of power they’ve got a brand-spanking-new limited-accountability way to privatize Social Security! So maybe what I’ll lose paying for my own health expenses after Obamacare finds a way to make our current health care delivery system even worse will be balanced out by an actual meaningful return on my FICA taxes.
I’m sure the opponents of Medicare felt the same way. Once Nixon swept into office….
Sorry for the late response but I wanted to make sure I had my facts straight so I didn’t stick my foot in my mouth.
Your comparison isn’t valid.
Medicare was popular from the beginning and enjoyed significant bipartisan support.
Medicare passed the House on a 307-116 vote and the Senate on a 70-24 vote. In the House the Democrats went for it 237-48 AND the Republicans went for it 70-68. In the Senate the Democrats went for it 57-7 and while a majority of Republicans opposed it was still about even with 13 in favor and 17 against. Contrast that with Obamacare where every Republican is opposed as well as a not-insignificant number of Democrats.
The idea that the prototypical big government conservative president (Nixon) didn’t work against a popular measure with significant bipartisan support and so that means that in the future a (hopefully) pro-limited government president won’t take steps to repeal an unpopular piece of legislation passed his party stood in unanimous opposition to is, in my mind, quite a leap of logic.
They may not have to wait that long.
Are you sure a majority of the Supreme Court wouldn’t rule a federal individual mandate unconstitutional? (I would hope that decision would be unanimous but there are a couple fruitcakes up there.)
If the individual mandate doesn’t hold up, it’s easy enough to come up with an alternative that does: an across-the-board tax hike, coupled with tax credits for people who buy insurance. The tax code has plenty of both.
But I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if this court ruled that the National Park Service was unconstitutional and turned Yellowstone over to private developers. So you never know. Anything they can do to screw the little guy and consolidate more power in the hands of the wealthy, they’ll gladly do, it seems.
That will take years though. With what it has taken to put together the current mess you think there will be the political will to use a fix like that? In the mean time we’ll have a shrunken risk pool and higher insurance costs. It unravels quickly from there.
IIRC, the fact the big parts of the current reform package (mandate, Stupidest Idea In The History of Congress [the pre-existing condition thing], subsidies) all need to be in place together for the plan to work is why Krugman said it was a bad idea to break the bill up into smaller pieces and force the Republicans to vote against individual things that are popular with people who haven’t thought deeply enough about the issue.