Cartoon from Walt Handelsman at Newsday (reg. required for some pages).
No one can predict how today will go, there is some hope that since the Senate likes to appear to be the royalty of the Congress, we might avoid some of the circus antics that Saturday in the House brought. It's unlikely anyone will use procedural objections over and over to silence Barbara Boxer or Olympia Snowe.
It's an open thread for what you're seeing in, and thinking about, today's procedures.
Joementum 2012?
Is he the greatest senator ever? He fought for victory in Iraq, he's fighting for victory in Afghanistan, and he's fighting to save us all from Obamacare. Who needs Olympia Snowe when you've got Joementum?
Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Democrat-turned-independent from Connecticut, said Tuesday that he will not vote for a healthcare reform bill that includes a government-run insurance plan.
This means that as things now stand, Democrats will not have enough votes to pass healthcare reform with a so-called public option unless Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) can pick up unexpected GOP votes.
Sen. Olympia Snowe (Maine), the only Republican to vote for the Senate Finance Committee’s healthcare bill, said Tueday that she would vote against bringing up a bill that included a government-run insurance program unless the implementation of such a program were set to a trigger.
Lieberman said he would vote with Reid and other Democrats on a motion to begin debate on a healthcare bill because he believes it is an important issue that needs to be considered. But he said he would not lend his support to an effort to cut off debate on a bill including a government-run insurance program.
Lieberman said he told Reid of his position in a recent conversation and that the leader “respected and understood.”
“We’re trying to do too much at once,” said Lieberman. “To put this government-created, government-run insurance company on top of everything else is just asking for trouble for the taxpayer, for the premium payer and for the national debt. I don’t think we need it now.”
Lieberman said he was not placated by allowing states to opt out of the public option “because it still creates a whole new federal government entitlement program, for which taxpayers will eventually be on the line.”
The motion to begin debate and the motion to move to a final vote are two actions that would require 60 votes and are considered the highest hurdles to passing a reform bill through the Senate.
Can we strip this traitor of his chairmanships already? I have several choice descriptors for Lieberman, but party/caucus loyalist is not one of them. Mr. Gang of 14/Up or Down Vote is more interested in letting insurance companies make a profit off you than helping Americans. He's afraid of doing "too much."
Too late. He already has done too much. Too much to ever be allowed to caucus with the Democrats again.
In other words, the White House wants the plan that won't work, so they can claim it's a bipartisan plan. Or is it that the administration wants a plan that won't really work, and they're using bipartisanship as a cover? Just asking the obvious question, here:
Multiple sources tell TPMDC that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is very close to rounding up 60 members in support of a public option with an opt out clause, and are continuing to push skeptical members. But they also say that the White House is pushing back against the idea, in a bid to retain the support of Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME).
"They're skeptical of opt out and are generally deferential to the Snowe strategy that involves the trigger," said one source close to negotiations between the Senate and the White House. "They're certainly not calming moderate's concerns on opt-out."
This new development, which casts the White House as an opponent of all but the most watered down form of public option, is likely to yield backlash from progressives, especially those in the House who have been pushing for a more maximal version of reform.
It also suggests for perhaps the first time that the White House's supposed hands off approach that ostensibly allowed the two chambers in Congress to craft their own bill has been discarded.
High level White House officials have floated the trigger idea a number of times, and it seems they continue to do so, even at this, crucial stage of the health care reform process, when their involvement is greatest. That has senators who support the public option concerned.
The Villagers always love to attack us liberal bloggers and leave conservative bloggers alone. I know in their hearts they can't stand the dirty hippies that we are, but then I read this post by my pal John Cole and I realized something:
The moment I heard Snowe was going to vote for the bill, I began furiously refreshing Red State for the reaction. Finally, they deliver:
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That is right, folks. To show unhappy they are, they are going to ask you to buy rock salt through their amazon store and mail it to Olympia Snowe. They don’t call them the Red State Strike Farce for nothing.
Seriously, how do I make a joke about this?
(You have to check out the screen grab Cole has. It is "the joke," Mr. Cole.)
They are too stupid to be taken seriously even by the John Harwoods of the pundit class so I know why they do it. Because we do have political influence and it bothers the Beltway media elites profoundly. I'd say we're doing our job. Now pack up your rock salt and get to UPS.
Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) was the lone Republican to support the package. "My vote today is my vote today. It doesn't forecast what my vote will be tomorrow," she said, although her vote does keep her at the negotiating table and at the center of the health care reform debate. Snowe risked marginalizing herself with a no vote.
The year after both Truman and Clinton's failed efforts, the Republican Party retook control of Congress and any hope of reform faded to minority status. President Obama intends to avoid the same fate.
With the bill having officially moved through the panel, deliberations will migrate to the Capitol, where Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will huddle with Senate leaders to merge the finance bill with a more generous version from the health committee which passed earlier this year.
There are more votes to come in the Senate, so this thing is far from over.
From The Hill, "Sens: Snowe may be risking a high perch on healthcare reform vote":
Sen. Olympia Snowe (Maine) is risking a shot at becoming the top Republican on an influential Senate committee by backing Democratic healthcare legislation, according to senators on the panel.
..."A vote for healthcare would be something that would weigh on our minds when it came time to vote," said a Republican on Commerce, who said Snowe would otherwise be assured of the ranking member post if not for the healthcare debate.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Sunday he's still trying to keep Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman within the Democratic caucus despite anger over Lieberman's support of Republican presidential nominee John McCain.
While he has opposed Democratic efforts to end the war in Iraq, "Joe Lieberman votes with me a lot more than a lot of my senators," Reid told CNN's "Late Edition."
Sen. Joseph Lieberman affirmed on Tuesday what progressive health care reform advocates have long feared: At this juncture, he is likely to oppose a public option for health insurance coverage.
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For Democrats, it was a shot to the gut -- the latest so-called centrist lawmaker from within their own party ranks speaking out against one of their most cherished aspects of health care reform. For all the angst Lieberman has caused within Democratic circles the past few years, he was supposed to be an ally on domestic issues.
The response from Reid’s No. 2, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.): "We’ve never done that. We’re not going to do that."
Durbin said the petitioners needed to "count to 60 and understand we need to be together, and there are times when we need to work out our differences."
"This is a silly and unnecessary distraction that is not going to happen — period," added a Senate Democratic leadership aide. "Given how important this is to the rest of his agenda, it is up to President Obama to help the leadership to hold the caucus together."
The GOP threatens Snowe and the Dems do nothing to the appeasers of the obstructionist right. It's infuriating.
It's all about that up-or-down vote, and it's something we need to push hard on, as Digby says:
Anyway, those last comments probably tell us where the filibuster issue is, in my opinion. The leadership aide says that Obama needs to step up to twist those arms, which one assumes from the comment, he is not doing. And Dick Durbin, who is Obama's staunchest supporter in the Senate, is basically saying that nobody's going to play hardball. So, there you have it. At least for today.
As I've been writing for a while, it's all about cloture. There's no need for them to vote for the final bill, they just need to allow their president and the people of the United States to have a simple up or down vote on health care reform. And there is a cluster of egos in the centrist caucus (not the least of whom is Holy Joe) that is getting ready to stamp their little feet and hold their breath until they turn blue unless someone, goddamn it, finally understands that they are the most important people in the world.
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R.E.M. Live At The Olympia is a double CD and DVD packed with 39 songs from their "rehearsal shows" in Dublin from 2007, where they played to smaller crowds over five nights at the Olympia Theatre.
The band used these shows to test-drive material from the album Accelerate before recording it and to treat fans to classics from all stages of their formidable career. They graciously offered C&L the chance to premiere one of the clips, and we happily accepted.
The set comes out on October 27th. It's pretty obvious from this clip that they still pack the vitriol and passion that most bands that have been cranking for 29 years have lost long ago.
(BTW, R.E.M. is the first concert I ever went to -- my Dad took me to see them at the Felt Forum in New York City for my 7th birthday (I thought I was older until I Googled the show). Legendary indie-rockers The Feelies opened, so technically they're the first live band I ever saw, but my only memory is of R.E.M. playing "Superman" and "Fall on Me", and being generally mesmerized by live rock music for the first time.)
Like a lot of people, I get a certain amount of ‘junk mail’ in my email inbox, some of it wanted, like the various eclectic, innocuous but interesting things such as A Word A Day and The New Zealand Week and my second favourite aviation newsletter, AVWeb. I even – god help me – knowingly subscribe to a few of the more rabid rightwing websites just to keep myself informed about whatever the other side is foaming at the mouth over today. (Think I’ll just mention them in passing without giving any the benefit of a link, however). Sometimes I sign an on-line petition or make a donation and inevitably end up with endless newsletters soliciting more money and more signatures from me, like from BoldProgressive.org – which the other day sent me yet another plea, this time to help defeat Republican Olympia Snowe who opposes the public health insurance option.
So over my morning toast and coffee, I read BoldProgressives’ article on Nancy Randolph, who with her husband were a modestly well-off married couple from Maine, and had paid for what they had thought was excellent health insurance… until Mr. Randolph was diagnosed with cancer and the insurance company denied him coverage. He died, and the couple ended up in bankruptcy. Heartbreaking, gut-roiling stuff. And my heart truly does go out to Nancy Randolph, hers is a terrible tragedy made so much worse by knowing it was preventable. But there was one small point that bothered me...
Nancy Randolph voted for Republican Olympia Snowe.
In the clip, Nancy explains she voted for Snowe because she thought the senator would be ‘independent’. What, she didn’t notice the great big R beside the candidate’s name on the ballot? She didn’t notice how ‘independent’ a certain senator from a nearby New England state has been?
Far, far too many people in this country have either voted Republican, or worse, didn’t vote at all, because they didn’t think all those issues progressive have been so annoyingly vocal about for years would ever affect them. They’re hardworking middle class folks with decent jobs at good pay; why should they worry WalMart threatening their workers with violence if they dare to unionize? They’ve kept themselves in decent shape, watched their diet, exercised, stopped smoking, been responsible for their health and the worst medical problem they’ve had to deal with has been a bad cold or a sprained ankle, why should their hard-earned taxes go into paying for treating someone else’s kid with paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria… whatever the hell that is? They’ve been upstanding citizens responsible and financially prudent, just as the conservatives have always claimed they should be, been loyal employees for stable companies and managed their pensions and modest investments carefully, saved up to put their kids through college. So why should they care about other people who weren’t as sensible, why should they care about tuitions skyrocketing and universities cutting back on such rubbish as the arts or adult education? Why should they worry about companies that go under from mismanagement, why should the government imposing regulations on the banks and investment firms that have done such a good job of safeguarding their retirement? They’ve been conscientious about donating to proper charities, like their church or Girl Scouts or those little brown kids in far away countries, but resent one penny of their tax money being used to help deadbeats or drug addicts or criminals in prison or single mothers or high school dropouts – those people get what they deserve… don’t they?
It’s not even like Olympia Snowe is on the same level of revulsion and incompetence as is Mean Jean Schmidt or Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin, either. Snowe has earned her respected reputation, rarely missing a vote. She and fellow Republican Maine Senator Susan Collins went against her own party to vote to acquit Clinton, adamant his perjury didn’t warrant his being hounded from office. She’s angered the GOP enough times for them to have accused her of being a RINO, and she has shown genuine bi-partisanship in the past. Her reluctant opposition to the current attempts at health care reform has not been as dogmatic and irresponsible as all too many of her colleagues’, either. As Republicans go, this country can and has done a hell of a lot worse than Olympia Snowe, some of them even being our own Blue Dogs… haven’t we? We can live with a compromise, better we get a little something rather than nothing at all… right? Right?
As Jason Rosenbaum points out, Queen Olympia's proposal is just another way of putting the final nail in the public option coffin. You going to lie down and take it? Call your congress critter today:
Olympia Snowe's trigger is a plan to kill the public health insurance option. Not kill it as in make it weaker, but kill it as in make absolutely sure it will never, ever come into existence.
Senator Snowe's trigger is literally a catch-22, defined by Wikipedia as "a set of rules, regulations, procedures, or situations which present the illusion of choice while preventing any real choice."
The legislative language says that a public option will be set up in a state in which health care is not affordable to 95% of the state's residents, but it defines affordability as after the new tax credits that are written into the bill to make health care affordable.
Affordable is defined as 13% of income. So, if there is no plan in the exchange that costs less than 13% of a person's income, we'd get a public health insurance option. But that calculation of what a plan costs is made after the government pays out subsidies or employers pay their share. And therein lies the catch-22.
Max Baucus's bill caps out-of-pocket costs for people buying insurance in the exchange at 12% of their income. Therefore, after you add in government subsidies, costs will legally always have to be below 12%. The insurance industry can raise their rates as much as they want and government will make up the difference. The trigger, if passed, will never trigger. Not ever.
(This opinion has historical weight - there is a trigger for prescription drugs in Medicare Part D. So far, after 6 years, it still hasn't been triggered. Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical industry rakes in the profits and seniors get screwed - a Families USA report [pdf] showed that private drug prices were an average of 58% higher than prices the government could have obtained through a public option. The fact that this trigger was never triggered costs government and seniors hundreds of billions per year, money that goes straight into the pockets of private pharmaceutical companies.)
It's clear: No public health insurance option anywhere in the country will ever be created under Snowe's trigger amendment.
The trigger amendment isn't a fig leaf. It isn't even a co-op. It's a plan to kill the public health insurance option outright, and give taxpayer money straight to private insurance companies.
Mike Lux writes a very disturbing piece about something that he warned us about back in June. It's called a Trigger.
The moment I am talking about is the debate of the so-called trigger mechanism for having a public option in health care insurance.
The insurance lobby has had multiple tactics for stopping the public option idea, which they despise because they know if regular folks have choice to go to a public option, insurance companies won't have the same ability to treat their customers like garbage when they get sick. The first tactic was just to try to kill the public option outright, and the good news is that they appear to have failed at that. This so-called trigger proposal is the second tactic: the idea is to write a "trigger" that will allow for a public option only under certain conditions, but write the legislation so that those conditions would never get met in the real world. It's a classic DC tactic, right up there with calling for a commission to study something. Olympia Snowe is carrying the insurance industry water on their trigger proposal, proposing triggers that would only get tripped in some fairyland none of us have ever visited.
As Lux describes it now, the White House is obsessed with Olympia Snowe and they are willing to allow her to write the language in the bill that adds the trigger to the public option. but she will basically eliminate any chance a trigger will actually get triggered.
Media reports and insider buzz make it increasingly clear that key people at the White House have become obsessed with Olympia Snowe on health care, and are willing to do pretty much whatever she demands in order to get her on board. The price is looking more and more like this incredibly bad trigger proposal she has been pushing, a trigger that quite literally is written to automatically never trigger a public option. You see, Senator Snowe is writing language into an amendment that is literally a Catch-22. The legislative language says that a public option will be set up in a state in which health care is not affordable to 95% of the state's residents, but it defines affordability as after the new tax credits that are written into the bill to make health care affordable. Not only would this be an incredibly weak public option (doing it in one state will mean it can't get the market power to compete with the big insurers), but it would be a public option that is written by its definition to never be triggered. This is a trigger specifically, intentionally designed to kill the public option...read on
Please keep up the pressure and don't allow Rahm or the White House negotiate the public option away with bullshit triggers put there by Olympia Snowe.
Olympia Snowe's trigger is a plan to kill the public health insurance option. Not kill it as in make it weaker, but kill it as in make absolutely sure it will never, ever come into existence.
Senator Snowe's trigger is literally a catch-22, defined by Wikipedia as "a set of rules, regulations, procedures, or situations which present the illusion of choice while preventing any real choice."
Since the media gasbags for the most part have all proclaimed the public option DOA, the trigger will be a point they will hammer progressives that go on TV about. It's the Bipartisan Creep for Broderites. I hope any members of the CPC are well informed before they decide to do the Hardball's, CNN or cough, cough....FOX News. The Villagers think they speak for America when they discuss health care reform, but they do not. Americans overwhelmingly support a public option and one that isn't rigged to a phony trigger. Lux warns that this will cause a civil war in the Democratic Party.
The AFL-CIO, Howard Dean and Democracy for America, bloggers, MoveOn.org, progressive media figures, and the tens of thousands of people coming to Obama rallies and cheering wildly for a public option will figure out quickly that this trigger proposal is a farce specifically written to kill any chance of a public option. The Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus already are angry at having legal immigrants thrown under the bus by Baucus, all will explode.
Ya think?
This trigger will never trigger a public option, but I can tell you what it will trigger: a civil war inside the Democratic Party just when you most need unity to pass health care reform. I am convinced that there are deals that can be struck that will bring progressive and moderate Democrats, House and Senate Democrats together on a good strong health care bill that will pass. But a trigger designed to never trigger isn't even close to being one of them.
Rahm seems to be using the trigger to get his backroom deals done with Big Insurance, and he's playing with fire.
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Sen. Olympia Snowe told CBS' Bob Schieffer that there will not be a bill from the Senate Finance Committee that includes a public option "trigger."
"It's not on the table. It won't be. We'll be using the co-op as an option at this point as the means for injecting competition in the process," said Snowe.
President Obama, I do hope you stop wooing this "reasonable" woman, one whose intellectual capabilities are far exceeded by her political grasp. (She's proposed some breathtakingly bad ideas, like this one.)
Sen. Olympia J. Snowe, R-Maine, praised President Obama's speech to Congress on health care, but said Thursday that his refusal to drop the "public option" insurance proposal will delay action on health care reform.
Snowe said in a prepared statement that the proposal to offer a government alternative to private insurance is "divisive" and is "unnecessarily delaying our ability to reach common ground."
Olympia? If you know how to read polls, you'd know the only place the public option is divisive is in the corporate political class. We The People like it just fine.
Obama spoke before Congress on Wednesday night and maintained his support for the public option, but said he is willing to listen to a reasonable alternative that provides affordable coverage to Americans without insurance.
Snowe, who opposes the public option, has been working with five fellow members of the Senate Finance Committee to draft a health care reform bill. As a moderate Republican, Snowe is considered a pivotal figure in the debate and a potentially decisive vote.
Snowe said Obama indicated that he's willing to work with Republicans to move the reform measure forward. But Snowe said many Americans are afraid that the public option represents a government takeover of health care.
She has proposed a "safety net" that would provide health insurance if private insurers failed to offer affordable coverage after reforms took effect.
See, now, I'm confused. I thought the public option was the safety net? What would this net be, Your Majesty?
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Olympia Snowe says she urged the President to take the public option off the table during his speech tonight "so it could provide, I think, a momentum of a different kind in moving this issue forward overall." Snowe is still insisting that the President wants a "bipartisan" agreement.
A watered down version of health care "reform" which ends up being a give away to the insurance industry isn't going to solve our problem with the health care and it isn't going to get any "broad support" as Snowe claims the President is looking for.
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In a speech to Congress Wednesday, President Barack Obama may come out for a public health care option that would be triggered only if health insurance companies don't provide affordable solution in a predetermined time frame. One Republican Senator, Olympia Snowe, has expressed support for this idea. Gov. Howard Dean told Fox News' Chris Wallace that it was a mistake to craft a bill just to get a single Republican vote Sunday.
"The problem is it won't work. It doesn't add anything. If you're going to do that, just do the insurance reform," said Dean. "There's no point in spending $600 billion and giving it to the insurance industry. We know what they'll do with it. I'm hopeful he'll stick to his guns and we'll have the reform we were promised in the campaign."
Olympia Snowe admitted to Andrea Mitchell that the Senate Finance Committee is not even considering a public option in their bill and never had it on the table. She said that the skyrocketing costs of health care are paramount to their bill which is why they are ogling co opts.
Mitchell: So bottom lines, Nancy Pelosi says that they will not produce anything that does not include a public option. Do you see any way that the gang of six will come out of the Finance Committee with a public option?
Snowe: No, I don't. We have not had the public option on the table. It's been co ops and addressing affordability and availability and plans through the exchange and those are the challenges we're wrestling with to insure that there are basic plans to offer Americans.
Snowe: ...states today can create co-ops as a matter of fact, but we want to make sure that not just incorporating the status quo. In other words, if these co-ops were to be formed, Americans still could not have access to affordable, quality plans then you really do have to have a contingency plan, with a fall back plan of some kind to make sure that you do have the conditions to ensure that Americans do have access to an affordable plan.
Today for example in the state of Maine, you don't have the purchasing power necessary to leverage competitive prices so it really has kept so many people and so many small businesses out of the market, we want to make sure that's not what we repeat as we try to reform and provide universal access and coverage to all Americans.
Why is she now on board with co ops when she knows they suck? Is Chuck " Killin' Grandma" Grassley her daddy?
Foreshadowing a House-Senate showdown, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday there is "no way" the House can pass a health care bill without a government-run insurance option.
Speaking at a news conference in San Francisco, Pelosi told reporters that a public option will "keep insurance companies honest."
“There’s no way I can pass a bill in the House of Representatives without a public option,” the California Democrat said, according to wire reports. "Unless someone comes up with a better idea, that's how we're going forth in the House."
Pelosi reportedly added: "If someone can come up with a better idea, let them put it on the table, we haven't heard that yet. ... So we're fighting very hard for the public option."
