Now the final phase begins, where we see what House liberals can achieve within the confines of a broken system that gives a handful of senators from sparsely populated states a disproportionate power to shape legislation:
Democrats are already outlining a strategy to achieve a final compromise that can satisfy the more liberal House without upsetting the painstakingly assembled coalition of 60 Senate Democrats and independents.
Central to those talks, House leaders said, will be the search for an acceptable substitute for a government-run insurance plan that those without medical coverage could purchase, a provision the House designed to compete with private insurers and force them to rein in costs. While the Senate has decisively rejected the "public option," House leaders say they will demand other concessions to ensure that Americans can afford the insurance they will be required to buy if the bill becomes law.
[...] House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has signaled approval for the Senate's solution: the creation of at least two nationwide insurance plans run by private companies but overseen by the Office of Personnel Management, the same federal agency that handles health insurance for members of Congress. In a conference call Wednesday, Pelosi also assured rank-and-file Democrats that they would not be asked to rubber-stamp the Senate bill and began soliciting ideas to improve it.
Among the options under discussion: pressing the Senate to increase the federal subsidies that would be offered to low- and middle-income people who do not have access to affordable coverage through an employer; having a single national marketplace for people buying insurance, rather than 50 state-based exchanges, as the Senate prefers; and moving up the launch date of those marketplaces and subsidies to 2013, one year earlier than under the Senate bill.
Each of the 435 members of the House of Representatives represents a district and serves a two-year term. House seats are apportioned among the states by population. The 100 Senators serve staggered six-year terms. Each state has two senators, regardless of population. Every two years, approximately one-third of the Senate is elected at a time. Reelection rates for incumbents often exceed 90%.[1]Article I of the Constitution vests all legislative power in Congress. The House and Senate are equal partners in the legislative process (legislation cannot be enacted without the consent of both chambers)
WALLACE: Senator Conrad, what do you expect to happen? Because now this isn’t the end of the process. It’s just another step in the “Perils of Pauline.”
What do you expect to happen in the House-Senate conference next month? After struggling for months to get Senate Democrats on board to accept this, what are you going to do for Democrats who have a bill which is considerably to the left of your bill?
CONRAD: I think any bill is going to have to be very close to what the Senate has passed because we’re still going to have to get 60 votes. And anybody who’s watched this process can see how challenging it has been to get 60 votes...
WALLACE: But to go back to the question of the conference, you’re saying that you don’t -- you can’t go further, that the House is basically going to have to accept -- the House is going to have to accept the Senate bill?
CONRAD: It is very clear that the bill, the final bill, to pass in the United States Senate is going to be -- have to be very close to the bill that has been negotiated here. Otherwise you will not get 60 votes in the United States Senate.
Kent Conrad is telling the House of Representatives to go "Cheney" themselves. Are Nancy Pelosi and the progressive members of Congress listening? I wrote this last week and Conrad just made my point for me.
When the House and Senate committee members meet in conference and supposedly merge their bills, exactly what can they do to influence it at all? If the Senate bill is as far as the Gang of Four, or Six or Ten or whatever it is, are willing to go, then is the House bill nothing more than a stage prop?
Do members of the House of Representatives feel jubilation at the thought that any pieces of major legislation they are asked to put together will ultimately be decided by President Lieberman, Queen Snowe, Mary Landrone, Ben "floppy hair" Nelson and Max Baucus? I'm sure more names will be added to the list.
I really want to know how they feel.
The White House needs to understand that there are many progressive members of the House who will not vote for the Senate bill as it stands. When they meet up in conference there is supposed to be a compromise struck on the bill between both bodies. What Conrad, President Lieberman and the hairpiece known as Ben Nelson are telling 435 elected members of the HOR is that they don't matter.
Well I say to Conrad that he can "Cheney" himself -- and that's what the House should say.
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I've never said to "kill the bill," as many are arguing liberals have been advocating like Howard Dean. But I do want to improve the Senate version of it and there's still time. I'm sorry that I do have some principles and want to keep on fighting. I always knew as liberals that we would be disappointed in the end, but it still can help millions of Americans in need of health care. And I would like my own premiums to stop being jacked up too.
As for the internecine politics, there were numerous graceful concessions from the left from the beginning on health care that were not exactly easy to make, from single payer to the abortion language to immigrants. But it was the late dangling of a swap on the long held dream of a medicare buy-in, getting liberals to sign on and then allowing the loathed Lieberman, of all people, to capriciously snatch it away that was the real gut punch. And admonishing them to "get with the program" within minutes of that outrage while Lieberman preened that the president thanked him was gratuitous. Lucy and the football is an overused metaphor, but this was a classic. You'd have to be soulless not to be angry about that.
I'm glad Gov. Dean basically called John McCain is a damn liar after McCain spun his words into a bullshit Republican talking point. The conservative obstructionists in Congress only want to destroy health care reform for all Americans, and to me that borders on being a traitor the office they hold.
So it--you know, I respect John McCain, but it's, he wouldn't be the first person who twisted my words around and used them for something I had no intention of endorsing, which is the Republicans' behavior in this bill.
Nancy Pelosi can bring about some much needed improvement to the bill and I say go for it Nancy. Call Lieberman's bluff. If health care reform dies, it should be killed by the people who are destroying it, not by the people who have fought tooth and nail to reform a broken health-care system.
Via MyDD, here's some encouraging news. Saying that the filibuster wasn't supposed to be used to stop legislation, Sen. Tom Harkin told Iowa reporters he's thinking about reintroducing legislation he first put forth 15 years ago. I say, call and write to let him know you support it:
Given what he sees as the abuse of power by a couple members of his own party whom he said are threatening to join the minority party if their every demand is not met, Harkin is considering reintroducing the legislation.
"I think, if anything, this health care debate is showing the dangers of unlimited filibuster," Harkin said Thursday during a conference call with reporters. "I think there's a reason for slowing things down ... and getting the public aware of what's happening and maybe even to change public sentiment, but not to just absolutely stop something."
Harkin noted with interest that his original legislation was cosponsored by Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., who has been threatening to filibuster the legislation.
"Today, in the age of instant news and Internet and rapid travel -- you can get from anywhere to here within a day or a few hours -- the initial reasons for the filibuster kind of fall by the wayside, and now it's got into an abusive situation," Harkin said.
He and the constitutional scholars agree that the intention was never to hold up legislation entirely.
To keep the spirit of slowing down legislation, though, Harkin's proposal back in 1995 would have kept the 60-vote rule for the first vote but lessening the number required in subsequent votes.
He said for instance if 60 senators could not agree to end debate, it would carry on for another week or so and then the number of votes required to end debate would drop by three. Harkin said it would carry on this way until it reached a simple majority of 51 votes.
"You could hold something up for maybe a month, but then, finally you'd come down to 51 votes and a majority would be able to pass," Harkin said. "I may revive that. I pushed it very hard at one time and then things kind of got a little better."
Very good news, I think, on the climate change front. This is an excellent way to sidestep the political process and keep the necessary changes from getting bogged down in the politics:
The Obama administration will formally declare Monday that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions pose a danger to the public's health and welfare, a move that lays the groundwork for an economy-wide carbon cap even if Congress fails to enact climate legislation, sources familiar with the process said.
The move, which Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa P. Jackson will announce at an afternoon press conference, comes as the largest climate change conference in history gets underway in Copenhagen. It will finalize an initial "endangerment finding" by the government in April.
While an EPA spokeswoman declined to comment on the matter, the agency sent out a press advisory that Jackson will make "a significant climate announcement at a press briefing" at 1:15 p.m. at EPA headquarters. Jackson will also speak at the U.N.-sponsored climate conference Wednesday; her address is titled "Taking Action at Home." Obama, who will attend the end of the U.N. talks Dec. 18, has sent a series of recent signals to the international community that the United States will curb its carbon output as part of a new global climate deal.
The endangerment finding stems from a 2007 Supreme Court decision in which the court ordered the EPA to determine whether greenhouse gases qualify as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. It could trigger a series of federal regulations affecting polluters, from vehicles to coal-fired power plants.
Businesses argue that such a finding would mean even emitters as small as a mom-and-pop grocery store would be forced to comply with onerous greenhouse gas regulations. The administration has crafted rules that would exempt facilities that emit less than 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide or its equivalent annually. But it remains unclear if that exemption would hold up in court.
"An endangerment finding from the EPA could result in a top-down command-and-control regime that will choke off growth by adding new mandates to virtually every major construction and renovation project," Thomas Donohue, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement. "The devil will be in the details, and we look forward to working with the government to ensure we don't stifle our economic recovery."
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid scrambled Tuesday to lock down votes behind a health-care bill that he may present as early as Wednesday.
The Nevada Democrat would not confirm that he had received commitments from all 60 members of his caucus to overcome GOP procedural objections and bring the bill to the Senate floor, saying only, "I feel cautiously optimistic that we can do that. I think we're together as a caucus."
[...] Preliminary estimates by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the legislation's official scorekeeper, have indicated that the Senate measure would cost far less than the bill the House approved last week, while lowering the federal deficit further over the long term, said several senior Democratic aides who have reviewed the CBO data.
Democrats are hopeful about winning over at least one Republican, Sen. Olympia J. Snowe, on a vote for final passage. But the Maine moderate has pledged to support a GOP filibuster at the outset because Reid's bill is expected to include a public-insurance option that she opposes.
Under the terms of the bill, Medicaid would be expanded to cover everybody up to 133 percent of the poverty line. And in a move that will disappoint progressives, tax credits to buy health insurance would be limited to those between 133 and 300 percent of poverty line. (People between 300 and 400 percent of poverty would not be provided any direct federal assistance, but insurers would not be able to set their premiums at more than 9.8 percent of their annual income.)
Here we go again. That's not going to be enough to make it affordable to most people, and it has to change in the final version. Call your Congress critter!
And the Democrats are doing what, exactly, about this? Do the Republicans want the economy to get worse, hoping it means they'll sweep the mid-terms? (As if we needed any further proof of their sociopathic mindset.)
While this piece is about California, it will apply to other states as well:
Few, if any, unemployed people will be able to get the full 20-week extension in jobless benefits because Congress delayed so long and failed to change a sunset provision, says a California Employment Development Department official.
As a result, most Californians — an estimated 285,000 long-term unemployed — will be able to qualify for only an additional 14 weeks of benefits, says Loree Levy, an EDD spokeswoman.
The legislation, which was approved by the House today, provides 14 weeks of additional benefits to all states. Those states with a jobless rate over 8.5% — California's is 12.2% — get up to 20 more weeks.
But instead of simply tacking on the additional weeks in one new extension, the bill sets up a Byzantine plan that adds two new extensions to the two previous ones before the last extension, referred to as FedEd, kicks in.
Congress previously extended FedEd from 13 weeks to 20 weeks, but included a sunset provision for the end of the year. If Congress doesn't change that provision, FedEd will revert to 13 weeks on Jan. 1.
So even if a person could start collecting on the latest extension today, the calendar will run out before that person can get all 20 weeks of benefits. As currently written, they will get one additional week for the second extension and, because their unemployment will carry into next year, 13 weeks of FedEd, for a maximum of 14 weeks.
Stupak probably doesn't have the votes will be joined by the Republicans and will probably get his amendment passed. Again, I ask: Why does someone's personal religious beliefs get to infringe on mine or anyone else's rights? Abortion is legal, in case anyone forgot.
WASHINGTON — The House opened debate on its health-care bill Saturday after Democratic leaders agreed to allow a vote on an amendment from antiabortion Democrats.
The agreement early Saturday could break a stalemate over abortion that was threatening the bill's prospects.
If the House approves the bill, it would be the first time a chamber of Congress has passed legislation aimed at guaranteeing near-universal access to health care.
A final vote on the health measure could come late Saturday or early Sunday morning. House Democratic leaders were still scrambling to come up with the 218 votes needed to pass the bill, and aides predicted the vote would be a cliffhanger.
[...] Abortion has divided Democrats, with antiabortion lawmakers saying they couldn't allow any federal funding of abortion under the new health-insurance exchanges the bill would establish.
Rep. Bart Stupak, an antiabortion Democrat from Michigan, explained his amendment before the House Rules Committee just after midnight Saturday. He said it provides that federal subsidies cannot be used to purchase a health plan including coverage for abortions other than in cases of rape or incest.
The amendment from Mr. Stupak and Rep. Joseph Pitts (R., Pa.) is set to come before the full House for a vote later Saturday.
The concession to allow a vote is significant because House Democrats aren't allowing votes on any other substantive amendments, save one Republican amendment that is an alternative to the Democrats' plan.
Nearly 90% of private health insurance policies now offer abortion coverage, and almost half of women with private insurance have it. But women covered under the new system would have to find supplemental insurance or pay out of pocket for an unanticipated procedure that can cost from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on complexity. For anyone unable to afford it, this would amount to a de facto ban.
But here's the catch: The bill makes it so financially unattractive for insurance companies to offer abortion coverage - even if you pay for the insurance yourself - that they're likely to stop offering it except to the largest groups. Got it? This is not a minor amendment.
And unless it's rejected by the Senate or in conference, women have once again been stripped of the ability to get abortions.
Louisville, Ky.: Ezra, can you shed some light on the process involved in moving the Health-Care bill through the Senate? I've heard bits and pieces about number of votes required, but would like some clarification about: voting to block filibuster in the Senate, taking the bill back to a joint Senate-House conference, then back to the floor for final vote. Would you expand on this? Thanks.
Ezra Klein: Sure. Next move is the Finance Committee vote on Tuesday: that requires a bare majority of the committee (I think that means 11 votes, but that's just memory). Then Reid and the Democratic leadership blend the HELP and Finance bills into one bill. That doesn't require any votes. Then the bill comes to the floor. It'll need 60 votes against a filibuster, and 51 votes in favor of the legislation.
Then we have to deal with the House bills. Do you have a headache? People are becoming very irritable in America. Haven't you noticed? The health-care debate and the economic situation is really, really making life miserable for most of America.
A kiss for luck and we're on our way...
Before the rising sun we fly...
So many roads to choose...
We start out walking and learn to run...
Ho hum! Another Monday, another story of official indifference to the lack of affordable health care. In the words of Barney Frank: On what planet do these people live?
The affordability question vexing Democrats is whether those with moderate income will be able to afford health insurance, even with the subsidies the legislation would provide and all sorts of new rules aimed at controlling costs.
Because the legislation would require nearly all Americans to obtain health insurance, affordability is a potentially serious political issue. That is particularly so because most people would incur a financial penalty — payable along with income taxes — if they did not obtain coverage.
Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Finance Committee, last week attacked the requirement to have insurance, the so-called individual mandate, as potentially imposing a crippling penalty of $1,500 on a family earning as little as $25,000 a year.
“It’s a pretty heavy burden for low-income families,” Mr. Grassley said in committee debate.
You know it's bad when Chuck Grassley is the voice of the working poor.
Some liberal Democrats are already suggesting that the legislation may not be worth adopting if it will end up forcing Americans to buy health coverage they really cannot afford.
“I am sympathetic, and I understand the concerns, and I appreciate as well the political volatility around the question of mandating or requiring coverage,” said Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan, who is also on the finance panel. “The big question we have all grappled with is how do you make sure everybody is in, and that’s a tough one. It comes down to whether or not ultimately in this bill we can say this is affordable for people.”
Well, Debbie, I'd say the big question is: Who benefits? I don't doubt your sincerity, but I don't think everyone on the committee sees it the same way you so. Ultimately, is this a billion-dollar giveaway to insurance companies, a balm to the massive egos on the Senate Finance committee, or an actual solution to a very serious problem - namely, lack of affordable health care? I'm guessing the last is not all that important to the boys of the Senate Millionaires Club.
There are two obvious ways of making coverage more affordable, and neither is workable.
One would be to sharply reduce the cost of health care across the board, thereby limiting the cost of insurance. This is a chief aim of the Democrats’ bill, but it would require sweeping improvements in efficiency, including higher-quality, lower-cost treatment and better use of technology — all goals of the legislation, but not about to happen anytime soon.
The other obvious way would be to sharply increase government subsidies to help middle-class people buy insurance. Ms. Stabenow, for instance, has proposed capping the amount moderate-income Americans would have to pay for insurance premiums at 6.5 percent of income, with the subsidies paying the balance. The legislation now sets that cap on premium costs at 12 percent.
But President Obama has already sealed the top of the affordability box, telling everyone in his speech to Congress on Sept. 9 that he will not accept a health care bill that costs more than $900 billion over 10 years. And subsidies are already the biggest-ticket item.
Because after all, maintaining all those wars is expensive! Gotta prioritize here!
Some top White House officials, however, see a third way, a potential escape hatch: exempting more families and individuals on the basis of income from the penalty for failing to buy insurance, a fine that for families could run as high as $1,900.
The bill proposed by Senator Max Baucus of Montana, the Finance Committee chairman, would waive the penalty if the cheapest insurance, even with subsidies, would cost 10 percent of a family’s income.
Lowering the waiver threshold to 5 percent of income is a risky move, because limiting the threat of a penalty could leave more people uninsured, undermining a main point of the legislation.
Oh, come on. We all know the point of the current legislation as it stands. It's to put 40 million new victims on the insurance company rolls, thus ensuring massive quantities of campaign cash in the bank accounts of the cooperative politicians.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that while there would be 29 million fewer uninsured people as a result of the legislation, a separate 25 million people would still be uninsured in 2019 — about one-third of them illegal immigrants.
Sparing more people from the penalty would certainly increase the projected number of uninsured, by tempting more people, particularly younger Americans, to continue going without insurance. But White House officials think the number of people willing to risk going uninsured would not rise by much, perhaps two million people. The budget office has not issued projections yet, and some Democrats warned that the erosion could be much worse.
Oh well! What's another two million college students who can't afford a doctor when they get the swine flu - a disease that has disproportionately fatal results in their age bracket?
And in the end, that may be the smallest price to pay to avert what could be a devastating political argument against the Democrats’ plan: that working-class Americans would be penalized heavily for not buying insurance they say they cannot afford.
Think of how amoral that argument is. People aren't really human, they're merely chips to be used in a high-stakes political poker game. Nice 'hope and change' there, President Obama.
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.
Jay Rockefeller is actually the chair of the health subcommittee in the Senate Finance Committee. Any "Gang of Six," or really any legislation on the Committee, should at least have his input, if not his controlling hand. Yet Max Baucus froze him out of the legislation in favor of Republicans who will never sign on to the final version and worthless schemes like the Conrad co-op proposal (which is just a thin ploy to get Blue Cross of North Dakota, which controls 90% of the market in Conrad's state, the "co-op" label so it can access federal start-up funds). Rockefeller may have the last laugh when the bill moves into the full committee.
U.S. Senator John Rockefeller, a Finance Committee member and a strong backer of a government-run insurance option, said on Tuesday he will not support the panel's healthcare bill in its present form.
Rockefeller told reporters he was unhappy with the lack of a government-run "public" insurance option in the bill, which is scheduled to be made public on Wednesday, and had problems with some of its changes in children's health insurance and Medicaid, or healthcare for the poor.
In particular, Rockefeller wants a public insurance option instead of the weak co-ops, better affordability provisions so working people can actually use the bill, and changes to the way that Baucuscare deals with the Children's Health Insurance Program and Medicaid.
Rockefeller specifically said "There is no way in its present form that I will vote for it... unless it changes during the amendment process by vast amounts." Now, getting amendments through may not be an easy task. Each Rockefeller amendment in that committee would have to get the votes of all the Democrats plus at least a couple Republicans, if Baucus and Conrad hold firm on them. Considering that 10 of the 13 Democrats on the panel were completely shut out of the process during the Gang of Six talks, I'd expect a lot of support for what Rockefeller wants to do, but Baucus and Conrad can basically nullify anything meaningful on their own, should they want to.
Still, Rockefeller's advocacy is important because it sets the tone for Democrats with the full Senate, where votes like his will be needed. Jon Cohn explains.
A little over a month ago, right before the August recess, I spoke with Rockefeller at some length. And he was clearly wrestling with how to position himself.
No living senator has done as much to promote health reform as he has. It's the cause of his life and, for the first time, the goal is within reach. He admitted that voting against a package, even a flawed one, was difficult to imagine.
But Rockefeller also made clear his frustration with the compromises Baucus was making, whether it was replacing the public plan with a co-op or gradually reducing the subsidies to help people pay for insurance. He was particularly incensed about the changes to Medicaid and CHIP, programs to which he's devoted much of his time--and on which many West Virginians rely.
At the time, it seemed like Rockefeller was still on board, if only to help get a bill out of the Finance Committee and onto the Senate floor. But you got the feeling--well, I got the feeling--that he was near the breaking point.
Sometime since that interview, clearly, he's hit it.
Every vote is precious in the Senate, given that votes on the Republican side other than Olympia Snowe and maybe Susan Collins will not be forthcoming. Harry Reid has laid down the marker that anything less than 60 votes will lead him to go through the reconciliation process (and I don't think Reid's low poll numbers in Nevada will be much of a factor - the consequences of doing nothing on health care would be far graver for him). Therefore everyone in the Democratic caucus, essentially, represents an interest group to be satisfied. Rockefeller is standing up and saying that he's perfectly willing to vote against something that doesn't fulfill the promise of health care reform as he sees it. Bernie Sanders probably feels the same way. Maybe Barbara Boxer does. Or others. Max Baucus and his cronies will have to wrestle with that.
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Paul Begala on AC360 makes the case for why it's time for Democrats to stop negotiating with Republicans on health care reform, and puts out the number on just how much Democrats have given to Republicans in order to appease them for a bill they are never going to get a single vote on. David Gergen is dead wrong here. If there is decent legislation passed with some meaningful reform, the public is not going to care who voted for it.
If it's a bad bill and nothing but a giveaway to the insurance industries, then they're not going to be happy in the end no matter what the roll call is when this is said and done. And Amy Holmes is full of it. Republicans are not going to support even the watered down co-op plan. They're already calling it all the same names they would be single payer if it was on the table, and the public option. Republicans do not want any reform of the insurance industry, or anything to be done which cuts into their profits.
COOPER: Paul, we got a text 360 question based on the -- I guess, the Barney Frank thing.
Patty says, "Do you think the Obama administration is considering moving ahead because of negative Republican reaction at town hall meetings?"
I mean, do you think this -- this idea of -- of going it alone is in response to what they have suddenly seen at all these town hall meetings?
BEGALA: I think, frankly, less the town hall meetings. That hasn't moved a lot of Democrats. I have talked to a whole lot of them. They don't seem terribly rattled by that. But I think what they're seeing is...
COOPER: What about independents?
BEGALA: Well, I mean, Democratic members of Congress.
COOPER: Oh, OK.
COOPER: Among independents, it's -- Republic opposition has hardened. And that's fine. They're the opposition party.
But to try to pass something in a bipartisan fashion is just going to be very difficult, and almost impossible. Look at this. There's four committees that have already passed out versions of health care, three in the House, one in the Senate.
If you add all those committees together, they accepted, the Democrats who run the committees, 183 Republican amendments in those four committees, 183. Despite taking all those 183 amendments, you know how many Republican votes they got? Zero, zilch, as we say in the Catholic Church, bubkes, nada.
Now, at what point do you start to get the idea that the Republicans are just not going to play along? More recently, you know, we have the Senate Finance Committee as the last hope of bipartisanship. Senator Max Baucus, the chairman, is trying to negotiate with Charles Grassley, the leading Republican on the committee.
And he's been reached out to, Grassley has, and the president has praised him in the past. And, so, what does he do? He goes home. And, you know, grandpa Twitter gets on his BlackBerry and says, the president wants to pull the plug on grandma, and then he calls the president of the United States intellectually dishonest.
That's who Obama is trying to deal with. So, there's no hope of bipartisanship.
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Digby took note of this segment on Hardball, and I agree with her assessment about what it would mean for the President if he lost some Blue Dog Democrats in the mid-term election.
I would love to hear anyone tell me why I shouldn't be cheering for that outcome.
Cook said it would "reflect on" the president, but from my perspective it would reflect well on him. And if it happens because he rammed through meaningful health care reform instead of some watered down bucket of warm spit and the administration managed to get unemployment down, I think he will very likely have Morning in America in 2012.
To hell with Rahm and his appease the Blue Dogs at all costs strategy. What good is it if the president fails in 2012? If Cook is right and the Dems maintain their majority while losing a bunch of these reactionary wingnuts, I couldn't be happier. And the Democrat should be happy too because it means they can pass successful legislation for a change.
It wouldn't break my heart either. These Blue Dogs and Liebercrats do nothing but vote against the President anyway, and they give the media an excuse to bring them on to undermine the progressives in the party.
Ohio Republican John Adams has re-introduced a bill that would make it illegal for a woman to get an abortion without the written consent of the biological father:
An Ohio lawmaker has re-introduced legislation that would include a father's rights in the abortion decision-making process. Under Roe v. Wade, fathers are left out of the equation when a woman considers whether or not to have an abortion that would end the life of their child.
Rep. John Adams, a Republican from Sidney, wants to change that and the legislation he introduced today, House Bill 252, would require the biological father's consent before an abortion can be done.
Adams told the Daily Reporter newspaper that abortion centers would "need to get consent from the biological father" before the abortion can proceed and he called the measure a "father's right bill" to protect the interest of fathers who are given no say in the abortion process.
He also said the bill provides for criminal penalties for women seeking abortions who do not obtain consent properly.
Ladies, don't even think about trying to find a stand-in daddy, that will land you in the slammer, and if you don't know who the father is, you're just s*it out of luck:
"Providing a false biological father would be a first-degree misdemeanor the first time, which means not more than six months and jail, and a maximum $1,000 fine," Adams said. "And on the second occasion, providing false information would be considered a fifth-degree felony."
Adams told the newspaper that, in cases when the mother does not know the identity of the father, the abortion would be prohibited. Read on...
Adams says that this is about trying to keep the biological mother and father together, which is a gross encroachment on individual freedoms. For someone who belongs to a party that supposedly wants smaller and less intrusive government, Adams would have to create a whole new bureaucracy to pull this off.
"There needs to be responsibility for actions," Adams said. "As someone who is pro-life, this is also an attempt and a hope to keep the two people who have created that child together, and I suppose if you just go back to the simple beginning, there is merit to chastity, and to young men and women waiting until marriage."
Finally, there appears to be nothing in this bill requiring the man to take care of the mother or the child once they've forced her to bear their child.
