Before I go into what happens during a markup, I want to say that I feel a sense of vindication today.
Thanks to citisven, I looked at the breathtaking video of Wendell Potter talking to Bill Moyers. How long have we known this? Five, ten, fifteen years, or longer.
But despite the truth about for-profit insurance, which Wendell Potter described in excruciating detail last night, the politicans, want to "reform" healthcare by keeping this murderous industry at its center.
This is why, if we do not succeed in the fight for a real public option available to all Americans on day one, it will be one of the most tragic days in our national life.
We need the Whip Count project to succeed--it's a firewall. As I've said over and over, politicians respond to two stimuli--money and votes. Maybe we can help with a few dollars.
We've established an Act Blue Page for our Health Care Heroes. If you can donate a few dollars, this will get noticed and it might help encourage other Congresspeople to step up, do the right thing and take the Whip Count Pledge.
Here's the Whip Count Tool. Please use it like your life depends on it.
I've received a bunch of emails about the pending House markup. Jane Hamsher will keep us abreast of all developments on this.
People asked me for a bit more understanding about how it works. All the information I provided yesterday, was given to me and Jane, by a long time Congressional staffer when we were on the Hill last week.
Let me reiterate, this markup will be one of the most savage and contested spectacles ever. Does anyone know whether CSPAN will be broadcasting it live?
Our precious healthcare legislation could easily be bludgeoned to death, by an army of savage corporate shill lobbyists and special interests. And here's how they'll do it.
This is what I wrote yesterday.
The markup which we believe will begin next week, though there are some rumblings that it may get delayed.
It was explained to me, in very general terms, what really happens during this process, and it's rather ugly. Basically the bill is reviewed in its entirety. Amendments are added, language is changed. Changing one word, say the word, "shall" to "will", for example, can have huge consequences.
Lobbyists attempt to take every seat in the room. As the bill is debated, they blackberry Congressional staffers with their objections (the objections of the industry they represent), which the staffers then relay to the Congresspeople (doing the people's business). So this is where the pedal meets the metal. This is the place where the special interests get in their last licks.
How do lobbyists get all the seats in the room? They pay people (naturally), to wait on line starting very early in the morning, to assure them of a seat.
We would like to organize people who live in or near Washington to come to the markups and stand in line ahead of the lobbyists and the people they pay to stand there for them. Jane Hamsher will have more details on this, when the date the markup will begin is finalized.
Going further into the toxic cesspool.
- Expensive training sessions, where they learn all the ins and outs and where they can exploit the so-called "pressure points".
- The lobbyists are "trained" by people working on the inside. (You can't make this stuff up.)
Meet Your Training Team
John Sullivan, Parliamentarian, US House of Representatives. Parliamentarian since 2004, he was first appointed Assistant Parliamentarian of the House of Representatives in 1987 and then Deputy Parliamentarian in 1994.
Keith Stern, Rules Associate, Rep Jim McGovern (D-Ma)
Hugh Halpern, Staff Director, House Rules Committee- Minority. A veteran of nearly 20 years on Capitol Hill, he has served as General Counsel of the House Committee on Financial Services and was recruited to head the staff of the Committee on Rules in January 2005 by then-Chairman Dreier. The Committee on Rules serves as the Speaker's tool to manage the floor, and has the authority to dictate the terms of debate and which amendments are considered by the entire House.
Marty Gold, Covington and Burling. Co-chair of the firm's Legislative Practice Group and one of the country's leading experts on congressional procedures, he is author of "Senate Procedure and Practice." His prior experience includes serving as Floor Advisor and Counsel to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, assisting in all aspects of floor procedure and strategy during Senator Frist's first session as Majority Leader.
Eric Ueland, Vice President, Duberstein Group. Prior to his current position, he had 17 years of service on the Senate Republican Leadership staff, most recently as Chief of Staff to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (TN). Senior positions included staff director for the Senate Rules Committee.
http://www.alldc.org/...
- Here's a video describing everything you need to know about getting a seat in the room. These seats are highly coveted by Washington's army of influence peddlers -- the lawyers and lobbyists whose job descriptions entail leveraging personal and professional relationships in order to affect legislation on behalf of their corporate clients.
Jane, I think we need to start calling whoever is going to chair the markup and demand that if you want to attend, you wait in line. No line holders!
- Why do the lobbyists need a seat in the room? I urge you to read Mike Taibbi's horrifying account, Four Amendments and a Funeral, of how CAFTA was passed during the Bush regime. I will make you weep (and perhaps become a bit homicidal), to think that this is the fate that awaits the healthcare bill, the most important legislation of my generation.
Here are a few nuggets:
. . .To understand the breadth of Bush's summer sweep, you had to watch the hand-fighting at close range. You had to watch opposition gambits die slow deaths in afternoon committee hearings, listen as members fell on their swords in exchange for favors and be there to see hordes of lobbyists rush in to reverse key votes at the last minute. All of these things I did -- with the help of a tour guide.
Nobody knows how this place is run," says Rep. Bernie Sanders. "If they did, they'd go nuts."
. . .Congress isn't the steady assembly line of consensus policy ideas it's sold as, but a kind of permanent emergency in which a majority of members work day and night to burgle the national treasure and burn the Constitution. A largely castrated minority tries, Alamo-style, to slow them down -- but in the end spends most of its time beating calculated retreats and making loose plans to fight another day.
Taken all together, the whole thing is an ingenious system for inhibiting progress and the popular will. The deck is stacked just enough to make sure that nothing ever changes. But just enough is left to chance to make sure that hope never completely dies out. And who knows, maybe it evolved that way for a reason.
"It's funny," Sanders says. "When I first came to Congress, I'd been mayor of Burlington, Vermont -- a professional politician. And I didn't know any of this. I assumed that if you get majorities in both houses, you win. I figured, it's democracy, right?"
What we have going on here, is a window into the workings of money in politics. Because public hearings have been transformed into more-or-less private affairs, representatives of nonprofit organizations, protesters and average citizens have been effectively shut out of one of the few participatory aspects of the political process. And, sadly, it is Washington's most vulnerable -- those forced to find whatever work they can in a city racked by poverty, and little or no access to healthcare --who make such a system possible.
This is some democracy, ain't it?
Here's the Whip Count Tool. Please use it like your life depends on it.
Here again, is the Act Blue Page for our Health Care Heroes. Even a small contribution is very welcome!