What a tumultuous week! In the span of just 7 days, we’ve gone from "we will have health care this year" to "health care reform is on the ropes".
We saw Nancy Pelosi tell us that she had the votes to pass it, only to be told right afterwards that no, she doesn’t. We saw the president give a prime-time press conference on the subject, but the only thing people were talking about the next two days was that he stupidly used the word ‘stupidly’. We were told that healthcare bill will be finished before the congress goes on their August break, only to be told 12 hours later that it won’t even get out of the senate, and then today, we hear that’s get out of the house either. We have heard that the so-call "blue dog" Democrats are essentially controlling the issue. That these 52 Democrats effectively have a stranglehold on the entire process. And finally we hear that every one of the health-care bills will cost a huge amount of money, and at the same time, we keep hearing the president say that he won’t sign a bill that adds "even one dime" to the deficit.
As I watched the press conference the other night, I heard Obama give a long list of items that he says will be in the health-care reform bill, then he finished by telling us that it will all be paid for, or he won’t sign it. Even I had to do a double-take at that one. The bill he described sounded allot like the Pelosi bill, and the CBO has already scored that as costing more than a trillion dollars. Even after the taxes are hiked up on the millionaires in this country, there would still be a significant increase to the deficit.
Presumably, he is insisting on the budget-neutral requirement in order that he can use the reconciliation process to get it passed in the senate. Because it’s starting to become abundantly clear that that he’s not going to get the 60 votes necessary to get it passed a filibuster - especially after Baucus and Grassley’s tweets, along with both Byrd and Kennedy in the hospital - and God only knows when or even if they will ever get out.
So it occurred to me – we are going to have to be pragmatic. In light of the realities in place, it seems unlikely we are going to get everything the president is asking for without it adding to the deficit. So with that in mind I wondered "What items would be acceptable for removal from the list, if their removal would allow passage?". So I thought I’d ask all of you to chime in.