I’ve been feeling oddly optimistic for the last couple of days. My cheery attitude earned me a rebuke from a friend of mine in the House - and yet I think that the events of this week represent an opportunity rather than complete catastrophe.
Let’s start by reviewing where we are:
In 2006 and again in 2008, the American people voted for real change in Washington DC. They haven’t gotten the change they voted for, and they’re tired of waiting.
Democrats lost the Massachusetts Senate seat because the voters there believed Democrats weren’t going to deliver the populist change this country needs. Unless Democrats deliver real healthcare reform, they will have completely proved the charge that has been leveled against them: that the Democrats in Washington, D.C. are incapable of successfully fighting for and winning what the American people need.
If the President and Democratic leadership in the House and the Senate want to deliver real reform, they have a golden opportunity to do so – if the White House prioritizes delivering for the American people over the deals that they cut with the insurance companies and the drug companies.
That, at the end of the day, is the choice. Will they take it?
The only real hurdles to passing reform are issues of political will, not of procedure. The Democrats still have large majorities in both the House and the Senate. If they have the political will to do so, Democrats can have the Senate pass a "fix" bill through reconciliation that includes changes negotiated with the House. The House would pass the original Senate bill AND that "fix" bill. Democrats need only 51 votes in the Senate and 218 votes in the House to do this. They have far more members in each chamber than that.
Passing an aggressive healthcare reform is both good politics and good policy. Democrats need to stop pandering to insurance companies and drug companies and instead fight for the American people – which the American people will reward. Polling of the people who voted for Obama in 2008 and for Republican Scott Brown in 2010 shows that 82% of them support a public option: they believe the failure in DC is that Democrats are not aggressive enough in fighting for them.
Our nation’s health care crisis is not an incremental problem and cannot be fixed with incremental solutions. We cannot ban denials for pre-existing conditions without mandates; we cannot institute mandates without providing subsidies; and we cannot provide subsidies without raising revenue. All the most popular elements of true meaningful reform are intertwined.
And the support for those elements of reform is tied up in whether the American people get real reform that gives them real choices and reins in the abuses of the insurance companies and the drug companies.
Specifically, it’s tied up in whether there’s a public option or not.
Adam Green at the PCCC released polling [edited: which they did in conjunction with DFA] showing that the problem in the Massachusetts Senate race was that the Senate healthcare bill was fatally flawed in the minds of the voters because it didn’t go far enough and didn’t include a public option:
We wanted to make sure you saw the Massachusetts Research 2000 poll, reported on by the Wall Street Journal, NBC, Politico, Huffington Post, TPM, and others.
It polled critical 2010 swing voters: the 18% of Obama voters who returned to the polls and voted for Republican Scott Brown.
- On health care, they oppose the Senate bill because it "doesn't go far enough" and they overwhelmingly support the public option (82%).
- On the economy, by 2 to 1 they think Democrats have put special interests ahead of folks like them -- and by large margins think stronger regulation of Wall Street is more important that cutting spending.
- And 57% say Democrats are not "delivering enough on the change Obama promised."
Why did they vote for Scott Brown? They are angry and want Congress to fight on their side against entrenched power. Scott Brown pretended to be a populist, so he won.
Recent SurveyUSA polls in competitive House districts showed the same things:
So let’s go back to the plan.
Senate Democrats need to pass a bill through the reconciliation process – which requires only 51 votes and cannot be filibustered – that will make the changes allowing them to get to 218 votes in the House. They get to 218 in the House by keeping nearly all of the progressives and nearly all of the Democratic freshmen and sophomores. Interestingly - and despite the attempts to blame the progressives for the potential failure of healthcare reform - the bigger obstacle is almost certainly the vulnerable freshmen and sophomores. They want to deliver what their districts want, and the Senate bill doesn't do that. The easiest (and perhaps only) way to do that is to have the changes include the ONLY element of healthcare reform that has been shown over and over again in polling to increase support for the bill to a strong majority of the public: buy-in to a public option.
Then the House passes the fixes and the underlying Senate bill.
And then President Obama signs the Senate bill and the fixes into law.
The Senate, quite frankly, needs to start the process. The House has passed plenty of great legislation this year, only to watch it die slowly and painfully in the Senate. There’s no assumption of good faith there anymore.
So does President Obama want a healthcare bill? This is how he gets it.
Senator Tom Harkin has been saying for months that there are 52 solid votes in the Senate for a bill with a public option. The President has the opportunity to wrangle those 52 votes and get this done. He can make it happen so long as he’s willing to keep his promises to the American people by breaking his promises to the insurance companies and the drug companies. He gets to choose. Let’s see where his priorities lie.