{"id":302,"date":"2009-11-25T02:37:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-25T10:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=302"},"modified":"2009-11-25T02:37:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-25T10:37:00","slug":"are-democrats-failing-on-health-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2009\/11\/25\/are-democrats-failing-on-health-care\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Democrats Failing on Health Care?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many people are wondering why Senate Democrats are still trying to overcome the standard GOP filibuster requiring sixty votes for cloture.  The main alternative in the news is to go for reconciliation.  But that route is not the simple solution some portray it to be.<\/p>\n

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\"Senate\"<\/a> The single biggest complaint I hear by non-DC insiders is the sheer dysfunction of Washington. Whether it’s Jon Stewart’s<\/font> very funny interview<\/a> with Joe Biden the other day, or bloggers attacking Harry Reid for not just wrapping the health care issue up by going to reconciliation, people not involved in the day to day DC maneuvering and negotiating don’t understand why all this is so hard and takes so long. Insiders get very grumpy about this attitude, because they have to deal every day with the complications of the Senate procedural rules, the egos and turf battles of the powerful committee chairs, and the traditions and clubbiness of the Senate.<\/font><\/p>\n

I have a lot of sympathy for people on both sides of the divide. Having served in the White House, and been in DC for 17 years now, I know how hard it is to get things done in this town. And having read my share of history books, I know how hard it is to get big things done in general – it just doesn’t happen very often, and it is never ever easy or painless. But I also know this: if Democrats don’t deliver now, there will be no excuses<\/strong>. They have to find a way to deliver the goods. History, the media, activists, and voters will offer them no mercy if they can’t get health reform done this time around<\/strong>.<\/font><\/p>\n

So if failure is not an option, and there are four holdout Democrats [Wrong! Three DINOs and one pig!] in the Senate blocking the way to getting a reform bill the rest of the Democratic Party can live with, what is to be done?<\/font><\/p>\n

A lot of people, including me, have been saying for a while that those four Senators would probably eventually force Reid to use the reconciliation process, where you only need 51 votes, and in the end they still might because there might be no other option. But a lot of the more liberal Democrats in the Senate (including Harkin, Rockefeller, and Schumer) have started arguing against that option. Their reasons include that the bill would have to be dramatically scaled back to fit within the reconciliation rule<\/strong>, the process would likely be slowed down making pending legislation tougher to pass, and that the bill would have to be referred to Kent Conrad’s rather conservative budget committee where all kinds of bad things might happen to it<\/strong>. There are also an undetermined number of otherwise more progressive Senators such as Robert Byrd and Russ Feingold who believe putting health care in reconciliation violates the spirit of reconciliation rules, and would vote against the bill on principle.<\/font><\/p>\n

These are pretty compelling arguments, so my view is that progressives should not be demanding that Harry Reid put this bill through the reconciliation process. In the end, he may have no other choice<\/strong>, but to demand that before he has had the chance to pursue every other option makes no sense to me. To say Harry Reid – or the President or anyone else – can just force the bill through no matter what is simply not true. The American government, just doesn’t work that way\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Alternet<\/a>><\/p>\n

The Republicans passed many things by reconciliation, but the difference is that they always goose step together.  The Democratic Party encompasses almost the entire political spectrum and lacks the Senate leadership needed to pull them together.  Health care is not the only problem.  Even the most recent veterans bill that passed on the Senate floor 98-0 was stalled for weeks, because Coburn held it up.  Then just bring it to a vote took a full three days of floor debate, including overcoming three separate GOP filibusters.  When Democrats filibustered only the most egregious of the Texas Tyrant\u2019s ideologue judicial nominees, the Republicans threatened a \u201cnuclear option\u201d, changing the Senate rules to outlaw the filibuster on judicial nominees.  But in the 110th Congress, Republicans more than doubled the previous record for filibusters, and now in the 111th, they\u2019re on track to break that record.  The Republicans have crippled our government by filibustering every measure, even those without controversy, and sixty votes had become the de facto requirement to pass anything.  The filibuster was never intended to be used in this manner.  Enter Alan Grayson.  He has proposed to the Nevada Leg Hound, Harry Reid, that the rules be changed to require fifty five, not sixty, votes to overcome a filibuster.  The GOP cannot filibuster this rule change, so a simple fifty one vote majority is all that is required to pass it.  Last night, Keith Olbermann interviewed him.<\/p>\n