Amid Health Care Chaos, Progressives See Opening For Public Option Revival

hear, hear!

GREAT!!! everyone wants to do all the things that no one agreed on before.

I only want a free unicorn if it has rainbows and sparkles. I also don't want "those" people to get a free unicorn. Especially if I'm going to have to pay for it.

I like unicorns....

The longer this drags out, the less chance there is that there will be reform. And I think chances are already vanishingly small.

It's almost as if the Democrats don't want to lead and don't want to govern.

I have been a supporter of the public option, but this seems like the last thing HCR needs right now, in terms of getting a real comprehensive reform package passed. We know there aren't 60 votes for a public option in the Senate, but I frankly have my doubts that there are even 51 during this year election year.

The public option was never the most important part of this legislation. It is a good idea, and something I would like to see the Congress pick up again, but they're never going to have the chance if they don't get the Senate bill passed (with an amending bill that would enact the compromises that otherwise would've been taken care of in conference committee).

yesterday was a dismal day for the average citizen.
Elections will no longer be determined by voters, thanks to the
activist corporate flank of the Supreme Court.
The Republican spin on Tuesdays Mass election and the heath care debate spread like a thick
slimy layer of crankcase oil over all the news media.
And Air America closed shop.

As to the health care bill. Many on the left, center and right did not like the Senate bill.
Many fear it's expense, but many were ready to go along with it because, well because average Americans so desparately need more affordable healthcare.
Liberals, conservatives and moderates in the house felt they could not pass the Senate bill. In the genral public, many liberals, conservatives , moderates and populists agreed that it was scary expensive.
So the death of that Senate bill is not to be wholly mourned.
the only way out of this is through it. With steely determination and a renergized base, the house must now craft health care legislation that actually serves the average American. period. This is actually an opportunity for populist and progressive Democrats, and even independends and Republicans, because people are watching and are hungry for results.
However, this morning I hear Republicans, who have never offered the American people one ounce of reasonable legislation with regard to health care, proclaim that recent events show their solution to be the right one.
Nothing could be further from the truth. It will be interesting to see if recently self proclaimed 'populist' voters are in fact populists. If these voters think that the Democrats represent big money and bloated budgets, they have either forgotten or have not yet glimpsed the massive greed and cynicism at the heart of the right wing political machine.
Will they turn on their new heroes when they get fed crumbs? Or will they continue to lap the delusional yet perfectly concocted pablum being served them via their chosen pundits? Will they ride this machine till it
abandons them ?

As to the Supreme court decision, As foreign as well as Domestic CEO's are rubbing their hands together in glee, this decision should point out to any self proclaimed independents who think that the current administration is leading the country in the wrong direction to do a gut check. You have no idea how much your supposed 'freedom 'loving antics are jeopardizing our basic constitutional freedom. The self proclaimed constitutionalists are unwittingly participating in the process of eroding the last vestiges of a proud nation of the people , for the people and by the people.

ZOMG. I've been suggesting this before the summer circus mess!!!

La La land. 'nough said.

I have come to know exactly what the Democratic party is:
a cult of self-mutilation and masochism that only cares about getting its members re-elected, all while mouthing cliches it doesn't believe or understand. And yet, we have to find better Democratic candidates because a third party will only give Republicans more power.

Pass the crackpipe.

There aren't 50/51 votes to pass the Senate Bill if it came up right now given the freakout. Getting the PO through the Senate *and* a House where the Blue Dogs are running scared... just nuts.

I'm a single payer fan. I liked *neither* the House or Senate bills as my ideal. But at some point folks need to wake up: There is no longer a "better" fall back position from the Senate Bill. Only it, or worse.

Are there areas that over time might be improved. Perhaps. But with the Citizen's case, we'll see *billions* rather than hundreds of millions tossed at defeating it. There will be no process like this in the future. The best we will be able to do are populist items like SCHIPS, or tweeks like expansing Medicare.

I don't think people grasp both the level of the freakout (*Bayh's* seat looks like it's in play) nor the impact of Citizen's.

2009 will long be looked back at a wasted chance, and probably the final nail in the coffin of the American Empire. Bold action *was* possible. But it really needed to be all crammed into the first 100 days, with all the planning on it being worked on and done by Leadership and the incoming Admin in the *transition* period so that legislation was teed up to go.

Instead, none of the major items have passed. None of them *will*. Kiss off Global Warming via Congress. Kiss off immigrations. DADT? Good luck. Financial Reform? The Admin is going to try, but they have failed on populism, and even something like BK cramdown and credit card regulation failed. Does anyone think this Admin can control the message, or that Leadership in Congress can move items through fast enough before they get bogged down by the lies of the Noise Machine? The GOP in the Senate isn't going to let anything move swiftly. That's they tool: slow it down long enough to get the Noise Machine going, which strangles it off like a python. Often with the help of Conservative Dems.

2010 will be more of the same as 2009. Just more embarassing for our party, and more destructive for our country.

Jesus... I don't look forward to the RR Admin who comes after the Carter Admin that Obama's is slowly sinking into. The foundation is well laid for a group like that (or Nixon's or Bush II's) to complete the final shove of us into the abyss.

John

These hammerheads just do not get it

The public is EXHAUSTED after 10 months of harangue often from the totally irrelevant PCC which Beutler dutifully passes here

Unfit to govern

Essentially the same muddle from van Hollen via Sargent which drew this to my congresswoman Cc: DCCC
Just emailed my congresswoman cc: DCCC

“Madam Speaker:
Chris Van Hollen wants me to continue answering his fundraising emails and calls?
Van Hollen: Senate Bill’s Brand May Be Irrevocably Tarnished, So We May Go Reconciliation Instead
Good money after bad.
Problematic, loopy logic – If you cannot pass the Senate bill now and improve the result with targeted legislation you cannot pass comprehensive reform. But you can PASS THE SENATE BILL or take responsibility for killing health care.
I’ve had it with these uncoordinated, unworkable, feckless responses from my Democratic leadership”

Do these knuckleheads really think the public is clamoring for the Public Option? Thanks to the PCC and folks like Beutler some people still persist in that folly

Of course they aren't. Neither are they going to tolerate months of parliamentary wrangling in the USS over a public option via reconciliation which isn't essentially a budget matter

Now that reconciliation is back on the Democrats to-do list, there's no reason why elements that fell just short of 60 votes can't be revisted as a way to bolster support for the bill.

Granted there's little will to do anything in the Senate, so it may come down to passing the Senate bill first, and then just hoping they do their part; but if we're not going to panic -- then there's no reason to assume the worst. The plan is feasible and the result, if agreed to would be very good.

There's no reason to crap all over one of the few groups to be proposing something instead of panicking, and there's no reason to dismiss out of hand the idea that something that couldn't get sixty votes can't get fifty under different circumstances. It might not fly, but it's certainy worth a shot, and it doesn't preclude the last ditch 'just-pass-the-senate-bill' option.

Yes, as long as we're going to pause to pull some unicorns and rainbows out of our ass while the clock ticks down to zero, by all means let's not let the fact that this novel procedure of having a house amending bill it's passed to the other side before it's enacted would be constitutionally dubious bother us.

And let's not even bother our utopian little heads with worrying that the Supreme Court has just shown us that it has an activist majority that will wipe its collective ass with every principle of Constitutional jurisprudence built up over the last two hundred years if that's what it takes to advance narrow partisan Republican interests. Those unicorns can't wait!

No, let's forget all of that and build a Constitutional time bomb into our Progressive Unicorns and Rainbows For All amendment so that our activist Surpreme Court will have a hook it can use to strike down the whole fucking act, rather than take any of the dozens of other, perfectly normal, paths to getting what we want. Paths like, say, enacting the Senate bill and then introducing legislation to amend it a minute after it's signed into law.

Idiots.

I'll tell you what--if Democrats can't kick some butt when they have the boots on, then what's the point of voting for Democrats?

by all means let's not let the fact that this novel procedure of having a house amending bill it's passed to the other side before it's enacted would be constitutionally dubious

Based on what do you suggest this? As described it doesn't sound all that complicated, and this isn't coming from blast emails from MoveOn or something, it's coming from some fairly level-headed members of Congress. If it is constitutionally dubious, okay, count that against the plan (the bigger problem to me with the amend-then-pass strategy is it sounds like more delay), but I haven't seen anything to suggest it is.

The idea of an amendment to a bill being passed before the bill itself and the President just signing the two in reverse order is so simple surely it's been discussed or attempted or come up before. If there's something actually controversial about it surely that will come out very quickly. And if it turns out to be impossible then it seems reasonable to expect the Congresspeople asking for reconciliation "first" to moderate their positions to something which maybe gives them less security but still offers some (for example, demanding the Senate take up the reconciliation bill, or do a whip count, before the House passes its own bill).