Harry Reid

What Did We Learn From Saturday's Health Care Vote

Brian Beutler | November 23, 2009, 11:50AM

Senators Nelson (D-NE) and Lieberman (I-CT)

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid got his 60 on Saturday, and when the Senate returns from Thanksgiving recess next week, they'll be debating and amending a major piece of health care legislation. However, the vote, and its aftermath exposed or clarified the cleavages within the Democratic party that will have to be bridged if Reid hopes to keep his caucus in line on the next cloture motion--to end a Republican filibuster and hold a simple majority vote on reform.

If you thought the opt-out compromise was a silver bullet for the public option, you may have gotten a bit ahead of yourself. It held up for a while, and could still survive, but that's going to require some interesting gymnastics from Democratic leaders. Leading up to Saturday's vote, and in its immediate aftermath, conservative Democrats entrenched their opposition to the public option in the Senate bill. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) repeated his threat to support a health care filibuster if it includes a public option of any kind, and, despite her earlier support for the provision, Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) took to the Senate floor Saturday and announced, "I'm promising my colleagues that I'm prepared to vote against moving to the next stage of consideration as long as a government-run public option is included." That gives her a bit more wiggle room than Lieberman's left himself, and Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Ben Nelson (D-NE) have a bit more still, but that makes 60 for the opt out a tough climb. On the other side of the caucus, though, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), and Roland Burris (D-IL) have inched closer to threatening to block a health care bill from the left if the public option is weakened further. If reform is to pass, one side of the caucus will have to hold its collective nose and vote for something they don't like.

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Health Care

Progressives To Moderates: Do You Really Want To Kill Health Care Reform?

Brian Beutler | November 17, 2009, 12:46PM

Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)

The urgency of last night's meeting between Senate progressives and Majority Leader Harry Reid surrounded the fact that, though the overwhelming majority of Democrats want a public option, and several think they've already compromised enough on that score, the votes still aren't there. So, with key votes just around the corner, how can those moderate hold-outs be swayed, and what happens if they can't be? One possibility is simply leaving the ball in the moderates' court.

"There's potentially a dynamic that works in all of this that as you get closer and closer to the vote, you say--you really do say--we're going to make or we're not going to make history, and it takes on another dimension, psychologically," Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) told reporters. "I mean I've been through that myself. I've gone downstairs thinking maybe I'm not going to vote for that, and then suddenly I see its dimension, think of it in large terms, and then vote for it."

Rockefeller downplayed the possibility that, at the end of the process, there won't be 60 votes to end a filibuster.

"We're not taking that tack, what if we can't--we're talking about how we can," Rockefeller told TPMDC. He said using the budget reconciliation process as a procedural tool to circumvent a filibuster would be ugly, and, for that reason, the focus has to be on making sure Democrats (and perhaps Olympia Snowe) stick together to against a filibuster.

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Bill Clinton

Clinton To Senate Democrats: Whatever You Do, Don't Lose

Brian Beutler | November 10, 2009, 2:40PM

Fmr. President Bill Clinton

After an hour-long lunch with the Senate Democratic caucus, former President Bill Clinton found himself surrounded by dozens of reporters, and summarized his message as one of the urgency of action. "The worst thing to do is nothing," Clinton said of the party's health care reform push. "We can do so much better."

As they emerged from the lunch one by one, a number of senators echoed this rendering.

"His message was very simply it is so important that this be done, that there are so many people, I think 30 percent of the population he said at one point or another, don't have any health care coverage," Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) told TPMDC, "and so the ability to fix the problem is really upon us."

"He made clear that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity," she added, noting that Clinton did not directly address the politically divisive policy aspects of reform--abortion, the public option--in his presentation.

To members who are facing tough re-election races next year (such as fellow Arkansas native Blanche Lincoln) Clinton's message was equally simple: "You're going to do it, and then people are going to begin to see that none of the bad things that people are talking about will come to pass, essentially," Feinstein said.

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Health Care

Dems to Revisit Party Unity Against Filibusters When Massachusetts Appoints 60th Senator

Brian Beutler | September 21, 2009, 6:48PM

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

If you're keeping score on the question of passing health care reforms as part of a filibuster-proof budget reconciliation bill, then you know that Democratic leaders in the Senate see it as an absolute last resort; and you know that if they go there, then they don't plan to test the limits of Senate rules along the way. The latter means that the reforms themselves would be subject to a number of arcane procedural tricks that could leave the legislation with some serious holes in it, and Democrats would either have to fill those holes separately, in a regular bill, or cross their fingers and hope things work out OK in the end anyhow. Meanwhile, liberal activists are pretty miffed that Democrats aren't at least threatening to use the process as aggressively as they can, and that's both widening the inter-party rift and leaving the party's legislative efforts without much support from the base.

That way lies the potential for a number of problems, both within the fractured Democratic coalition and for the substance of reform itself.

But if and when the governor of Massachusetts appoints a temporary replacement for Ted Kennedy, there will suddenly be a simpler and more elegant way around this impasse. That is, if only Democrats can stay united against a GOP health care filibuster.

Even if this meant passing a purely partisan bill, this would be the Democrats' preference. "We can get more done through a 60 vote bill than through reconciliation," says a Senate Democratic leadership aide.

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Health Care

Dean: Reconciliation Threat 'A Reminder That We're Getting Health Care This Year'

Brian Beutler | August 21, 2009, 2:33PM

Fmr. DNC Chair Howard Dean

Former DNC chair Howard Dean is pleased as punch with the message coming out of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's office.

In response to the news that Reid might carve up health care reform legislation and pass pieces through the budget reconciliation process, Dean tells TPMDC "I obviously think reconciliation is a great idea."

"I don't believe in obstructionism, which is what the Republicans are doing," he says.

On the point of obstructionism Dean isn't deaf to the political problems reconciliation might cause. He acknowledges that "the GOP might be so incensed by the use of reconciliation" that they'd tie up the Senate with procedural issues. Of course, the Republicans didn't have any problem with jamming controversial measures through the reconciliation process when they controlled things under President Bush.

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