Kinda, Sorta Real Time Thoughts on Meet the Press (March 01, 2010)

Reality continues to ruin my life.  For the second time in as many weeks, I’ve been forced to jot down the points of political interests. The March 7th airing of Meet the Press features Gov. Kathleen Sibelius, the Secy. of Health and Human Services.  She has been dispatched by the Obama Administration to talk about the last run at real health care reform.

1.  The main question on the table: Most Americans who have health insurance like their insurance and a majority of Americans do not favor Obama’s healthcare proposals.  So how can the administration pass it?

Secretary Sibelius’ argument is that those with insurance are one lay-off away from disaster.  And those who are employed are worried about this.  Secondly insurance market competitition in this country is decreasing.  Due to this monopoly pricing even employed workers are being priced out of the individual insurance market.  The counter-point to this argument is: Okay where is the evidence that people are afraid?  Certainly there is strong evidence that Americans do not like what Obama wants to offer.

The second point of the argument is to demonstrate that insurance companies are gouging the consumer with rate hikes that do not correspond to the increasing cost of care.  So if this can be demonstrated to the U.S. voter then the Democratic leadership can pull together the required 51 votes in the reconciliation process in the Senate.

The final push is coming, but when is the deadline, DG wants to know.  If reform is not passed by Easter, will Obama come back to this policy issue, even though Obama has now staked his presidency on this policy?  There’s no doubt that Sibelius does not want to talk about the consequences of break-down in the Democratic Caucus.  After all, everything will turn on what the perceived consequence of this bill on cost-cutting will be.  And the Caucus will vote up or down as polls show the expected benefits of reform.

The other big question of how this reform bill passes is Bart Stupak’s promises to vote no for the Senate version of the bill.  Stupak is the Michigan Congressman who pushed through a House bill that does not allow for insurance plans that take in federal money associated with abortion funding.

2.  The roundtable includes Sen. Orinn Hatch of Utah, former Congressman Harold Ford Jr. E.J. Dionne and Rich Lowry of the National Review.  The question is the same: what are the benefits of going through reconciliation. Harold Ford Jr. is talking about passing the bill with some GOP support, like the jobs bill. (Okay now, this is pie in the sky stuff).

Rich Lowry is saying the bill is partisan.  (Yes it is.  But not for a lack of effort to try to get some GOP votes.  The question then is what are the limits beyond which a bill becomes, remains, etc, bipartisan.) 

Senator Hatch is saying that the reconciliation process never went through on a partisan bill that had long-lasting societal impact.  (That seems untrue since the welfare bill under Clinton passed in reconciliation as did the Bush tax cuts).  E.J. Dionne has done a marvelous job in pushing Sen Hatch on parsing apart his argument: are you talking about the reconciliation process or bi-partisanship?  If the former, then your criticism is fairly weak.  If the latter, then the GOP has been as guilty as what one now assumes falls on Democrats.

Rich Lowry is right that the Democrats are going for the end process run because they can’t go back to committee on this bill.  So given what they’ve got, the Democrats are going to push process into an outcome.

Harold Ford Jr. wants is saying that at the end of the day results matter more than politicking a process.  It is interesting that he is ciding the Democratic leadership for forcing him out of the Senate race in New York.  Explaining that he wasn’t interested in bringing down the majority, he nevertheless argued that Democrats don’t quite understand the policy argument is about owns insecurities.  Jobs is at the top of that list.

~ by Faheem Haider on March 7, 2010.