Ahhh, assumptions. It being Monday, the staff here at Blogistan Polytechnic Institute assumed the faculty would follow their usual practice, rambling from the wine cellar library where they spend the weekend researching our motto of Magis vinum, magis verum ("More wine, more truth") to the hot tub faculty lounge for their usual game where the underwear goes flying conference. They did, but along their way they spoke at some length about the tacit assumptions beneath the swirling theories about President Obama's position on health care reform.
More below the fold....
First as always, we thank last week's guest lecturers. Last Tuesday, Professor of Neuroholdemology Caractacus compared observations on the United States by Bono and Alexis de Toqueville. Last Wednesday, co-tag-fixer and Top Comment maven JanF made her BPI guest lecture debut with a discussion of political humor titled What's So Funny? If you missed either, please give them a read.
This Tuesday Professor Caractacus will continue his Things We Learned This Week series with his observations on Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's speech last week at Columbia Teacher's College. On Wednesday, Professor of Ecoinsaninsuroscamology winterbanyan returns to the podium to explore who falls through the cracks of our economy in a lecture titled "The Least Of These." As always, Chef will be there with refreshments and the Professor of Astrology Janitor will be somewhere else making a Halloween costume involving cream cheese and poker chips.
Note: We have guest hosts for the following two weeks. If you would like to host Morning Feature on Wednesday, November 18th or any subsequent Wednesday, please volunteer in a comment below.
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So about those assumptions....
As has been multiply diaried at hotly debated, the Huffington Post echoed other reports that Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) may include an opt-out compromise of the public option in the combined Senate health care reform bill and that Reid will do so without President Obama's support. If true - and that's an anonymously-sourced "if" - that report could support any of these conclusions:
- President Obama thinks it's better to compromise on when/if (trigger) than where/who (opt-out). Given the choice of those compromises, I would prefer the opt-out as it allows at least the possibility that those in states that opt out can "vote with their feet" and move to a state that has not opted out. A perhaps-never-pulled trigger offers no such chance. But I can see a reasoned argument the other way: if the trigger is pulled, the public option would be available nationwide, and it wouldn't begin until 2013 even under H.R. 3200 so a trigger may not delay its inception regardless.
- President Obama doesn't think the votes are there for the opt-out public option and that a Senate bill with a trigger is better than no Senate bill at all. The announced White House plan was to work the public option into the bill in the conference committee, for two reasons: (a) the White House has greater leverage during the conference committee because there are fewer actors to convince; and, (b) conference committee bills get an up-or-down vote in the Senate. If the Senate bill fails, there's no conference and health care reform dies, period. If the Senate votes down a public option without a trigger and then passes a bill with a trigger, it will be harder to remove the trigger in conference.
- President Obama really doesn't want a public option, his speeches in favor of it were all meant to confuse progressives, he's received or has been promised tons of money from the insurance lobby, and "the fix was in" all along.
Many have leaped to presume #3. While some making that leap may simply have never believed President Obama is progressive enough for their liking, I suspect the more common impulse for that leap has to do with the tacit assumptions one makes about universal health care reform in 2009.
How easy did you assume universal health care would be?
One assumption is that, with 60 members of the Democratic caucus in the Senate, an overwhelming Democratic majority in the House, and a mandate in the 2008 election, universal health care reform should and would have been a done deal if only President Obama had issued a veto threat, Rahm Emanuel were not Chief of Staff, Howard Dean were on Obama's health care team, and/or [other hypotheticals here]. Under the Obama-could-have-anything-he-"really-wanted" assumption, options #1 and #2 are moot and President Obama is a "corporate sellout." That assumption seems to be popular in some quarters, but that doesn't make it true.
I think the more likely assumption is that universal health care reform is a daunting political challenge and - despite strong popular support and the best efforts of President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid, and activists who've supported them - we're not all the way there yet. Moreover, an ideal bill was never possible given the makeup of the 2009 Senate. The Senate Democratic caucus may have 60 members, but not all are progressives on health care reform and this was never a done deal.
For example, Senators Mary Landreau (D-LA) and Ben Nelson (D-NE) have openly criticized any reform that might hurt the insurance industry. In that respect they're nearer Republicans than Democrats on this issue. With only 60 members in the Democratic caucus and the 40 Republicans in near lockstep agreement, just two Senate Democrats supporting a GOP filibuster guarantees no Senate bill at all. Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) might break with her party if the bill includes a trigger, and maybe she could convince Maine colleague Susan Collins to come along. Most of the analyses I've read don't think Sen. Collins would join Sen. Snowe, and even if she did I don't see any other Republican voting for cloture. The remaining Senate Republicans, plus Senators Landreau and Ben Nelson, are enough to sustain the filibuster and stop the health care reform dead in its tracks.
Why can two Senate Democrats wield so much power here?
The answer doesn't require speculation on what President Obama "really wants." It turns on the structure and history of the U.S. Senate, a body that was intended to be more change-averse than the House. While usually described as a bulwark against the "tyranny of the majority," the filibuster rule and the overall structure of the Senate were crafted to safeguard the privileges of property ownership against the passions of populism. The Senate is expressly counter-democratic. Each state gets two senators, regardless of population, and originally the senators were not directly accountable to voters. They were appointed to six-year terms by state legislatures to insulate them from popular opinion.
This is the context within which the filibuster - letting a 40% minority block a bill - was created. The Senate, and the filibuster in particular, were created to thwart popular will, including the roughly 60% of Americans now demanding a public option in health care reform. Senators Landreau and Nelson, and perhaps one or two other members of the Senate Democratic caucus, wield so much power because the Senate was set up to enable exactly that: a 40% propertied minority blocking a populist reform.
What leap do we make?
These are the obstacles with which President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Majority Leader Reid have been struggling. Under this assumption, we need no unproven and unprovable speculation about what President Obama "really wants," and options #1 and #2 are the more reasonable leaps if - again that anonymously-sourced "if" - the HuffPo and other reports are true. Either President Obama believes the trigger is a better compromise than the opt-out, or he believes trying to pass the opt-out compromise in the Senate bill may result in no bill passing at all. Neither requires that he be a "corporate sellout," merely a president making his own count of likely Senate votes and devising strategies accordingly.
Which of those two assumptions, and which of the three leaps, do you think is most likely ... and why?
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Happy Monday!