Part I is here
Q. What is a 'Senate Finance Committee' ?
A. A bunch of old people (average age 63) who know they'll have good
health care for as long they live. They get to decide whether younger,
lesser beings like you and I are worthy of health care, and if so, to
what extent we will continue to be terrorized by customers of
private insurance companies.
[The Gang of Six, exposed, after the cut...]
Q. Really?
A. Really. 23 Senators comprise the Senate Finance Committee, which has
jurisdiction over lots of important government functions including
revenues, Medicare and Medicaid. Proposals affecting Medicare or
Medicaid (which all health care proposals now under consideration do),
or revenues, as in taxes (which most of them do), go through this
Committee.
Q. What is a 'Gang of Six' ?
A. A bunch of even older people (average age 66), who will most
definitely have good health care for as long as they live. They get
to decide whether younger, lesser beings like you and I are worthy of
health care, and if so, to what extent we can continue to be
terrorized by customers of private insurance companies.
Q. But you just said...
A. Well, the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, decided
that the committee as a whole was too young and spry to deal with the
issue, so he knighted himself, two other Democrats and three
Republicans and put them on a sub-committee specifically tasked with
creating a Health Care bill.
Q. There are 60 Democrats in Congress, and only 40 Republicans, right?
A. Well, 57 Dems, 2 Independents, and a new Senator to be from
Massachusetts. All of them are or will be in the Democratic Caucus.
Q. Anyway, why would Max Baucus, a Democrat, create a
sub-committee with an equal number of Democrats and Republicans?
A. Because everyone wants the health care bill to be bipartisan.
Q. But if there are more Democrats than Republicans, why does
a health care bill have to be bipartisan?
A. Because everyone wants to bill to be bipartisan.
Q. Oh, come on now.
A. No really. The entire point is to have a bipartisan bill.
Max Baucus wants you to have a bipartisan bill. Your aunt Lucy, the
crazy one? She wants a bipartisan bill. That homeless lady downtown
with the kid who needs medical attention and the cute dog?
The lady and the kid (we're not sure of the dog) want a bipartisan
bill. Those Congolese women about to be forced into sexual
slavery? -- they all want the bill to be bipartisan. And Taliban
fighters in Afghanistan? -- they pray five times a day for Allah to
make this bill bipartisan. The only people who are even suspected of
not wanting a bipartisan bill are (shhhh) socialists. (And that's just
a rumor that occasionally surfaces on a certain blog site.)
Q. Okay, okay. So have they created a bipartisan bill?
A. No.
Q. Why not?
A. The Republicans are against it.
Q. But you just said...
A. Look, there's an exception that proves every rule. The
Republicans do not want a bipartisan bill, thereby completing the
proof that everyone wants a bipartisan bill.
Q. Oooh. My brain hurts. So what have the Gang of Six been doing?
A. According to this eyewitness account, they've been holed up in a secret hideout in
Iowa for months, waiting on a mysterious stranger.
Q. So what have the Gang of Six accomplished?
A. No one knows.
Q. Oh, come on now.
A. Well, maybe Olympia Snowe's hairdresser knows, but no one else does.
Q. Haven't they been working on this since April?
A. Define 'working'.
Q. Now just one dang minute, here. Just want the devil is going on?
A. Senator Baucus has given himself and his sub-committee numerous
self-imposed deadlines to forge a health care bill (a process called
'mark up'). He has failed to to meet each of those deadlines. The
committee keeps meeting, and when it's not has mysterious conference
calls where they speak in sign language so no one can wiretap them.
Q. Really?
A. I just made that last part up.
Q. So why don't they fire him? My boss would fire me if I missed
every deadline for six months.
A. You don't write software, do you?
Q. Look, I'm ask the questions here! Is there a current deadline?
A. Yes, September 15th.
Q. Why should this deadline be any different?
A. No one knows.
Q. Is there any way to get around the Gang of Six? Bypass them, perhaps?
Make them irrelevant? Move their headquarters to Irkutsk ?
A. I played Risk! too as a kid. But Irkutsk is out of the question.
Still It might be possible to bypass them. (Read down).
Q. So why is this circus farce waste of the public treasury allowed to continue?
A. Everyone wants a bipartisan bill. Remember your Aunt Lucy, the
crazy one?
Q. Sigh. Yes. Is there any hope?
A. There is always hope.
Q. Not that again.
A. Would you prefer watching 'The Gang of Six, Episode 352' ?
Q. Touche'. What about President Obama?
A. What about him?
Q. Can't he, like, do something?
A. President Obama wants a bipartisan bill.
Q. No!
A. Yes, he's said so many times, such as here, in June, and here, in July.
Q. Couldn't he just, like, use a signing statement?
A. He'd have to have something to sign.
Q. Oh, right. Threats? Bribes?
A. Illegal.
Q. Are not.
A. Are too.
Q. Are not.
A. This is tedious.
Q. I've got it! Send the Gang of Six to Guantanamo! A little 'enhanced
interrogation' and they'll be confessing to the Sharon Tate murders
marking up a health bill in no time.
A. They're closing it...
Q. Curses! Foiled again. Where is Dick Cheney when you need him?
A. There is something they could do.
Q. What? Tell me! Does it involve a sex scandal?
A. Sadly, no. But once they get their 60th Senator back, they could
do this thing called reconciliation.
Q. Is that anything like intervention?
A. No. Yes. I don't know. Anyway, if all the Democrats in the
Senate can agree to nix a health care bill filibuster (you need 60
votes to terminate the filibuster, i.e. cut off debate and move on),
they can pass a health care bill even if they don't actually all vote
for it. They just have to vote not to filibuster it, and get 50 votes
(plus Vice President Biden to tie-break) to pass it. Then, when a
compromise bill comes back from a conference committee with the House
of Representatives, they can invoke reconciliation to pass it with 50
votes (plus tie-breaker).
Q. No way!
A. Way.
Q. No way?
A. Way!
Q. So why don't they just do this?
A. Everyone wants a bipartisan bill. Remember your Aunt Lucy, the
crazy one?
Q. Look, Aunt Lucy may be daft, but she's not anywhere near as crazy
as Michelle Bachmann.
So, strictly hypothetically, could Obama get his 60 Democratic Caucus
members to, uh, actually support the Democratic Party and not
filibuster a Democratic bill supported by a Democratic President?
A. It's not as hard to herd cats, as it is to herd Blue Dogs.