First, my own personal opinion. Sen. Reid. Bring the public option with the state opt out to the floor and make them filibuster it.
In current practice, Senate Rule 22 permits procedural filibusters, in which actual continuous floor speeches are not required, although the Senate Majority Leader may require an actual traditional filibuster if he or she so chooses. This threat of a filibuster can therefore be as powerful as an actual filibuster. Previously the filibustering senator(s) could delay voting only by making an endless speech. Currently they need only indicate that they are filibustering, thereby preventing the senate from moving on to other business until the motion is withdrawn or enough votes are gathered for cloture. Since this change, the procedural filibuster is used frequently, and the traditional filibuster has become increasingly rare.
You have the power to make them talk this out on national television and I think guarantee the 2010 election for this party.
The White House is apparently afraid of the filibuster and does not trust in Sen. Reid's count. That's what I've taken from Ezra Klein's round up of the yo-yo reports emerging today.
On Thursday night, Reid went over to the White House for a talk with the president. The conversation centered on Reid's desire to put Schumer's national opt-out plan into the base bill. White House officials were not necessarily pleased, and they made that known. Everyone agrees that they didn't embrace Reid's new strategy. Everyone agrees that the White House wants Snowe on the bill, feels the trigger offers a safer endgame, and isn't convinced by Reid's math. But whether officials expressed a clear preference for the trigger, or were just worried about the potential for 60 votes, is less clear. One staffer briefed on the conversation says "the White House basically told us, 'We hope you guys know what you're doing.'"
David Dayen at FDL has pretty much gone through this and come out at the same place:
I think the best guess you can make of all this hash is that the White House is running their own parallel whip count and doesn’t trust Reid’s numbers and just wants something to pass and thinks that anything with Snowe on board will.
The screw up over the Doctor's Fix likely hasn't done much to instill any confidence in Leader Reid's whip counts; which is probably why the entire leadership team went to the White House yesterday to make the case.
So let's think about this:
We have numerous reports that the President favors the trigger option on the public plan because that brings in Sen. Snowe's support and allows him to pull in the conservative democrats. It also puts the public option in the senate bill. We also know that Speaker Pelosi has pushed for the public option in the House bill and explicitly told balky House members that she wants the robust Medicare +5 public option plan because it gives her the strongest hand in negotiating during conferences and she can pair it with excellent subsides that are far more generous than the Finance bill; something a lot of democrats are worried about too.
Politico, CNN last night, and the NYT all pushed out stories that infuriated House leadership intimating that Speaker Pelosi wasn't going to be able to deliver on Medicare +5 and that the President wanted a trigger option not a robust public option. This was pushed back on Morning Joe by Valerie Jarrett and by the Speaker's aides in other settings.
Transcript:
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Hey, Valerie, we had Mike Allen from Politico on earlier this morning, he said Nancy Pelosi didn’t have the votes for a public option and said that there was some suggestion that the President wants a health care reform bill that doesn’t have a public option, but has a trigger in case the insurance companies don’t start playing ball. Is that a fair description of the President’s current position?
VALERIE JARRETT: No, I think the President has always said that he’s committed to the public option. Why? Because he thinks it will create competition and therefore bring down costs. He’s always said he’s open to new ideas, but at this late stage in the game, he still thinks it’s the best option. So I don’t know whether Mike Allen can actually count votes or not. A lot of people said President Obama didn’t have the votes to win, but he did. So we’ll see. He’s committed to it, he’s pushing for it, and he’s absolutely committed to delivering on health care reform this year.
SCARBOROUGH: So, by the White House’s count, do you believe you have enough votes to pass a public option in the House and the Senate?
JARRETT: You know, we’ll see. I think it’s too soon to tell. All I know is that we’re going to keep pushing until the very last moment. But I think it’s important to understand why. We want to bring down the costs. Joe, there’s some states, such as Maine or Alabama, where you only have a couple of insurers, and in those states, you see that the prices are going up. And so what we want to do, on behalf of the American people and our taxpayers, is to bring down those costs so that it’s more affordable. That’s what we think the public option will do.
This does two things. It undercuts Nancy in the House; the President isn't going to go for a public option and wants a trigger and stops cold the momentum that had been developing. We know that Baucus has hated the turn towards the opt-out compromise and been fighting against it. This has shown up in multiple reports. We also know that the White House wants to get this thing to conference and out of both houses with a serious public option place into the bill in conference if necessary.
At about 5:30 p.m. today, President Obama held a conference call on health-care reform that included, in his closing remarks, an unusually thorough glimpse at the White House's legislative strategy:
The House bills and the Senate bills will not be identical. We know this. The politics are different, because the makeup of the Senate and the House are different and they operate on different rules. I am not interested in making the best the enemy of the good. There will be a conference committee where the House and Senate bills will be reconciled, and that will be a tough, lengthy and serious negotiation process.
I am less interested in making sure there's a litmus test of perfection on every committee than I am in going ahead and getting a bill off the floor of the House and off the floor of the Senate. Eighty percent of those two bills will overlap. There's going to be 20 percent that will be different in terms of how it will be funded, its approach to the public plan, its pay-or-play provisions. We shouldn't automatically assume that if any of the bills coming out of the committees don't meet our test, that there is a betrayal or failure. I think it's an honest process of trying to reconcile a lot of different interests in a very big bill.
Conference is where these differences will get ironed out. And that's where my bottom lines will remain: Does this bill cover all Americans? Does it drive down costs both in the public sector and the private sector over the long-term. Does it improve quality? Does it emphasize prevention and wellness? Does it have a serious package of insurance reforms so people aren't losing health care over a preexisting condition? Does it have a serious public option in place? Those are the kind of benchmarks I'll be using. But I'm not assuming either the House and Senate bills will match up perfectly with where I want to end up. But I am going to be insisting we get something done.
After that quote, it seems almost redundant to say that this is the clearest indication we've gotten that the White House sees conference committee as the focal point for its efforts. But that's the message. The audience for this call -- which I was not originally invited to, but was able to listen in on -- was mainly progressive bloggers, and so the underlying argument was that liberals should have some faith that a disappointing draft out of the Senate Finance Committee is not the end of the process, and they should not lose heart.
But it's also a risky strategy: The plea for progressives to avoid making "the best the enemy of the good," and instead remember that flaws can be fixed in conference committee, is, on some level, the White House saying, "Trust us." Conference committee, after all, is a closed-door negotiation that is hard to influence. What emerges will be very hard, if not impossible, to change. If the White House does not hew to the same bottom lines as the progressive bloggers, or is not able to persuade the congressional negotiators to honor its preferences, the product could diverge quite sharply from what some liberals are hoping for.
On the other hand, actually getting health-care reform to conference would be further than any president has gotten ever. If the White House can shepherd this effort that far, maybe it will deserve some trust.
Between Jarrett's comments today, the President's comments during this blogger conference call and in public numerous times, and the actions of Speaker Pelosi it seems clear the White House never envisioned a public option passing through the senate in regular order. In point of fact, there were deep fears of health care reform in ANY shape passing the senate. Hence, the reconciliation insurance.
At the end of the day: the White House has 55 votes for a Medicare +5 national plan in the senate. If they put that in through conference committee and then take it back to the senate the conservative democrats will not be able to filibuster the conference report and can go and vote it down and say I voted for a different health care reform and liberals pushed it too far.
The opt-out actually threatens the idea of a national plan in that respect and getting a trigger is a better deal. Then in conference, the House can demand a their fiscally sound public option, go from Medicare +5 to negotiated rates in return for larger subsidies.
A trigger is a safe way to get to committee.
But Harry Reid has to watch his left flank, now. And he can't afford a trigger. He also can't afford a pure public option. The White House doesn't want to put this through reconciliation when the House is guaranteeing a real national public option and they can get that in conference.
So, what's the deal?
Harry Reid doesn't have control of his caucus. He doesn't have the trust of the administration like Nancy Pelosi does. And he desperately needs the President to come down hard on the opt-out; which he's not willing to do because it isn't a true national plan. The trigger, at least, he can say is a national plan that will be pulled. And then go for a non trigger in conference.
But Harry Reid is facing down "Are you strong enough?" ads. This is a political test of his manhood. And he's stuck and the house is stuck this nightmare with him that Ezra Klein outlines:
Imagine Reid puts Schumer's pulibc option proposal -- the national plan that states can opt-out of -- into the bill. The bill comes to the floor, and it loses Snowe and one or two centrist moderates. Byrd is sick and unable to vote. The sticking point is the Schumer plan, so it needs to come out of the bill.
But even though the bill can't get 60 votes to proceed, Reid's office also can't find 60 votes to strip the public option out of the bill. The liberals won't go for it. The left is organized against it. There's no reason, they say, that 55 Democrats should bow to the wishes of five centrists and a Republican on a popular provision. Reid and the White House should stop dithering and put their back into this, they argue. Indeed, maybe some mischievous Republicans even join the liberals in defeating the motion to strip Schumer's proposal. The bill is just stuck in limbo: It doesn't have the votes to move forward or backward.
But I say: Let them filibuster. The Senate Majority Leader can require a traditional filibuster if he wants to and Harry Reid should definitely want to force a filibuster on the opt-out. It solves his own political problems. Smokes out the democrats threatening to join the Republicans in filibuster. And forces a true blue filibuster. People going to the floor to argue against health care reform in this economy with AHIP just saying that health care premiums WILL be raised.
The White House will also have political gold. They will be on the side of the people. It'll be like the government shut down. People hated that. They'll hate this too.
So make'em talk it out Harry. And Mr. President: Stop worrying and learn to love the filibuster.
That's my take on the confusing events of the day and how I reconcile it all. I'll just say to end, I support the President. But this health care legislation is one of the major reasons that I am a democrat. At the end of the day; this is going to be on President Obama to have created a workable plan that constitutes real reform. And that's what I'll judge him on. And the freak out over lackadaisical reform in the progressive sphere will be intense.
Get a public option, Mr.President. And yeah, you should think about the fact that none of this kicking in til 2013. I know someone has because you addressed this issue in the health care address; but I've seen nothing since then and you have a hella lot of work to do towards this. Good Luck with that.
UPDATE: Thanks so much for putting this on the Rec list. I'm sorry I won't be able to respond so more til later but I'm going out now. Have a great weekend.
I also want to say thank you to slinkerwink and the folks at FDL. They've been doing such great work and I wanted to recognize them.