Thank you Senator Reid, hopefully not prematurely. What a Herculean task. Passing the Patient Protection and Affordability Act through the first of six scheduled votes, on a motion to invoke cloture, required corraling a Democratic caucus that is more fractious than disciplined in the face of unprincipled and disgusting opposition from the Party of No. Throughout the process you, Senator Reid, have been attacked from the right and the left. But as many have commented, the current state of health care in the United States is unjust and unsupportable, and while no one will likely hail the Senate compromise as a perfect solution, it is a worthy first step.
Thank you Senator Reid. There are a few more points below the fold.
The Senate, as the truism goes, is the place where good bills go to die. Well, while the health care reform effort suffered a few scares - and gave the country more than a few migraines - the good idea that is HR3962 did not die. Now, I am no expert on health care or health insurance, but boy have I had an education in the last nine months. Although I prefer the House version, itself not perfect, and hope and expect that the conference report will prove a significant improvement, I appreciate the enormous effort that it took for you to shepherd this bill through the Senate.
Some criticism leveled at you was warranted. You vacillated for far too long in deference to Senator Baucus, only to have the Finance Committee report out a bill that barely resembles the final manager's amendment. You gave lip service to a phantom bipartisanship for far too long. You courted Senator Snowe for far too long and too solicitously; the most moderate Republican is still a member of the Party of No. Whether you believed it or not, you publicly gave far too much credence to the idea that the Party of No wanted or could contribute as if it were composed of adults.
But those who label you as ineffective, or worse, for not forcing through more and better reform, for not somehow forcing certain intransigent members of the caucus to vote one way or another, those critics do not understand the arcana of Senate rules or the egos of senators, or have the luxury of not caring about either. The frequent exhortations to comity on the Senate floor are not mere verbiage. The Senate functions on unanimous consent, and not receiving any such comity from the Republicans, the effort to force through debate and vote on the health care compromise required tremendous work by you, Democratic leadership, and particularly staff. In the face of absolute obstruction from the Republicans, moreover, you forged a united Democratic caucus through sometimes painful compromise. But you got the job done.
Governance is the art of the possible. Senator Reid, you proved wrong too many people who thought that reform of a broken system defended by entrenched and powerful interests was impossible. The task is unfinished, as all progress must always be, and we expect the Democrats to take this victory as only a beginning step. But as for whether it is a good first step, whether it is better than nothing, I leave it to the words of your peers to judge.
Senator Al Franken:
The plain simple truth is, because of this legislation crafted by Leader Reid and others in the Senate, 31 million more Americans will have affordable health insurance and the growth in health care costs for families will be dramatically diminished. For those reasons and the many I outlined here, today I am proud to announce my strong support for this historic step toward universal health care in America
Senator John Kerry:
I am a strong supporter of the public option and I've fought to see it included. But if it cannot be included, I'm not willing to walk away. I'm not willing to tell someone five years from now that when I had a chance to guarantee that insurance companies couldn't discriminate against pre-existing conditions - which will save lives - that I walked away. We need to step back here and see the forest not just the trees. In the totality of this bill, there are real reforms we've fought to win for decades that will make peoples' lives better -- that will lower costs and encourage the development and proliferation of nonprofit and consumer-oriented health insurance plans.
Senator Jay Rockefeller:
We continue to make extraordinary progress on health care reform and I commend my colleagues and Leader Reid for refusing to lose sight of what matters most – fixing our broken system so we can make people’s lives better. While no bill is ever completely perfect – I believe the health bill we are considering in the Senate today is a great step in the right direction and I know it will make a real difference in the health of American families and our economy. This bill gives health care coverage to a record 31 million Americans who are currently uninsured, it provides all Americans with the access to adequate and dependable coverage when they need it most, and it reins in spiraling health care costs – and that is a very great thing.
Thank you Senator Reid, and the Democratic Caucus, and especially the unsung heroes in the Senate Democratic Staff. But on behalf of all Americans please remember the course of this debate. Remember how shabbily the Party of No Health Care treated you and your fellow Democrats. Remember the lack of comity, the obstruction. Remember how Senator Sanders was treated. Remember how they prayed on the Senate floor that Senator Byrd would be too ill to attend the cloture vote. Remember the lies and the slurs. Remember 'death panels' and 'they want to kill grandma'. Remember 'health care is the President's Waterloo'. Remember how empty and unsatisfying words like 'bipartisanship' can be when one side has devolved into a cynical parody of a political party. Perhaps, finally, you might remember how they treated the American people in the debate on this life-and-death issue, and give up any pretense that the Democrat's current mandate to govern should be tempered by giving credibility to the ideas or motives of a party that rubber-stamped eight years of disaster from the Bush Administration.
