Replies to post #92880 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[wbmw]

hge, that was a good and thoughtful post, and it has a lot of truth it in. One thing I will debate, though, since I think it's important to set the record straight:

Dems have had a year with total control and could not get Health Care Reform completed, not because of obstruction, because THEY either could not agree or didn't have the guts to get it done. If they had wanted Republican input, and cover, on the issue it would have gone much differently.

People incorrectly think that the Democrats had total control of Congress, but that was a myth perpetrated by the mainstream media. The truth was that 60 seats of the Senate *caucused* with the Democrats, but that's not the same as a super-majority.

Case in point was Joe Lieberman, who voted with the Republicans against cloture on several issues that the rest of the Democrats had majority (>50 seat) agreement. The Senate cannot vote on a bill until it hits the floor, and the Republicans were united against the Cloture vote, and all they needed was one additional member from the Democratic caucus to join them. Joe was that member for many votes, and just to point out the obvious, he is not a Democrat. He's a right-leaning independent.

Second, the so-called "Blue Dog" Democrats also frequently voted with the Republicans against Cloture. Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, and Mary Landrieu - did not support the public option, and often gamed the system to get their own special perks in the Senate version of the bill, and only after getting these perks did they cast their vote.

Basically, you had more than 50 Democrats willing to pass "change", but in order to overcome obstructionist Republicans, those >50 had to convince a hand full of others who caucused with them in order to overcome the fillibuster and vote for cloture. That did not happen in spite of an incredible amount of hours spent on debates.

I don't know how you can cast blame on the >50 good Democrats when <10 Dems who caucused together couldn't agree with the rest of their party, and I don't know how you can accuse the Democrats of not having enough guts when there is no procedural way of passing something with <60 vote super-majority, when the Republicans unify in fillibustering every bill before it hits the floor.

The only exception is through reconciliation, and it may get to the point where the Democrats need to be brave enough to invoke that option, regardless of how the Republicans spin it.

By the way - and this is the last point I'll make:

If you listen to the Republicans, you might think that the Democrats never embrace their ideas, but that's not true. The Health Care Reform bill has dozens of Republican amendments included, and they can certainly do even more without having to "start over".

Besides, what will starting over mean? Going through the same hearings and debates? Or is it just another delaying tactic?

All the ideas of the bill are already on paper, so I don't think "starting over" would cause a different bill to emerge. It's just a bunch of wasted time, since all the elements that need to go into reform would just have to go into a brand new bill, anyway. On the other hand, if the Republicans want to put more ideas into the existing bill, it saves much more time to just add more amendments. JMHO.