The Insidious Myth Of The Progressive “Bill Killers”

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(I asked the folks at FDL to crosspost this latest diary from Jon Walker at GMD. In my opinion, it responds to the opinions many are expressing. This is a great and important debate, folks. Thanks to everyone for participating. – promoted by odum)

Cross posted from FDL Action, authored by Jon Walker.

There is a very insidious myth right now that there is a large group of progressive leaders who want to “kill” health care reform in its entirety. While there might be some progressive leaders out there who have advocated for this position, I have yet to hear from them. What I have heard from people like Howard Dean, Markos Moulitsas, Keith Olbermann, Jane Hamsher, etc… is that they simply want to kill the current version of the Senate bill. None of them, to my knowledge, have advocated ending all efforts to pass a health care reform bill. I believe each and every one of them have advocated for simply passing a different bill through different means. Do not heed those who are working to create a false dynamic where the only two options are passing this horrible Senate bill or passing nothing at all. The idea that there is a large group of progressive leaders trying to kill health care reform is a red herring.

The other great myth is that if this current Senate bill, thoroughly compromised to get 60 votes, does not become law it will be impossible for any health care reform to pass during this Congress. President Obama made sure to include instructions to pass health care reform using reconciliation in the budget for a reason. It is still completely possible to pass an arguably better bill with only a simple majority in the Senate using reconciliation. Progressive activists are demanding to “kill this particular Senate bill” because they know Democrats will not walk away from health care reform empty handed. If need be, they will use reconciliation. While Senator Harry Reid and Barack Obama for some reason think it is preferable to let Senators Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, and Blanche Lincoln gut health care reform; if they are forced to, they will use a special procedure that completely cuts these conservadems out of the debate.

While I cannot speak for other progressives, I personally have outlined at least four strategies to produce a better reform package:

1. Try to pass a version of the House bill using reconciliation. Take provisions removed by the Byrd rule and pass them by attaching them whole or piecemeal to the next few big defense and/or agricultural appropriations bills.

2. Use reconciliation to pass a bill with only Byrd-rule proof provisions. This would include an expansion of Medicaid, expansion of CHIP, early Medicare buy-in, public option, possibly employer mandate, etc…

3. Pass the bill with no individual mandate for right now. Let progressives hold the individual mandate hostage until some point between now and 2015 (when the individual mandate goes into effect), and they will trade it in exchange for better reforms. There is zero need to have the individual mandate just sitting on the books unused for the next few years.

4. Force Harry Reid to use the “nuclear option” like former Senator Bill Frist threatened to do.

I will admit number four is a long shot (although in reality it is the simplest and best solution), but the first three should be completely doable. All the progressive leaders I know who are against this particular Senate bill have advocated for similar strategies to produce a better reform package.

The real choice is between: this current terrible Senate bill, a potentially much more progressive reform package passed using hardball tactics, or no health care reform bill at all. Obama and the Democratic leadership clearly prefer the first option, but they have also made it clear that they will not accept complete failure by passing no bill at all. If they can’t get this massive, corporate giveaway Senate bill passed into law and are left with no other option, they will using reconciliation.

The argument is not between people who say pass this imperfect bill and uncompromising, ideological, progressive straw men saying “kill all health care reform because we are unhappy.” The argument is really between some who say we should cheer for our representatives in Washington whenever they pass some terrible of pile of broken promises and others who are demanding that our elected officials use every tool at their disposal to fulfill the promises they made. Progressive leaders are not upset that the reform is imperfect. They are angry because our elected officials have the ability to fulfill their promises to pass a much better reform package but refuse to use hardball tactics to live up to their promises. Killing this current Senate bill is not an act of progressive nihilism; it is the first step in a strategy to force our members of the Senate to admit they can, in fact, pass a more progressive bill.

Until progressives start demanding Democrats in Congress serve us something better than BS sandwiches that will be the only thing we ever get to eat. Those on the “left” who say we should push for the passage of this terrible Senate bill because it is “the best we can get” are lying to you. By being enablers of this myth that Democrats can’t do better, they are, in fact, fighting against long term progressive change.

Things will never get better until you demand they get better. Do not buy the nonsense of those who say you must accept expectations so low that you are practically eating dirt. Do not buy the lie that we need to elect “just a few more Democratic senators,” because the real problem is that the ones we have refuse to do their jobs. We need thousands of voices all calling out the truth that the Democrats in Washington have the tools at their disposal to do much better. This is what it means to speak truth to power.

21 thoughts on “The Insidious Myth Of The Progressive “Bill Killers””

  2. The Lieberman and Nelson Insurance Industry Tax & Transfer and Woman’s Health Care Prohibition Act bill does the following:

    1. Transfers wages, wealth, health care resources and taxes from the middle class to health insurance companies.

    2. Does not increase access to health care.

    3. Leaves the middle class just as vulnerable to financial ruin from the cost of accessing the health care system.

    4. Does not control costs and does not unburden U.S. business from the costs of employee health care or the competitive disadvantages health insurance imposes in the competitive global marketplace.

    – Bottom line, unregulated health insurance does not create access to health care.

    – Access to health care creates access to health care.  It’s that simple.

    A medicare buy-in creates access to health care and controls costs through competition.

    A regulated insurance industry with, among other regulations, a medical loss ratio of 90%, creates access to health care and controls costs. (A 90% MLR requires health insurance companies to pay 90% of premiums to policy holders’ health care.  10% is an extremely healthy profit margin for a product that must be purchased per Gov’t mandate).

    The Senate Bill is a punt. It is a lost opportunity. It is walking away from an opportunity to give Americans access to health care and to protect them from financial ruin at the hands of the health insurance industry and a vastly overpriced health care industry.

  4. http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-tr…

    Now that the core demand of progressives has been removed from the Senate health care bill–namely, the public health insurance option–should progressives continue to support the effort?

    For me, the question is particularly difficult. I have been the thinker most associated with the public option, which I’ve long argued is essential to ensuring accountability from private insurers and long-term cost control. I was devastated when it was killed at the hands of Senator Joe Lieberman, not least because of what it said about our democracy — that a policy consistently supported by a strong majority of Americans could be brought down by a recalcitrant Senate minority.

    It would therefore be tempting for me to side with Howard Dean and other progressive critics who say that health care reform should now be killed.

    It would be tempting, but it would be wrong.

  5. One more link out to a thoughtful supporter of passing the bill…

    Benen: http://www.washingtonmonthly.c…

    The whole post is worth reading, but here’s an excerpt…

    As we’ve talked about recently, progressives have faced this situation before. When Medicaid passed, it did very little for low-income adults, which is now seen as the point of the program. When Medicare passed, it all but ignored people with disabilities. When Social Security passed, the benefits were negligible, and the program excluded agricultural workers, domestic workers, the self-employed, railroad employees, government employees, clergy, and those who worked for non-profits. The original Social Security bill offered no benefits for dependents or survivors, and included no cost-of-living increases.

    These are, of course, some of the bedrock domestic policies of the 20th century, and some of the towering achievements of progressive lawmaking. But when they passed, they were wholly inadequate. There were likely liberal champions of the day who perceived the New Deal, the Great Society, FDR, LBJ, and their congressional Democratic majorities as disappointing and incompetent sell-outs who failed to take advantage of the opportunity before them, producing genuinely awful legislation.

    But the programs passed, and once they were in place, they improved, expanded, and became integral to the American experience. It took years and perseverance, but progress happened after the initial programs became law.

    The question — if we’re to assume that this bill will, in fact, survive — then becomes what progressive champions of reform are prepared to do to build on the starter home’s foundation.

  6. From Bill Moyers Journal

    “The Democrats are in exactly the same position that the Republicans were in once the Iraq War turned bad. All the Republicans have to do now is sit back and watch the Democrats make a disaster out of this health care effort. And they’re going to gain political capital whether they’re in the right or not. And I think it’s a very- it’s a terrible thing for the party.”

    A-to-the-men.

    This bill needs to be defeated, then hopefully the Dems will start growing a pair. I’m all for supporting a liberal challenger to Obama-Rahma in 2012. I don’t care if it hurts his chances. The Dems need to learn the hard way that they’re working against us, not with us. America wanted a pubic option, we got screwed. No amount of “we needed 60 votes, just to pass it” will excuse them. Now you know why nobody in America cares anymore for the Democrats or politics for that matter. They know they don’t listen and they know they don’t go to the mat for us when push comes to shove.

    I’ve had it with the Obama administration. Dr. Cornell West said it best about Obama.

    “I always knew there was a sense in which [Obama], was tied to the establishment waiting to embrace him. It was clear when he chose his economic team, when he chose his foreign policy team, he was choosing, of course, the recycled neo-liberals and recycled neo-Clintonites [who will perpetuate] these technocratic policies that consider poor people and working people as afterthoughts.”

    Obama supporters should tuck their tails between their legs and go home after an accurate observation like that.

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