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Olympia Snowe, our modern-day Hamlet, decided to vote in favor of getting the Baucus bill out of committee. This insignificant action in itself (if she had voted against the bill it still would have passed in committee 13-10), was celebrated by the MSM all day long today, as the coming of at least a bit of bipartisanship, and also as providing “cover” for Democrats like Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, and other “blue dogs” to vote for any health care reform travesty that also gets her vote, and still be in good shape with voters in their States. (Though why they ought to or do a care a bit about what one Republican Senator from Maine thinks is never elucidated by these commentators.)
Even more importantly, this vote of Snowe’s created a blizzard of commentary about the Democrats now having some hope of getting “the 60 votes necessary” to get health care reform passed, and that therefore they should resist using such “under-handed” procedural tricks as “reconciliation” (requiring only a majority), to get health insurance reform passed. However, as a number of people have written lately, including Jane Hamsher, Chris Bowers, and myself, 60 votes are not necessary to pass health care reform. 60 votes are only necessary to invoke cloture and end a filibuster. However, the practice of the filibuster can itself be ended with only 51 votes, or more precisely, 50 votes from Senators, plus one vote from the Vice President of the United States. So 60 votes are not even necessary to end filibusters. All that is necessary for that is a willingness and determination to end the filibuster once and for all.
So, as Chris Bowers has said, the claim that 60 votes are needed to pass health care reform is just a lie. It is a story invented by people who prioritize Senate procedural customs more highly than they do health care reform, and who don’t want to admit to the American people that it is within their power and authority to end the filibuster at any time, and to enable health insurance reform to occur with only 50 + 1 votes in the Senate.
Make no mistake, those telling this lie, prize retaining the filibuster more highly than they prize ending the 45,000 fatalities every year due to lack of insurance, or ending the more than one million bankruptcies due to health care bills that people can’t pay, or ending the many divorces annually that are caused by the current health insurance system, or ending all the stress people feel when their claims are denied by the insurance companies or when they are denied insurance due to preexisting conditions, or ending the domination of the lives of sick Americans by the health insurance companies and their bureaucrats.
However, the American people do not prize the filibuster in the same way. They do not care whether the filibuster continues or is ended. To them the filibuster is part of the arcania of Government that they do not understand. But, if because of the filibuster, they get a health care reform that won’t go into effect until 2013, or one that will cost more than they are paying now, or one that won’t control the accelerating costs of health insurance, or one that will force them to pay more in co-pays and deductibles than they pay now, or one that forces them to keep employer-based private insurance that they do not like, or one that doesn’t provide them with a public health insurance option; then they won’t forgive the Senate, or the President, or the Democrats in future elections, when they claim credit for a bill that delivers these outcomes, and then say that it was the best they could do because of the sacred filibuster that they refused to get around by just ending it, and with it, the “requirement” for 60 votes.
Over the next few days and weeks we will see all sorts of people bleating about the importance of having 60 votes, and the resulting need to compromise with Snowe, Lieberman, Nelson, Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, Kent Conrad and other blue dogs and “moderate” Republicans, in order to get any health care reform at all. While this lie circulates all around us we need to combat it by telling the truth and by saying that it is a lie that we need 60 votes, and also a lie that we need their votes. Democrats don’t. All they need to do is what is necessary to keep their promise of effective health care reform. And if that means getting rid of the filibuster, then so be it. It will be good riddance to the greatest procedural enemy of reform and progressivism in the US Senate.
(Also posted at the Alllifeisproblemsolving blog where there may be more comments)
13 Comments
You know that the sixty vote rule was made up by the Senate, and is not in the Constitution.
So these pompose asses created that problem to, and haven’t what it takes to change it.
Isn’t democracy majority rule? That means we don’t have anything like democracy, but are ruled by a bunch of pompose thugs.
Hi iremember54,
You’re right that the filibuster is not in the constitution. But the authority is operate according to such a procedure is in it. There’s a lot that’s anti-democratic in the constitution, and the Senate was intended to be a somewhat anti-democratic check on the House, and it remains so today.
However, the filibuster is not something we or our Senators have to live with. It is something they choose to live with, because it increases their power as individuals to block legislation. They need to take responsibility for their filibuster and the harm it does to the American people. And every time a desirable bill is modified or fails to pass because of the filibuster, I think we should point this out and tag our Senators with the responsibility for it.
All might be well if we had reasonsible politicains that represented their people,and did what’s right for the Nation and People, but we don’t
We have a bunch of pompose thugs that vote ideaolgy, who gives them the most money, and to oppose what the other party want’s.
When things like the Filibuster are used one sidedly, it reliability is to be questioned. The Dem’s didn’t use it on everything while the repub’s were in Control. They voted with the Repub’s for the wars, Bush’s spending, and almost everything.
No matter how you look at all of it. we have a Government that doesn’t work. All our problems from healthcare, the debt, deficits, unemployment, unsustainable entitlements, spending levels, and revenue levels are a hint. The wars, and a bloated military and military industrial complex, is another hit. The fact that everything is controled by big money interests, corporations, and the top one percent of the people is another hint. The fact they have sold us out to the world on our manufacturing, jobs, and national security is another hint. Letting us be dependant on foreign oil, borrowed foreign money, and foreign products is another hint. The biggest hint is taking a look at the people making the decisions. Here we have a bunch of so-called leaders, above retirement age, been there as long as many people have lived, and deciding on matters of our money, our healthcare, lives, and the future of us all. Guy’s like Grassley saying today I think, I think, was a good hint.
How many hints do we need. We can’t smack everyone between the eyes with a hammmer. Crisis’s and an almost depression, and what we saw in the past year from people losing jobs, houses, their savings, home values, and income didn’t wake us up. The fact they bailed out the Banks, AIG, Wall Street, and the Automakers, while the people were left with their loses didn’t wake us up.
What will it take? The country going bankrupt, Oil being cut off. Or a major disaster to wake us up. Maybe even then we will just go with the flow and die peacefully believing we ahd the best Government in the world.
All supporting re-electing and trusting partizen A-holes who put politics, and power above right and wrong.
Trouble is that lots of the people propagating the 60 vote lie are from the Obama administration and the Democratic party. They’re worried that failure of healthcare reform will be pinned on them since they control the Presidency, the Senate and the House. So they are spinning stories about how difficult it is to get to 60 votes and how they need bipartisan support when in fact they don’t as shown by this diarist.
Thanks fflambeau. That won’t work for them. The blogosphere will see to it. My upcoming diary, in fact, is called, “It’s the Democrats’ fault.”
Filibusters can work both ways, and have historically.
In this case, why are none of the progressive Senators threatening to join the Republican filibuster unless the option to buy into Medicare is added to the bill?
Two can play at that game, no?
No guts, no glory.
Why did they pre-compromise on the PO, instead of sticking to Medicare for All?
The progressives won’t say no because they don’t want to be responsible for voting against anything called health care reform. And they didn’t stick to single-payer because they didn’t want to go against their new President.
In health care reform legislative process, Chris Dodd, Harry Reid, and Max Baucus are going into a room with some Administration representatives to hammer out a final bill. Why are the Administration representatives going to be there? Don’t we have separation of powers? Isn’t the legislature an independent branch? When is Congress going to take back its authority and its soul?
Does Bernie Saunders give a rat’s ass about answering the call of history or about standing up for his values and Americans against a mandate to purchase crappy private insurance without any public option?
The Democrats clearly are not capable of representing a Democratic majority in Congress. I’ve been using the word ‘chickenshit’ so much recently, I’m going to tell my friend in Portland who has a chicken coop in her back yard to start calling what she cleans up “Democrats.” Honey, can you please clean the Democrats out of Artemis’ coop?
Again, we have to link the individual mandate they crave to the public option we need; no public option, no individual mandate, just business practices reforms for health insurers. Let ‘em raise premiums and out of pocket at their own peril, it will only put more pressure on Congress to put the insurers out of our misery.
Marcos, I don’t understand why you’re at Bernie about this. He said that he would not have voted for the Baucus bill in its present for. He’s one of the few who while advocating for a strong PO still keeps emphasizing that single-payer is better. He’s also the Senator who wrote S 703, the enhanced Medicare for All bill now being “considered” (but not really) by the Senate. Finally, if any Democrat can be trusted to end up voting against a bill with a mandate but no PO or a weak PO it will be Bernie. There would be very few others in the Senate who would join him in defiance of the Administration.
Letsgetitdone, would Saunders use his vote to side with the GOP on a filibuster because Saunders opposed the corporate welfare provisions should the final product resemble the Baucus bill? Clearly he is not a party man, and is in no danger of losing his seat.
And is Obama courting Snowe and Collins because he wants to hedge against the potential eventuality of progressives using the filibuster to stop a very bad bill?
Bernie Sanders said he would oppose a bill like the Baucus bill. He could oppose such a bill by voting against cloture, if Republicans filibuster it, by filibustering it himself, or by voting against it. The most probable alternative is that he would vote against it, and the least probable is that he would filibuster it himself. I can’t say whether he’d vote against cloture.
About Obama’s courting of Snowe, Collins, and other Republicans like Voinovich and Lugar, I think he’s looking for cloture votes and also a yes vote on the Baucus bill, but not so much as a hedge, as to be able to say that the final bill is bipartisan. At this late date, I don’t know why he cares about that. The Republicans he’s courting are members of the corporatist faction, not the right wingnut faction. They’re not quite respectable in the Republican Party anymore. He’ll never get the wingnut faction to support his legislation, and they’re the core of the Republican Party these days. So, real bipartisanship has never been a possibility, and has never been a big factor in domestic American politics anyway.
lets, my brother and I were talking about what constitutes a majority last night. The whole thing being used is “mystification” against the public, our system should not be too closely examinated by “little-brains” of citizens, we can get away with everything cuz no one has been looking — and you are quite right, finding others to blame while you water down a bill you were bribed to make weak but you must razzle dazzle the more liberal voters that you are helpless because of other idiots across the aisle. Obama and the Congress are in on the game. We are in on their game. But many aren’t.
Coworkers at my job don’t know the difference between public option, single payer and their elbows. They still have that authoritarian follower trust, especially now with Obama at the helm.
lib, it’s very sad. The American people have been suckers for a very long time now. After the Vietnam War, they bought off on the the idea that politics doesn’t matter, and not too long after they elected Carter and then Reagan. From my point of view it’s been mostly downhill ever since.