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In one of those "you’ll probably regret you wrote this" moments with which I have become familiar in my own posting, the normally sane and rational Matthew Yglesias is now comparing House progressives with the "world’s greatest monsters."
Raul Grijalva, Matt says, should just pass the Senate health bill and if that upsets him, just go kick Joe Lieberman in the shins or punch him in the face.
Since I respect Yglesia’s intelligence, I assume this momentary outburst is not a sign Matt’s gone all Glenn Beck on us. He’s siding with proposals that the House simply pass the Senate bill as is and try to fix the mess it creates later. But it’s hardly monstrous for the House to reject this approach, not merely because of the affront to the notion that we have two Congressional houses and not just a Senate, but because, as many of us believe, the flawed Senate bill contains provisions that are harmful to the country, along with the elements that are worth passing. It’s not just a question that the bill "doesn’t go far enough" and we can improve it later.
Virtually all of the problems in the Senate bill are a direct result of empowering, via the 60 vote rule, the most unprincipled opportunists and scoundrels in this dysfunctional Senate. Grijalva is right to say, "Enough!"
There are other means to get a decent bill out of Congress that don’t require the country be repeatedly blackmailed by scoundrels. A sidecar reconciliation process is on the table. So, rather than just kicking the shins of your least favorite Senator, Matt, how about supporting, and not demonizing, those in the House who are pushing not only for more democratic procedures, but for a better health reform bill.
More:
Jane Hamsher, Everyone is Dennis Kucinich Now.
Update: David Waldman has more on how the side-care reconcilation process might work.
45 Comments
Well said, Scarecrow. I think Matt needs a socialized xanax myself.
thanks Scarecrow.
I’m seeing a trend among the “normally sane and rational” that tells me he will never publicly regret his post -
Yes, it seems to be going around; but it’s not polite to say anything until you’re sure. We live in angry times.
Speaker Pelosi confirms Yglesias’ nightmare
and I haven’t read the Yglesias link yet (SCOTUS, etc) does he reserve any ire for Stupak and others ‘monstrously’ threatening passage ?
On another note, Sam Stein at HuffPost reports that the WH is going populist… well, we’ll see– and it won’t take long– whether there is any substance to it, or merely Obama’s customary rhetoric.
2nd and 3rd paragraphs:
Further down, Axelrod turns on a dime…
Grijalva is consistently consistent:
thanks. Yeah, that Grijalva sure is a monster, ain’t he? Wait till those poor Wall Street guys see Mothra, or is it Godzilla?
Grijalva voted for the House bill with the Stupak amendment in it.
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2009/roll887.xml
There are only a handful of members in the House who actually stand for anything and none in the Senate.
So Yglesias being horrified by Grijalva is actually pretty funny. Both of them are supposed to be liberal even progressive voices but the truth is both are deeply invested in and part of the status quo. But that status quo is unsustainable and the cracks are showing up in it as the demands on and looting of it by our elites increase exponentially. This is nothing more than a spat between passengers on the Titanic.
:-) Please define “Centrist Senator”, name one and explain why you think he or she is one?
“Both of them are supposed to be liberal even progressive voices but the truth is both are deeply invested in and part of the status quo.”" ; nailed it again Hugh. Wonder why so many have such a hard time seeing this.
Yglesias wants his pony!
It’s pretty chintzy to pick out one vote of Grijalva’s and use it to say he’s the same as the rest of them. Rather a cheap shot and lazy of you, imo. Without Grijalva and the house progs, that awful bill would be law right now.
Ditto!
Which Senator are you talking about? The Senator from General Electric or the Senator from General Mills?
Since I respect Yglesia’s intelligence
Like Obama, his “intelligence” is not the problem.
And with his jowls, Joe looks increasingly like a Ballchinian.
if our D senators are too damn lazy to make the Rs actually filibuster — poor things would have to stay near the senate floor for quorum calls — then they should resign immediately so someone willing to do the work of governance can take over.
powwow says:
Next time you’re in Philadelphia don’t forget to stop and see the Liberty Taco Bell.
Lieberman: “It’s not personal…”
I kicked DiFi via e-mail yesterday ….
Yglesias: “But snatching defeat from the jaws of victory by failing to take the most plausible path to universal health care doesn’t punish the Senate, it punishes the American people. This is no time for ego trips.”
This statement by YM goes beyond wrong, it is evil. He knows damn well that Obama killed the approach he is proposing almost immediately by signaling HE wasn’t interested. Why should members of the House stick their neck out when Obama won’t support them?
Pelosi was smart to continue to maintain she could pass the bill UNTIL she smoked out Barry on where he stood. The sleazeballs in the WH — and YM — would have loved to blame it all on her.
YM sees the BHO presidency disintegrating. He better pull his tongue out quickly.
he hasnt gone beck, hes being patronizing. as if we are all tempermental children, or his old mother, or his spouse. he tells grijalva that hes the worst thing that ever lived, and more importantly that he’s powerless and he should start acting like it.just suck it up and do what the grown ups want him to. he can get a joe lieberman dartboard.
MattY works for CAP. He’s paid to shill for Obama. That’s what CAP does. Does the name Podesta ring a bell?
Via the good folks over at TPM, did I actually see the phrase “establishment blogger” on the toobz the other day, but I digress:
(emphasis mine)
A clean Senate bill with the Rahmbama/Tauzin/Ignagni/Baucus secret deals intact is what Rahmbama has wanted all along. And i’ll be damned if they aren’t going to fight till the bitter end to protect the health care indutry’s interests over the interests of the American people.
Who will blink first?
House liberals now have the entire Democratic leadership, the corporate media and now even the “establishment bloggers” lined up against them.
Who will blink first?
…
I have supposed liberal senators in Difi, and Boxer. I haven’t voted for Difi the last 2 times she was up. I keep wondering what she’ll have to do to get the pink slip. I’m not all that thrilled with Boxer either but she is miles better than the war profiteer.
after your full-throated resort to Matt: “So, rather than just kicking the shins of your least favorite Senator, Matt, how about supporting, and not demonizing, those in the House who are pushing not only for more democratic procedures, but for a better health reform bill.”
I expected to see you say exactly how such legislation would make it into law. Hey. No rush. I’ll wait til tomorrow.
Passage of the House version with the Stupak amendment signaled to the Senate that House progressives would cave if pushed and allowed the Senate to craft a far worse bill. It wasn’t House progressives finding a pair that led them to this sudden stand but the MA Senate race that changed the political calculus and gave them cover to bail. That’s opportunism not leadership.
That would be the reconciliation process, much discussed on FDL lately, just not this particular post.
The procedural path is outlined by Waldman. See the update.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/1/20/827478/-Can-health-insurance-reform-still-pass
Should be interesting to watch, anyway. One thing I do know, I’ll be voting angainst Mr Obama early and often in 2012. God he sucks.
I never have been able to endure reading Matty Y. Well, once, maybe, on anti war shit.
Like Ezra Klein, he’s gone to the land of pony’s.
And his voice has changed, considerably.
Thanks Scarecrow, for all you do here, though.
Always value your posts and comments . . .
I just can’t wade thru any Matty Y no mo . . . ;-)
HAHAHAHAHA! Sorry, I feel out of my chair laughing.
How long have you lived in California? And HOW LONG did it take you to figure out Feinstein was NOT a Liberal?
Seriously though, Feinstein was branded a liberal many, many, moons ago when she and Boxer were pushed heavily under the same campaign. Do you remember the infamous “Year Of The Women” when a record number of females were elected into Congress? Well, that was the LAST year these two women ever combined campaign forces again.
Since that time Boxer has sort of distinguished (and distanced) herself from Feinstein.
I shall remain polite and not call Feinstein names but I’ve been over her for about a DECADE!
Boxer, until recently, was our Senator with guts. But lately she has been going corporate on us and the straw for me was voting YES on the Stupak/Nelson amendment then defending it with the laughably lame excuse of “Lots of Pro-Choice groups support this amendment”
Boxer is facing a potentially tough election cycle and is already gearing up for a rocky ride. But Feinstein is really the one that needs to go. She’s….awful!
I think you’re way overstating that. I don’t see Grijalva dog whistling to the administration that he’s ok with being rolled on this one. Seems more likely to me that somebody led him to believe some things about the Senate bill, and then fucked him on it – Lucy and the football. Seems to be the most common occurance in our govt, unless you’re a corporation.
That was a very interesting read. I didn’t realize you could amend a bill that the President had not signed into law as long as the President ends up signing the original bill before signing the amendment.
Must have been sleeping in civics class the day that was discussed.
Wandered across this little tidbit, hey a loophole in the Senate bill that allows insurance companies to deny you care, JUST LIKE BEFORE.
” Taken aback, Ms. Ignagni, the 55-year-old chief executive of the trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans, wondered on Tuesday why insurers were being singled out when, in her view, they had accepted that change was necessary.
“Attacking our community will not help get anyone covered,” she said.
The last statement was very revealing. It’s tantamount to “We still hold the whip hand.” And it appears they do.
Back to today’s update. Notice that the big concession that the industry supposedly made was its stand on pre-existing conditions. But the bill has a giant loophole: insurers can continue to cancel policies in the case of “fraud or intentional misrepresentation” as they do now. Readers have no doubt hear of or read about how low the permitted bar is now for insurers to rescind policies.”
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/01/quelle-surprise-health-insurers-pretended-to-play-nice-lobbied-against-reform.html
” Read the bill. As Yves Smith has highlighted, it allows an out for fraud. Guess what? Not telling your insurer of a preexisting condition, EVEN ONE YOU DID NOT KNOW ABOUT, is fraud! Unbeknownst to most, fraud is the means under current law that insurers deny coverage. The bill preserves the status quo here. A nursing organization with 150,000 members opposed the bill for this very reason.”
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/01/president-obama-its-not-just-the-words.html
Rockefeller lets the cat out of the bag.
““We have to have it. We have to get the bill,” said Sen. John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.). Not doing it “would be a disaster. It would be a disaster for my state. It would be an economic disaster. Talk about jobs; that’s the only growing sector in the economy. It just would be awful.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31836_Page3.html
Bailout, not reform.
I have agreed w/ FDL throughout the health care debate. We SHOULD have started with single payer, should have insisted on a public option, etc, etc. Democrats should not have freaked out after Brown’s election. HOWEVER: We have a ready-made bill SITTING in front of Grijalva. It is done. We had 60 votes there for a while, got a bill through, and while I HATED The Senate bill at the time, we need to do something NOW to turn the momentum around. Passing the Senate bill, IN CONJUNCTION WITH fixing up other things in reconciliation, is the only answer. Insisting on perfection right now is suicide for the near term and will ensure that Democrats never, ever pass something in the long term. While “there are other means to get a decent bill out of Congress” these “other means” are completely impossible if the Democrats cannot even muster non-world-is-falling-down comments following the Mass. election. The Dems as a party have no appetite for new bills and new scoring, and hoping it weren’t so won’t change a thing.
I know many of you hate the Senate bill on the merits. I’m not a big fan as well (For instance, I hate that the subsidies are this free-floating thing that will surely be cut by future GOP administrations, rather than a PO which would include the middle class and be harder to cut). However, the subsidies will help people. Besides that, there are *some* insurance reforms that are worthwhile. Starting over, as Grijalva wants to do, ignores that the public is SICK of hearing about health reform. I have very liberal friends who know very little about all this, but know that they’re tired of hearing about it and are wondering why Obama refuses to focus on jobs. That makes absolutely no sense, but the politics are important. These are people who volunteer and who talk up the Dems. Low-information liberals are disheartened, the GOP is energized, and what is FDL insisting on? Starting over for, as Paulo called it, “a better bill.” That is completely ridiculous right now and ignores what could get done tomorrow, for options that bring huge new risks with payoffs that are simply impossible.
The Senate barely passed a bill that helps people but that is deeply flawed. The House had a good bill that I supported. Knowing that a) the Medicare buy-in offers no insurance market reforms b) we don’t know what we get with reconciliation options c) we HAVE a bill ready to do to stop the bleeding of Dem popularity and d) Grijalva is somehow a savior for holding 30 million people’s insurance hostage, I’m not understanding how dragging any of this on longer helps the Democratic Party or helps health care. The House will never take the lead on this and convince the media, voters, and the Senate. It’s better to just do what good is possible now, and have the political strength to do more good later.
On the subject of Yglesias’s intelligence, it should be noted that it led him to support the invasion of Iraq. I guess he was working with the same intelligence Bush was…
No Public Option? No Mandate. Tattoo it on your forehead.
“In human anatomy, the forehead is the fore part of the head. It is, formally, an area of the head bounded by three features, two of the skull and one of the scalp. The top of the forehead is marked by the hairline, the edge of the area where hair on the scalp grows. The bottom of the forehead is marked by the supraorbital ridge, the bone feature of the skull above the eyes. The two sides of the forehead are marked by the temporal ridge, a bone feature that links the supraorbital ridge to the coronal suture line and beyond.[1][2]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forehead
There was a small window of opportunity that the Democrats refused to use, and it closed while they tryed to get bipartisan cooperation. Had this been the GOP they damn sure would not have concerned themselves with the Democrats.
They would have pushed ahead and to hell with what the Dems or the nation thought about their agenda. Sometimes it takes just pure guts and determination to succeed on issues that are so clear. Too bad health care was drug into the black hole of Washington politics where it will be disected, and watered down to the point it becomes meaningless.
Matt Taibbi’s article from September, for those who missed it. Good recap of how we got here.
Sick and Wrong
How Washington is screwing up health care reform – and why it may take a revolt to fix it
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/29988909/sick_and_wrong
Is that the lesson that the GOP/media will find if this goes down — that the Dems were too bipartisan? No. We’ve already seen “Centrists” come out and say it was all the fault of liberal over-reach.
I supported the House bill while it was viable. Now, alternatives are no longer viable. If being somewhat unhappy w/ the Senate bill is better than being *really* unhappy with a 2010 bloodbath, than I choose the former.
Besides, there can be a liberal stand elsewhere (like banking) where the potential payoff is more likely and the consequences for failure less dire. It’s like if reconciliation/other alternatives is Nader (the better, 2000 version), the Senate bill is Gore (the worse, 2000 version), and failure is Bush. While there may be reasons to support the alternatives/Nader on the merits, circumstances have changed in the interim that make such support untenable.
I’ve written in support (and attacked many of the moderate bloggers out there) for the PO. The PO makes the mandate politically doable.
However, the mandate spreads risk. Without the mandate, the thing doesn’t work at all. So, the choice is: a flawed bill w/ a mandate w/ no PO, similar to a few other countries … or nothing. I’m frustrated that the bill will likely be a) unpopular w/o a PO b) torn apart by GOP cuts because there will only be more vulernable people getting subsidies. HOWEVER the political failure of no bill is un-recoverable and having no HCR fails 30 mil people. You can have a bill that does good AND bad. This does plenty of bad, but there is some good in the short run — and more good with a Party that believes it can do good.
I’ll be glad if it dies, it’s unrecoverable. Passing the Senate bill with a mandate and no public option after Massachusetts would be ten times as catastrophic for dems in November than letting it die now. The people said No. This is all on Obama, him trying to get the house dems to take any more heat on this is laughable. Chalk it up, chris, Obama failed and failed hard on this one. Let’s hope he doesn’t do any more damage before he leaves.
I would like to see “centrist Senator” defined in political reality as a Senator that is in the center of the political crosshairs, about to find his or her political career shot down.
All of those other countries have strict cost controls to go with their mandates. Insurance companies already have to cover preexisting conditions in their group policies, but they don’t have mandates. Yet, they manage to make money off them. There are other ways to make it work, but they like the mandates, so they tell you they need them. Then they make sure any restrictions on what they can make off your mandated insurance are stripped from the bill. If you are stupid enough to still think that mandates are appropriate, you can pay for all their yachts, but leave me out of it.