Harry Reid predicts U.S. will eventually have single-payer health-care system

By Michael J.W. Stickings

And I hope he's right:

In just about seven weeks, people will be able to start buying Obamacare-approved insurance plans through the new health care exchanges.

But already, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is predicting those plans, and the whole system of distributing them, will eventually be moot.

Reid said he thinks the country has to "work our way past" insurance-based health care during a Friday night appearance on Vegas PBS' program "Nevada Week in Review."

"What we've done with Obamacare is have a step in the right direction, but we're far from having something that's going to work forever," Reid said.

When then asked by panelist Steve Sebelius whether he meant ultimately the country would have to have a health care system that abandoned insurance as the means of accessing it, Reid said: "Yes, yes. Absolutely, yes."

The idea of introducing a single-payer national health care system to the United States, or even just a public option, sent lawmakers into a tizzy back in 2009, when Reid was negotiating the health care bill.

"We had a real good run at the public option... don't think we didn't have a tremendous number of people who wanted a single-payer system," Reid said on the PBS program, recalling how then-Sen. Joe Lieberman's opposition to the idea of a public option made them abandon the notion and start from scratch.

Eventually, Reid decided the public option was unworkable.

"We had to get a majority of votes," Reid said. "In fact, we had to get a little extra in the Senate, we have to get 60."

On that, he is right. Single-payer, or at least a public option, would have been immensely better than the Republican-style system of "Obamacare," but it just wasn't going to happen. (Damn Lieberman, though he wasn't the only obstacle.) It's amazing how many on the left still don't understand this. I do think Obama could have done more to push for more progressive reform (assuming he actually wants a more progressive system), but the realities of the legislative branch are what they are, and it's quite amazing as it is that Reid et al. were able to get anything of substance passed at all given Republican opposition and obstructionism, conservative lies, and the concerns and objections of Democrats like Lieberman.

I wanted much more but ended up supporting Obamacare as probably the best that could have been achieved at the time -- and, yes, as the necessary thin end of the wedge that might just lead to more progressive reform down the road. And while a single-payer system isn't coming anytime soon, it's out there as the next step, or the one after that, and it may well be that the (highly likely) success of Obamacare, contra Republican fearmongering, is what eventually opens the door to it.

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Gang of Umpteen

By Frank Moraes 

Politico reported yesterday, "Reid digs in as Senate Nears Nuclear Option Showdown." While it is good that Reid is indeed moving forward, that isn't what the article is about. Rather, it seems that some Republicans are trying to pitch a new "Gang of Umpteen" to Reid. I am not in favor of this.

Right off the top, I'm skeptical because the Gang of 14 disappeared as soon the Democrats got control of the Senate. Why was that? I thought the whole idea of that group was not just to stop the Republicans from using the nuclear option, but also to make filibuster use more responsible and rare. And the way the Gang of 14 worked was pretty much that the Republicans got whatever they wanted. Pretty much every nominee who would have been filibustered was pushed through by the Gang of 14. In other words, the Republicans might as well have used the nuclear option, there were only a very small number of nominees the Gang stopped. So the question is whether the new Gang of Umpteen would function the same and allow pretty much all nominees through.

Ha ha ha! Wait, I have to catch my breath... My, but that was a doozy! Of course that isn't going to happen.

As usual, what the Republicans are offering the Democrats is the weakest of tea.


This is bad in a couple of ways:

McCain said he and Republicans are trying to strike a deal with Reid would either allow up-or-down votes on seven contentious nominees or at least find "replacements" for those nominees.

First, this doesn't even deal with the problem generally. McCain is suggesting that if they can deal with just these seven nominees, all should be well. But he isn't even offering up-or-down votes on them; he's offering to find replacements. Replacements?! Sure! Why don't we put John Bolton in charge of the National Labor Relations Board. I'm sure that the Republicans in their infinite charity would allow that.

There is a theory out there that it must be hell to be a Republican. By this theory, Republicans don't really want to stand for everything that is wrong and ineffective. But they have to or else they will lose their primary to an even more radical challenger. The problem with this theory is that it doesn't explain the filibuster. Not filibustering a nominee is not the same as voting for him. I don't see how the details of Senate procedure would be an effective challenge in an election. So that leaves us with a Republican Party that really is for everything that is wrong and ineffective.

This provides us with things like the recent spectacle of Eric Cantor announcing a new DREAM Act. And we see it here. Rather than legislating like normal politicians, these people think they can game and finesse everything to their advantage. But they've become so ideologically ossified that now they can't even effectively do that. Find replacements? Really?! 

Afterword 

Of course, I have little confidence that the Democrats won't go along with this pathetic attempt at a compromise. For all I know, Reid will give up the whole thing in exchange for McConnell's word that he won't use the nuclear option when he's in the majority. Time will tell.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

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Dear Senator Reid...

By Carl 

It ain’t working.

That's the way you do it:

Helped by a marathon speech, Texas Democrats have managed to block a bill that would shut most of the abortion clinics in the state.

Democratic state Senator Wendy Davis spoke for more than 10 hours, in a stalling speech known as a filibuster, at the state capitol in Austin.

Republicans then scrambled to pass the bill, but the vote was ruled too late for a midnight deadline.

The bill would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

You probably thought it was quaint when Rand Paul stood up and filibustered for 13 hours. Of course, it didn't help that Paul couldn't help but aggrandize his actions. It makes it easy to minimize the effort when he inflates its importance.

But here, here we have a bona fide filibuster that actually accomplished what it set out to do: to establish a firewall for a basic human right, the right to decide what to do with one's own body. 

You want to weed out the nonsense "filibusters" just being done to screw with the Democratic agenda? Force Senators who oppose a bill to stand their asses up and start talking about why. Passionate filibusters have a time honored place in American culture, not just in politics. Americans respect, even if they ultimately don't agree with, someone who has strong and deep feelings about something.

Your mealy-mouthed, status quo-centric pass on the whole issue of filibuster reform was ludicrous. It's not about what happens when Republicans take back power (if not them, then someone).

It's about believing in your cause. It's about knowing that the legislation you bring to bear is important enough to withstand tactical attacks like a filibuster.

It's about, in the end, honesty. Honesty is a quality you seem to minimize as much as you minimize Rand Paul's rage.

You ought to try it, Senator. It does a body politic good.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

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The new gun-control movement, post-Newtown

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I wasn't terribly disappointed when the Manchin-Toomey gun bill was defeated in the Senate (even though it got well more than 50 votes, because of a Republican filibuster), because it was a bad bill. But it did include an expanded background checks provision, along with various pro-gun provisions, and so in the end it was probably better than nothing.

And yet in defeat that bill did more for the gun-control movement that it would have done had it ever become law, and in that sense a lot of good may come from what at the time seemed like a serious, embarrassing, and revealing setback.

Actually, though, it started not on April 17, 2013, but on December 14, 2012, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza, armed with a semi-automatic rifle, killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. There had been many other mass shootings previously in America, including recently at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, but Newtown was different. It was a brutal attack on a school, where parents leave their children and expect them to be safe, and the fact that so many children were killed in cold blood was simply too shocking, too powerful, too overwhelming, to ignore. (And there was a cultural/racial element to it as well. This wasn't inner-city Detroit. This was a part of America with which more Americans, including the political and media elites who shape public opinion, could identify. It's easy, sadly so, for many to ignore the plight of a city like Detroit. But if it could happen in Newtown, it could happen anywhere.)

This is not to say that the country was suddenly ready for significant gun control. That will take time. No, if not that, it was at least ready for something meaningful to be done to curb gun violence, to put a stop if at all possible to a mostly unregulated gun market that has resulted in guns, including weapons of mass destruction for which there is no reasonable justification for private ownership, falling into the wrong hands way too many times.

President Obama himself took the lead. In an incredibly moving vigil in Newtown a few days after the shooting, he said:

We can't tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change.

And this: 

Charlotte, Daniel, Olivia, Josephine, Ana, Dylan, Madeline, Catherine, Chase, Jesse, James, Grace, Emilie, Jack, Noah, Caroline, Jessica, Benjamin, Avielle, Allison, God has called them all home. 

For those of us who remain, let us find the strength to carry on and make our country worthy of their memory.

Yes, the country was finally ready, at least for expanded background checks, and perhaps for much more, and they overwhelmingly expressed that in poll after poll. 

And then, when Manchin-Toomey failed, despite a solid majority in the Senate and popular support in the 90s, enough was enough. It wasn't just that Washington was behaving like Washington, Congress behaving like Congress, the dysfunction laughable, the system embarrassing, it was that the country's leading representatives had directly failed the people who put them there.

It has often been that way, but this was too much even for a largely apathetic electorate. Washington, and specifically Republican senators most of whom are deeply in the pockets of the NRA and the rest of the gun lobby, had given the American people the finger.

And the American people pushed back.

As Alec MacGillis writes in a must-read piece at The New Republic: 

In the Senate, the backlash had an effect. Some Republicans who had opposed the bill, such as Johnny Isakson of Georgia and Jeff Flake of Arizona, signaled they might be open to changing their minds. Majority Leader Harry Reid, once a dependable NRA ally, spoke about taking the rare step of bringing the bill back for another vote. Senator Joe Manchin, the bill's Democratic co-sponsor, is still actively courting support from his colleagues. "It's not going away," he told me.

Why did these developments take so many elected officials and pundits by surprise? As New York Times columnist Tom Edsall has pointed out, political science research shows that politicians consistently overestimate the conservatism of their constituents. But in this case, there was something more debilitating at work. The political class often lets old assumptions blind it to shifting realities.And the absolute power of the NRA is one of the oldest and least-tested assumptions in Washington.

And so there's a sort of perfect storm emerging out of the horror of Newtown: A mass shooting took hold of the popular consciousness, building overwhelming support for reform (at least for background checks); leaders like President Obama and Vice President Biden realized that something meaningful had to be done; there has been greater awareness of the plague of gun violence as a result of social media; the mainstream news media are paying attention; and the gun-control movement has finally built up the strength, propelled by Newtown, to push back against the NRA and its influence in Washington, with the realization now that the NRA is an extremist group that opposes even the most reasonable, sensible gun-control efforts and concerns itself mostly with the profits of the gun industry.

As MacGillis writes:

[F]or some time now, the NRA's power has been more a matter of entrenched wisdom than actual fact. Gun ownership is declining -- from half of households in the 1970s to a third today. A slew of senators and governors have won campaigns in red or purple states despite NRA F ratings, including Tim Kaine (Virginia), Kay Hagan (North Carolina), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Claire McCaskill (Missouri), and Bill Nelson (Florida), who has campaigned on gun control but has won majorities even in deeply conservative Panhandle counties. Senator Chris Murphy, a rookie Connecticut Democrat who has taken a lead on the issue since the Newtown massacre, points out that, of the 16 Senate races the NRA participated in last year, 13 of its candidates lost. "The NRA is just all mythology," he says. "The NRA does not win elections anymore."

And so reality is finally taking over from false perception.

And then came Newtown. We are so resigned to seeing mass shootings come and go without any attempt to fix gun laws, but after Adam Lanza killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook, something really did change. At long last and against all expectations, a viable movement for gun regulation is emerging. It is a development that not only bodes ill for the gun lobby and its Republican patrons, but will also complicate matters for elements of the Democratic Party who have been content to accede to the status quo. The narrow defeat of the background-check bill, it turns out, was not the end of hopes for gun reform, but the beginning.

And hopefully the beginning of great success in future, though of course a great deal remains to be done and there can be no rest in the long, hard fight for gun control.

Maybe, just maybe, the era of the NRA is over. And maybe, just maybe, America will have the serious gun laws it so desperately needs.

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Loan Harry Reid your testicles

By Frank Moraes 

(Ed. note: Frank's second open letter to Sen. Boxer is here. -- MJWS)

At The Washington Post, two writers I admire, Greg Sargent and Jonathan Bernstein, are excited about the prospect of filibuster reform. First, Sargent broke the news that Harry Reid plans to go for the "nuclear option" in July if the Republicans filibuster three upcoming nominees: "Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; Thomas Perez as secretary of labor; and Gina McCarthy to head the Environmental Protection Agency." And then Bernstein argued that Reid was playing this just right by giving the Republicans a warning and an opportunity to reform themselves.

The problem, of course, is: really?! Are we really supposed to believe that (1) Republicans will respond to what they should rightly assume is an empty threat? And is it at all credible that (2) Reid will in fact do anything this time other than shake hands with Mitch McConnell? However, it is possible that I'm being unfair to the Majority Leader. According to Bernstein, Reid is constrained because (he doesn't put it this way) he is the leader of a bunch of wimps who wouldn't go to the bathroom without asking permission from the Republicans. And there is likely something to that. But if it is the case that Reid doesn't have the support of his caucus, then why is he saying anything at all?

Another problem is that we really don't know what Reid means by his test case of three nominations. The truth is that the Republicans filibuster every nominee. I know that some nominees do get through, but that is only because some Republicans vote for cloture. Let's be really clear here: Senate Republicans require 60 votes for every nominee. Requiring 60 senators before a vote can be cast is a filibuster. If they get the 60 senators, it was an unsuccessful filibuster; but it was still a filibuster.

So the question is, will Harry Reid launch the "nuclear option" if Republicans unsuccessfully filibuster these three nominees? Because they will filibuster them. And even worse, what if only one or two of the nominees are successfully filibustered? We don't know. But I have a hunch: Reid will declare victory and slink away. I would love to be proven wrong.

Our only hope is to put pressure on our senators. I did so myself last night, writing to both Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer. I'm not sure about Boxer, but Feinstein has often been mentioned as someone who didn't want filibuster reform. Remember: writing to your senator is really easy. Just use the Senate's Contacting the Senate form. Or just enter your senator's name and "contact" into Google. If not for yourself or your country, do it for me! This stuff is really important. All you need to do is to say that you would like to see a stop to Republican abuse of the filibuster regarding nominations and that the senator should support Harry Reid's filibuster reform using the "nuclear option." It's easy! And most of all: it's effective.

One thing is for sure. If Harry Reid is ever going to do something about the filibuster, he's going to need all of our help.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

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