Should the Baucus bill be defeated outright in committee?

[IndianaGreen]

Dr. Howard Dean: Baucus Bill is Not Reform

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chq6pHrq-TM

Howard Dean, former Democratic National Committee chairman, minced no words about Sen. Max Baucus's health-care proposal, unveiled to the public this morning. "The Baucus bill is the worst piece of healthcare legislation I've seen in 30 years," Dean said last night at a healthcare town hall and book signing in Washington. "In fact, it's a $60 billion giveaway to the health insurance industry every year," he said. "It was written by healthcare lobbyists, so that's not a surprise. It's an outrage."

http://reddragon62.blogspot.com/2009/09/howard-dean-baucus-bill-is-worst-piece.html

Just as any number of amendments can never turn the PATRIOT Act into anything other than a direct threat to our civil liberties, there aren't enough amendments that can be tacked to Baucus's health care industry bill that can make turn that pig into a silk purse.

Let's face it, we already have a bill in the Senate that we can work with. It is the health reform bill passed by Ted Kennedy's old committee, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP). This is the bill that we need to support for reconciliation (the House bill is far superior). The Baucus bill should never be allowed unto the floor. It must be killed outright in committee, so that no parts of it ever make it to reconciliation.

The question for you is:

Should the Baucus bill be defeated outright in committee?

[hedgehog]

1. Is amend the hell out of it in full committee an option?

[IndianaGreen]

2. Better to kill it outright, than to let any part of it survive

The Senate already has the HELP bill out of committee. Let's use that bill as the one that eventually makes it to reconciliation.

[karynnj]

38. This bill has to be voted out of committee - if it isn't there are problems to passing a bill

[backscatter712]

25. Yes it is, in fact.

Sen. Rockefeller's already introduced an amendment to put the public option back into the bill, for example.

My strategy sense says that the best chance we've got for real health care reform with a halfway decent public option involves getting the progressive members of the Finance committee (i.e. not the Gang of Six) to push through amendments to fix as much of the brain damage as possible, before getting this bill onto the floor. Once the bill's on the floor, then it gets merged with the HELP bill, which will repair even more of the brain damage, then once it gets voted on by the full Senate, it goes to the conference committee, where it gets merged with HR 3200 from the House, and hopefully gets more of the crappy provisions removed.

Yes, I'm going against the votes this time, but I say that yes, we have to tolerate Baucus's bill being crapped onto the Senate floor, in order to keep the process moving. If the bill stalls out, it may derail the entire health care reform effort.

[Davis_X_Machina]

3. It's not that simple....

....and the reasons why are discussed here: What should Senate Finance Dems do? by Robert Waldman at DailyKos.

It's long, complicated, and involves the nuts and bolts of the reconciliation process, but the upshot is that reporting something out of Finance is necessary for a good bill.

[IndianaGreen]

5. We already have the HELP bill

If Democrats in Baucus committee want any sort of reform, they should vote against Baucus bill. I predict that the mere threat of voting against Baucus bill in committee will get the repukes in that committee to vote for it, a good indicator of what a bonanza for the health industry Baucus bill is.

Let's stop carrying water for the GOP and the health corporations.

[Davis_X_Machina]

6. There are serious negative...

...budget implications if the HELP bill is the only Senate version, involving required non-health-care cuts to the budget in the neighborhood of $100 billion, due to the nature of the reconciliation process, as well as a bunch of parliamentary problems that would make getting a final bill passed at all. It's spelled out in the article I linked.

[IndianaGreen]

7. We heard the procedural excuse as justification for voting for IWR

Baucus bill should be killed outright. If you think it is so precious to have the Finance Committee to produce a bill, then Kerry and Rockefeller should introduce their own bill.

[hadrons]

8. Baucus is chairman, so he has almost king-like power on the committee

He could kill any bill he wants basically

[IndianaGreen]

9. So be it!

Considering how Baucus went about writing his bill, he should be ousted as chair.

"Across the length and breadth of Congress, it is impossible to uncover a more tenacious front-man for the mining, timber, and grazing industries...It was Baucus who crushed the Clinton administration's timid effort to reform federal mining and grazing policies, and terminate below-cost timber sales to big timber companies subsidized by the taxpayers."

http://socialistworker.org/2009/09/18/health-care-swindler

[Mass]

22. He should, but wishful thinking does not help. He is there. The leadership is behind him

and people have to deal with him until people from MT get rid of him, just as we have to deal with Bayh until you get rid of him.

[karynnj]

39. Rockefeller, the chair of the health sub-commitee already did

He has been working with many of the excluded Senators, including Kerry and Menendez (and others I am not sure of - Menendez I remember as he is my Senator and Kerry, of course, is Kerry.)

Kerry has said that there will be a tug of war to amend the Baucus bill. It seems that they will push to amend the bill to correct its problems. The likelihood is that there will be compromises and a better bill than it now is will be voted out - but it will not be what any of the liberals want. Look at the Senators on that committee - there are many conservative Democrats. Kerry and Rockefeller can not get a bill like the HELP bill out.

The process is they need to pass a bill out for pieces HELP does not have. It can be further fixed in the whole Senate which is more liberal than the committee.

[clear eye]

49. DKos is being paid megabucks by the SEIU

headed by Andy Stern, who became the White House's house union leader since the latter part of the Presidential campaign by opposing single-payer.

[David Zephyr]

4. it should be killed outright.

.

[TomCADem]

10. With or Without Amendments?

[IndianaGreen]

11. You can't amend this turkey

anymore than you can change the torture school at Fort Benning, School of Americas (SOA/ WHINSEC), or make the PATRIOT Act conform to Bill of Rights.

Hitler should have been aborted in uterus. No amendments could have changed him.

[TomCADem]

27. What? First, We Need 60 Votes In The Senate, Now We Can't Amend Senate Bills!

Its outrageous all these anti-democratic procedural rules. 60 vote requirements and unamendable legislation are all BS if you ask me. Harry Reid should step down if he can't fix the Senate rules to allow Baucus's bill to be amended.

[BzaDem]

45. Don't worry. The OP is full of it.

The bill can of course be amended, and it will be. There are over 500 amendments that will be voted upon by the full committee. The OP just cares more about making a statement than actually passing healthcare reform or helping people (because anyone with any knowledge of the Senate knows that you can't enact universal healthcare without spending money).

[clear eye]

50. Yes, you can. It's called single-payer

which can be paid for w/ what we're spending now. We are currently adding to the deficit due to paying for emergency care for the uninsured and underinsured. If we want to stop adding to the deficit and cover everyone, single payer can do it with a 4% income tax increase for those of us able to pay taxes, which is less than most of us are paying for insurance premiums + healthcare now. The PNHP has crunched the numbers.

At the time you posted all the public option amendments had not yet been defeated. Now they have. Seems like the OPer was better tuned into the probabilities of the committee under Baucus than you.

[backscatter712]

30. Yes, it can be amended.

For all the garbage that is in this bill, structurally, it is very similar to HR 3200 - same layout, similar language, thus replacing Conrad's co-ops with the HELP Committee or HR 3200 public option is pretty much a cut & paste job.

There's a lot of problems with this bill, which means a lot of cut-and-paste amendments, but the bill is indeed fixable, much of it doable with party-line votes once markup begins.

Keep your eyes on the ball, people. Of course, the bill as it presently stands is shit, but the goal is to present a bill to President Obama that we can live with. If the Baucus bill stalls in committee, I won't go so far as to say the bill is dead, but it injects a huge amount of uncertainty into the mix, which would likely cause invertebrates like Harry Reid to say "Fuck it."

Our best chance is to get the progressives in the Finance Committee to fix what they can, then crap this turd onto the Senate floor. Then, it can be merged with the HELP bill, where we'll have another chance to replace bad provisions with good ones, such as readding or strengthening the public option, get it onto the Senate floor, shove it through with at least the threat of reconciliation, get it into conference committee, where it gets merged with HR 3200, and more brain damage can be fixed, and at that point, the process will have gone so far, that we can make sure the public option's in the final bill, and we can dare the conservadems to vote against it with all the pressure from the country at large to get a bill to Obama's desk.

Don't panic. Use strategy. Of course, Baucus's bill is shit, but the first step is to get it out of the Finance committee so we can take the ball away from Baucus and Conrad.

[TomCADem]

26. Delete

[backscatter712]

12. I voted other: Passed with Rockefeller's amendments to fix the brain damage.

It's coming up on markup time, and Rockefeller's introduced one amendment to add an HR3200-like public option to the Baucus Bill, and several other amendments designed to fix the Baucus brain damage.

In any case, the bigger plan is to get some sort of health care bill onto the floor of the Senate and bring it to a vote. Ideally, it'd be fixed first so all five bills in the House and Senate have a public option in them, which would virtually ensure that the final bill signed into law has a public option.

But if we can't do that, we still need to make sure the best bill we can get passes the Senate and gets to conference committee, and chances are we can fix remaining brain damage there.

[IndianaGreen]

13. If there is no public option on the final bill, it should be defeated

The public option, which was a compromise rising of the appeasement of the health industry on single-payer, is the only way to keep the industry from raping the American people.

[Mass]

14. Sure, if you want to kill reform. It is my understanding that a bill has to come out of the finance

committee in order for the process to advance. Then the two bills: HELP and Finances, will be merged in one bill that will be voted by the full Senate.

So, let's get the bill out of the Finances Committees with Rockefeller, Kerry, Schumer's amendments (and others if they make the bill better), and allow the process to continue.

[Parker CA]

16. That's my understanding as well. Without a Finance Committee bill in the mix, everything stops. nt

[IndianaGreen]

17. May I remind you that we voted for universal health care, not insurance 'reform'

We voted for our hopes, not for the profits of the health industry.

[Mass]

18. Never said I liked the bill. I am just stating what is needed.

The Clinton bill was effectively killed when the Finance Committee decided to stop working on it.

The point is to get this bill out so that it can be amended.

Now, if Reid can find a way to get it out without this, he is welcome to do so, because Baucus is no good, but until this, I am afraid there is no choice.

[backscatter712]

19. Exactly.

Ideally, liberal Democrats on the Finance committee can amend the Baucus bill to put the public option back in it, fix the subsidies, and repair all the other problems with the bill, and shove it out on a party-line vote.

But in the end, the committee has to crap whatever it's got onto the Senate floor so the process can move forward. Chances are that since we'll have to do reconciliation anyways to shove this bill through, we can put the public option back in when the bill goes to conference committee.

[IndianaGreen]

20. Sorry, but if there is no public option in the bill that passes Senate

you can't put it back when it goes to conference.

[Mass]

21. So, it needs to be put back in the bill that is voted by the full Senate.

but you cannot do that until a bill is out of the Finance Committee. The bill out of the Finance Committee is NOT the bill that will be voted upon by the full Senate. It will be combined with the HELP bill.

And there is no reason it cannot PO cannot be put into the Conference Bill if it is in the House Bill and not the Senate Bill. None that I know, at least (while I agree it would be better if it was in the Senate bill).

[clear eye]

51. I think everyone is confusing the bill stalling w/ it being voted down.

If the bill is just shelved in committee, the process stops. If it is voted down, there is no reason I can think of not to bring the HELP committee bill to the floor unless Reid simply won't move against those who have paid him. Not as complicated as the DKos reader says. If Reid won't bring the HELP bill to a vote, he is unmasked, and the process of lobbying for his replacement begins. I believe that under those circumstances, Reid would lose favor w/ Obama, who is committed to passage of a bill this year.

At the later time of this post, all useful amendments have been defeated in committee due to the 3 blue dogs.

[vi5]

15. Why did these other cmtee members take this crap again?

Why did Schumer, Rockeffeller, etc. and the other more liberal dems on the finance committe just sit back and let Max and his gang of 6 do this by excluding them? Why were they not all over the television and all over the media complaining about being excluded? I honestly didn't know until this bill got released that they weren't involved in the negotiations.

I mean Schumer of all people is never one to take things lying down (even when it's things I disagree with him on) and definitely never one to shun the opportunity to talk.

So what gives?

[karynnj]

40. They had no choice - they did complain

The fact is Baucus excluded the three most powerful Senators from the committee on this issue. Kerry, Rockefeller and Schumer. All of whom could have spoken against his ideas in the gang. They met working out what they wanted - and those amendments are the result of those meetings.

[clear eye]

52. The insurance lobby is enormously well-financed

and can credibly threaten to create a viable Republican opposition candidate. It can blanket the NY airwaves w/ ads saying that Schumer blocked healthcare reform because he insisted on a proposal which would drastically raise taxes. Since the MA experience shows that the Obama-style mixed private/public system is exhorbitantly expensive, they wouldn't even have to lie much. The difference is that at the Fed level, that system could be parlayed into single-payer, something states would have a hard time doing w/ their lower tax revenues.

[Lord Helmet]

23. get it through committee and on to reconciliation where it will be changed

if it dies in committee it will impede the process

[grantcart]

24. Baucus Bill = Senate version of "Weekend at Bernie's

[Perky]

28. Oh good grief... Of course not.

There is no other bill to consider. If the Baucus Bill is defeated in committee. there is no Senate bill. If there is no senate bill, there is nothing for the full Senate to vote on. If they vote on nothing. There is no conference.

No converence Report, no final bill... nothing to pass and nothing to sign. SOMETHING. ANYTHING needs to be reported out of committee. Period. End.

[Undercurrent]

31. Not true.

There is the Senate HELP bill already voted out of committee.

[Perky]

33. SEN Bill # please?

[SpartanDem]

35. S. 1679

[liberalpragmatist]

42. The HELP Bill is incomplete

The HELP Committee has no jurisdiction over Medicare, Medicaid, or funding. All those things fall under Finance. As a result, the HELP Committee bill is an incomplete one.

In fact, without the other committee's bill, both bills are incomplete. The only way to get a complete health care bill is by passing things through both Finance and HELP and merging them on the floor.

[backscatter712]

32. There is the HELP bill, but yes, the Finance Committee needs to crap this turd onto the Senate floor

If there's no Finance Committee bill, who knows if the process can be put back on track?

[Undercurrent]

34. Agreed.

I was just responding to the idea that there was no other Senate bill.

And yes, the process, to my understanding, requires a bill out of the Fiance Committee for reconciliation to be used.

The article at KOS about how the process works is very illuminating... and confusing at the same time! This is very complex.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/9/17/783373/-What-should-Senate-Finance-Dems-do?

[backscatter712]

37. That's the article I was going off of.

Nobody really knows what could happen if Finance fails to report a bill. Maybe the process could be salvaged by using the HELP bill and some last-minute parliamentary maneuvers, but given the craven cowardice shown by a majority of the Senate, I'm not sure the will is there for that sort of thing.

So I say amend the Finance bill, fix what we can get the votes to fix in the markup process, then crap this turd onto the Senate Floor, where progressives will probably have more clout to fix more of the brain damage.

[SpartanDem]

29. No it only makes a difficult process even harder

[BlooInBloo]

36. Or amended so much as to be not recognizable as the original.

[trueblue2007]

41. this bill sucks

[davidpdx]

43. If there were an option to use it as toilet paper, I would have gladly voted for that one

That's how bad his bill is.

[BzaDem]

44. It is COMPLETELY impossible to pass ANY healthcare bill without a bill from finance.

There is nothing else to it. The HELP bill is incomplete and not paid for at all, because funding/Medicare/Medicaid bills must be passed out of the finance committee. Please explain to me how we can have a universal healthcare bill that does not cost one dollar.

[bigwillq]

46. YES (nt)

[Faryn Balyncd]

47. yes

[TheKentuckian]

48. Other: Only if it can't successfully be amended up to tolerable

Killing it outright would be dicey because Finance has authority over medicaid/medicare and the ability to budget.