. . . as Senior Advisor to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan during the Clinton term. Moynihan was the 'moderate' spoiler in that fight.
I watched the two together in every committee hearing that Moynihan presided over as he worked against George Mitchell and Hillary Clinton's efforts to pass health care legislation. Moynihan had called the Clinton bill "boob bait for bubbas" and as chairman of the Senate Finance committee, he refused to hold a single hearing on it.
Moynihan was working on a bill together with Bob Dole. He was obsessed with getting republican support, but Gingrich and other conservatives pressured Dole and he eventually promised to filibuster any bill with an employer mandate, leaving Moynihan arguing for centrist proposals (short of universal coverage) in his own competing bill. Incidentally, Clinton sided with Ted Kennedy's Labor and Human Resources Committee crafting a bill.
In the end, Mitchell and the Clintons were persuaded that they didn't have enough votes to pass a bill so they stripped the legislation down and took out the universal coverage.
an account of what happened next from PBS NewsHour's Timeline of the Healthcare Debate portrayed in "The System":
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/may96/background/health_debate_page3.htmlLate August 1994 - Democrats begin preparing for the November elections by distancing themselves from their President -- and from the reform he has attempted.
Early September 1994 - Top aides to Kennedy, Mitchell, and Chafee, in round-theclock sessions, prepare a final compromise bill that will be ready when Congress returns on September 19.
September 19, 1994 - The New York Times reports remarks -- never subsequently denied -- that Bob Packwood made to his Republican senatorial colleagues during closed-door strategy sessions while he was managing the Republican attack during the summer. "We've killed health care reform," Packwood told his fellow Republican senators. "Now we've got to make sure our fingerprints are not on it." For many this is the "smoking gun": proof of a carefully plotted, and secret, Republican strategy.
Congress reconvenes. Mitchell hopes to set aside four days for Senate debate on the new Mainstream bill and then schedule a straight up-or-down vote. Republicans begin mobilizing for a filibuster to keep the bill from reaching the floor. Supporters realize they don't have enough votes to break the filibuster.
September 20, 1994 - Newt Gingrich privately warns Bill Clinton in the White House that if he continues to push for health reform in the closing days of the session, he will lose the Republican support needed to pass GATT, which the President believes is critical to the U.S. economic position as the leader of the Western alliance. George Mitchell, repeating this Gingrich threat to colleagues privately immediately after, describes it as "an atomic bomb blast."
September 26, 1994 - At a news conference in the Capitol, George Mitchell pulls the plug on health care reform.
Here's an account of what I understood to be at the nub of the animosity between the Clinton camp and Moynihan - a jurisdiction squabble . . .from NYT 1993:
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/25/us/moynihan-and-kennedy-tangle-on-health-bill.html___Months before they are to start scrutinizing any fine print in the Clinton Administration's plan to overhaul health care, some of the Senate's leading figures have fallen into a nasty squabble over who should hold the magnifying glass.
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the New York Democrat who heads the Finance Committee, wants his panel to handle the legislation. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who heads the Labor and Human Resources Committee, wants to claim it. Senate aides said their wrestling reached a heated climax last weekend during conversations between the two men and with the majority leader, George J. Mitchell of Maine. Bruised Egos
One result is that nobody has principal responsibility in the Senate for Mr. Clinton's principal legislative initiative, at least for now.
"It's still heated, to some extent," one Democratic aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said today. "Feelings were hurt. Egos were bruised."___
. . . and, for what it's worth, O'Donnell never left Moynihan's side during the entire process. I've never heard him talk about it in any detail.
President Obama said during the campaign that he thought the Clinton health care reform effort was too partisan and divisive. It looks like he tried to solve all of that by lining up the conservative votes from the start - and it looks like he intends to court them to the end by shaving off whatever objection of the day they have until something has enough votes to pass.
Just watching O'Donnell on MSNBC sounding progressive and anxious for a bill and thinking about all of this . . . remembering him whispering in Moynihan's ear at every hearing, following him around with briefcases and handfuls of paperwork . . .
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