TPM: Plan B: Democrats Consider How To Pass Health Care If Coakley Loses

[Pirate Smile]

Plan B: Democrats Consider How To Pass Health Care If Coakley Loses

A new way forward on health care is gaining some traction among Democrats, who are preparing for the possibility that Democrat Martha Coakley will lose her bid to replace Ted Kennedy in the Senate, costing Democrats their 60th vote, which they'll need to overcome the filibuster.

The House has been preparing to tweak the Senate bill with a package of amendments based on a deal reached last week with organized labor, send it back to the upper chamber for final passage, and claim victory. But Coakley could well lose her race, depriving Democrats of the 60th vote they'd need to overcome a filibuster, and that unthinkable possibility is forcing party leaders to consider a Plan B.

As I noted last week, the House could simply pass the Senate bill unchanged, and Obama could sign reform into law. As recently as last week, a number of high-profile Democrats were saying that would never fly. But many are now suggesting that the House might still pull through, if House members are promised that the deal they agreed to last week will be passed separately--and quickly--through the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process.

Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, told the Boston Globe, the idea is "well within the scope of the rules of the Senate," and, indeed, the deal with labor is largely a change to the tax structure of the bill, which is the sort of issue the reconciliation process is designed to address.

But there's another, extremely important X-factor.

Even if progressives can be convinced, in light of the Massachusetts curveball, to hold tight and pass the Senate bill, there's still the question of whether vulnerable members (freshmen, sophomores, red-state Democrats) will react to the loss of Kennedy's seat in sky-Blue Massachusetts with panic, and rush for the exits.

And yet, this is the most appealing option on the table for Democrats. There's almost no chance that the White House or Senate leadership could convince Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) not to filibuster the bill if the House sent it back over with their changes. Dems also don't want to start from scratch, and pass an entirely different bill through the reconciliation process. And all of those long-shot possibilities are much more appealing than defeat.

Discussions between members are ongoing, and nobody thinks moving ahead will be easy. But Democrats aren't willing to accept a Coakley defeat as a death knell for the year long fight over health care. At least not yet.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/01/plan-b-democrats-consider-how-to-pass-health-care-if-coakley-loses.php

[T Wolf]

1. ..."willing to accept a Coakley defeat as a death knell..." OR see it as an excuse to

either shove the Senate version through quickly or make even more concessions to the pukes in order to get their support.

I think they are beyond trusting to any extent. Rather, we should expect the worse from "our" pols in Congress and the WH and defend accordingly.

[daa]

2. Not to worry, they will come back and "fix" it nt

[Tom Rinaldo]

3. Democrats will be making a huge mistake...

If Coakley loses and they use the strategy discussed here they would multiply their woes. The Democratic Party has already dangerously dampened the motivation of many liberal activists to keep defending them Passing the Senate Bill intact without a quick package of more liberal changes would make matters worse still.

But it would be far far worse than that if the Democrats in the Senate finally actually used the reconciliation process, only to promote a couple of watered down marginal improvements in the
Senate bill of the sort that had just been negotiated with the then assumption that Democrats could not do better and still hold on to a 60 vote majority. If Democrats go the reconciliation route at long last but fail to produce a version of HCR at least as liberal as the version the House passed, which included a public option, holy hell will break loose from progressives. If they are too dense to see that coming they deserve to lose.

[bluestateguy]

4. I have no position on this

[pnwmom]

5. I think this could well work to our advantage

if immediately passing the Senate bill is done on the condition that the House changes are passed through reconciliation. This could also put the deficit-reducing public option back on the table sooner rather than later.

[Tom Rinaldo]

6. This story pointedly makes NO mention of the Public Option

Nor does it make any mention of any of the House alternative language to the Senate Bill that was in the bill that the House initially passed. It ONLY discusses a plan to honor the compromises hammered out in negotiations over the last two weeks during the effort to find a formular that would pass the House and keep 60 Senators on board. Those concessions to organized labor and to House progressives were minor ones, the final version was going to look a whole lot like the initial Senate Bill.

If I read this story right the back up strategy is to quickly use reconciliation to tweak the Senate bill back to the compromises that were just signed off on. I assun=me that's because if those compromises were non controversial enough to still hold onto 60 votes in the then 60 member Demo ratic caucus, they would be "non controversial" to pursue through reconciliation also.

This will blow up in Democrats faces if they go this route. As soon as they try to use reconciliation to pass HCR that only needs a bare majority they will have lost any political cover they once thought they had for not insisting on a more progressive approach, including a robust Public Option available to ALL Americans. They won't have Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberaman to blame anymore for pushing half assed measures.

[pnwmom]

7. If they start to go the reconciliation route, then why wouldn't Kucinich or some

other supporter of a public option immediately offer a proposal for one -- either as an amendment or as a stand alone bill?

[Tom Rinaldo]

8. They may well do so. Just like Single Payer was introduced as an amendment

But this story discussed what the strategy that the Democratic leadership in the House, Senate, and White House are supposedly discussing pursuing, and we have seen how progressive priorities have fared so far.

Let's just say that going the minimalist, course of supposedly least resistance, route to "reform" one more time would be completely consistent with all we have seen from this Administration at every step of this process to date.