Guilty of Practicing Good Government

[babylonsister]

http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-treatment/why-delay-good-if-frustrating


Guilty of Practicing Good Government

Jonathan Cohn


It's Wednesday morning. House leaders have indicated they want to vote on both the Senate health care bill and amendments to it by Saturday night. But, as you may have noticed, they still haven't said precisely what the wording of those amendments will be. And that's because they still haven't finalized them.

It's not for lack of trying. In the offices of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and occasionally in other locations on Capitol Hill, officials and staff have been working furiously to work out terms acceptable to all of the different political and interest group factions. And they're long past arguing over the big picture, since the outline of the final compromise has been apparent for weeks: A bit more financial protection for individuals buying coverage, more financial assistance for seniors buying drugs, a slightly reduced tax on expensive health benefits, and a higher Medicare tax for wealthy people. This is what President Obama proposed two weeks ago and it is, more or less, House and Senate leaders had said they would support in early January.

But, as Lori Montomery explains today in the Washington Post, the devil really is in the details. And the devil, in this case, has a name: the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). In order to satisfy the requirements for the budget reconciliation process, through which Congress will consider the amendments, CBO must certify that the changes will reduce the deficit both in the decade following enactment and the decade following that.

snip//

The cruel irony is that Democrats actually deserve some credit here. When President Bush and the Republicans wanted to pass their big health care bill, the creation of a Medicare drug benefit, they didn't even bother to pay for it. They were happy to run up huge deficits. When a government actuary predicted that the program would cost a lot more than its proponents claimed--a prediction that quite likely could have alienated enough conservative votes in Congress to stop the bill from becoming law--the Bush Administration ordered the actuary to say nothing and threatened to fire him.

Here, instead, we have President Obama and the Democrats confronting truly difficult trade-offs, in order to convince skeptical government accountants that health care reform will reduce government spending by even more than the accounts predicted it would already.

We hear a lot about the corrupt bargaining and backroom deals in health care reform. -There are valid reasons for that. But this is an instance where the Democrats are guilty of something else: Trying to practice good government.

[Control-Z]

1. I just rec'd

but the number stayed the same. Sorry. There are people who cannot allow anything enncouraging to get through.

[Cha]

2. Yes, they're practicing good government

and what do get? Attacks from all kinds whiny hypocrites.

[depakid]

3. Sometimes, all one can do is...

:rofl:

TNR... headed the way of US News & World Report.