On the night Scott Brown won, I wrote about the irony of his election:
despite Scott Brown’s promise to be the 41st vote against “Obamacare,” he won’t be. There will be a health care bill enacted this year, and quite possibly this month. Most likely, the House will simply accept the Senate bill, which means it goes to the President without ever returning to the Senate. And bam, we’ve got health care reform. Woohoo.
There’s lots of damage that Brown can, and no doubt will, do on cap ‘n’ trade, financial reform, and other things. But health care? Nope. He’ll never have the chance.
I was right about that, sort of (I didn’t predict the accompanying reconciliation bill). But I was wrong about that being the biggest irony of his election.
No, the biggest irony is that, had Martha Coakley won, we most likely would not yet have a health care bill, and we might never have gotten one. As long as Democrats controlled 60 votes in the Senate, they (including the President) seemed hell-bent on getting all 60 to vote in favor of it rather than simply end-running the filibuster rule and passing a bill via — *gasp* — majority vote. That gave us painful negotiations with Joe Lieberman; it lost us the public option; it gave us the “Cornhusker kickback” and other atrocities. And, had the Senate and House bills gone to a conference committee, we would have seen the same endless drama play out again on the conference report, with the end result far from certain.
But all of that changed when Scott Brown won. With his win, the possibility of getting 60 votes vanished — and with it, the need to do so. It then became perfectly obvious that the only way to get a health care bill through the Senate was via the budget reconciliation process — i.e., with a majority vote, as the founders of our country intended. And, once reconciliation was on the table, things suddenly got much easier. The Dems could afford to lose a few conservaDems in the Senate (apparently, Nebraska’s Ben Nelson is in fact voting “no” on the reconciliation bill, though he claims it’s not because of the repeal of his state’s bonanza), which means they didn’t have to tie themselves up in knots keeping the Liebermans, Nelsons, and Lincolns of the world happy. They only need 51 votes, and there’s little doubt that they have them.
So thanks, Scott. By winning, you gave America health care reform. Well done.
If they can’t eliminate the Senate (where Wyoming has the same representation as California, real democratic), at least eliminate the filibuster.
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p>I believe that PEOPLE should be represented in a legislature, not ACRES.
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p>With the filibuster, evern MORE power goes to the Lieberman/ Lincoln/ Nelson types. Notice that 2 out of 3 are from low-population states.
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p>As a big suburb guy from the Northeast, I see a lot of the problem as too much power to low population, rural areas as opposed to large cities, rather than a problem with Southern States.
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p>Remember, Alan Grayson is from Florida, and in North Carolina, Kay Hagen, Larry Kissel, and Barack Obama all won in North Carolina in 2008.
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p>And Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) is getting a Democratic Primary opponent from her left, Lt. Gov. Bill Halter (D-AR).
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p>That is VERY good news.
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p>Ben Nelson (D-NE) is mealy-mouthed and mush brained, with a great “I’m a dumb guy who don’t know no big and fancy” routine that I don’t think is faked.
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p>Joseph Lieberman (Connecticut for Lieberman-CT) is a war lover who doesn’t want health reform. Worderful.
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p>To those who object, saying that “then everything will be determined by NYC and LA, with no say for Farmer Brown”, I say, GOOD, THAT’S WHERE THE PEOPLE ARE.
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p>The US Senate does neither. Senators represent states, so to speak.
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p>Which isn’t a low-population state? Louisiana is the 25th most populous, and in fact more than 80% of Americans live in Louisiana or a state more populous than that. I grew up in Connecticut, the most populous of the three you mention — it sure seems like a low-population state to me.
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p>I agree it isn’t perfectly proportional to population, but I’m not so sure it really works out as a problem. It seems to me that on the one hand you’ve got WY, ID, MT, ND, SD, and AK. On the other, HI, VT, ME, NHish, DE and RI. That’s all the EVs=3,4. For EVs = 5,6 you’ve got red UT, NE and MS, but purplish NV, NM, AR and blueish WV. EVs=7,8: OK, SC, KY are quite red, IA is blueish, and OR and CT are bright blue. I just don’t see strong evidence that low population states are overwhelmingly red. I agree that the current balance is more red than blue. States like AR and WV seem to be drifting right, but states like NM, NV, NH are drifting left.
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p>I won’t touch your comments on individual legislators.
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p>That’s not quite where the people are. Most people are near but not in places like NYC, LA, Chitown, Dallas, Philly, Houston, Miami, Hotlanta, DC, and at #10, The Hub. Note that those 10 metro areas in 15 states (and DC) make up 80 million people, only 27% of tUSA population. Note also that the top three metro areas are only growing at about a 4% aggregate rate — which means that the distribution is spreading thinner, not being consolidated.
To the idea that cities should dictate the policy for everyone, despite the fact that large swaths of the population live in rural areas. City people don’t necessarily have the same concerns as rural citizens.
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p>Yes, the Senate is broken, and it seems out of proportion to the population a lot of the time (studying votes, where the votes can be stopped by people representing a LOT less people than those who want something, who represent the most population), but I think all we really need is to kill the filibuster. THAT is what is broken.
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p>I’ll even back that statement up when the Repubs have the majority, because I want them to OWN their disastrous legislation – let them deregulate, cut taxes on the wealthy, etc, because it’ll eventually wind them up in a long term minority.
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p>We didn’t use it anyway, the filibuster, under Bush, because Dems don’t have real balls. Though we seem to have some now that we lost our 60, as David said.
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p>BTW awesome post and I blogged it. đŸ™‚
The comparison I’ve heard cited is that the combined populations of Montana, Idaho, N. Dakota, S. Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska and Oklahoma are approximately equal to the population of NY City (~8.5 million).
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p>Yet the residents of these 7 states wield the power of 14 US Senators compared to just 2 for residents of NY City (never mind the other 10 million residents of NY State).
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p>If you add Alaska’s 700K residents and Utah’s 2.8M, you’ve got nearly one-fifth of the Senate representing a combined population only slightly larger than NY City proper, but still way smaller than the 18 million who comprise the greater NY City urban area.
The Chairman would be proud….
Unless/until the reconciliation package makes it out of the Senate, we’re right back where we were. And if there’s anyone on Capitol Hill who has the ability to turn this into a defeat, it’s Harry Reid.
First, even if reconciliation gets tied up in the Senate, we’re most definitely not back to square one. President Obama signs the Senate’s health care bill into law today, and that makes a ton of big changes. It’ll be a better law if reconciliation passes, but even if it doesn’t, we still cover 32 million Americans, ban rescissions and pre-existing condition exclusions, etc.
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p>Second, while I agree that Harry is capable of booting this, I don’t think he’s going to.
Good ones…we’ll see. It’s great news if you want health insurance and don’t have it, or live in Nebraska. It’s bad news if you don’t want it and don’t have it, or accepted better benefits of lieu of better pay. If the reconciliation is signed, then I think it’s better for everyone. If it isn’t, we’ve just moved the burden around some.
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p>PS: My fervent hope is that Reid slowly becomes a figurehead as he fights for re-election, with Schumer calling the shots.
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He appeased MA “moderates” by voting for a jobs bill, which infuriated his more conservative and out-of-state supporters. To get back into their good graces, he’s co-sponsoring S.3081, the “Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act”. It’s one of those truly horrendous and unconstitutional “get tough on vaguely suspected terrorists” bills that give the Executive branch dictatorial powers. Other co-sponsors include John McCain, who’s trying to out-crazy JD Hayworth in the AZ Senate primary, McC’s good buddy Lieberman, Inhofe, and a bunch of sons of the Old South whose constituents eat this stuff up. As gratifying as the health care vote may be, we need to keep an eye on the ambitious Senator Brown.