09.30.09
Democrats on Senate Finance Committee vote down public option
Yesterday the Senate Finance Committee voted down an amendment that would have added a public option (15 Nays, 8 Yeas) to the health care bill that the committee was debating.
The final vote was 8-15 with 5 Democrats–Sens. Kent Conrad (D-ND), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Tom Carper (D-DE), Bill Nelson (D-FL), and Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT)–voting with all Republicans to kill the proposal.
It needs to be made clear that the reason this, and another public optoin amendment failed, was not because of the GOP members of the committee, but because of the Democrats. It can’t be for fiscal reasons, since it’s likely all those who voted against are worried about the cost of health insurance reform. And a public option will bring down the cost of any bill, CBO Estimates Show Public Plan With Higher Savings Rate.
Unfortunately it leaves the specter of health insurance lobby donations to those Senators as a motivating factor. David Sirota does a great job of showing why that is even a consideration, The Mathematics of Corruption.
In case you were looking for a good, succinct mathematical example of what corruption really looks like, consider this:
- The latest poll shows two-thirds of Americans back a robust public option.
- Two-thirds of the Senate Finance Committee just voted down a robust public option.
I’d say that just about sums it up: On issues of economic and corporate power, you can basically take the majority percentage of public support for a given measure and expect to get that many Senate votes against it.
To further highlight the “tone deafness” of a majority of the members of the Senate Finance Committee, there’s the findings of this poll, Poll: Public Says Voice Not Heard In Health Debate.
Perhaps no other issue Congress deals with touches every American as intimately as health care. Yet a new poll by NPR, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Harvard School of Public Health finds that, so far, the public feels profoundly shut out of the current health overhaul debate.
“Most people don’t feel that they personally have a voice in this debate,” said Mollyann Brodie, director of public opinion and survey research for the Kaiser Family Foundation. “In fact, 71 percent told us that Congress was paying too little attention to what people like them were saying.”
Nancy Turtenwald is one of those people. The tourist from Milwaukee was walking around the sparkling new visitor center at the U.S. Capitol Tuesday. She was quick to agree with poll findings that the lawmakers debating the massive health overhaul bill just a few blocks away weren’t much interested in problems like hers.
“I don’t think they are people like us, you know?” she said. She thinks Congressional lawmakers know very little about the daily lives of the average American — and the health care costs they face. “How often do they go and buy gas and bread and stuff to see what it’s really like for the people like us?”
So who does Turtenwald think Congress is listening to? “Lobbyists, and people who will get them reelected.”
It’s pretty hard to disagree with that when you watch an ad like this and see how much money Democratic chair of the Senate Finance Committee Max Baucus takes from the health care lobby.
The last point to make on this for now is how far are some Democats willing to go to kill a public option. This post asks the question, Which Senate Democrats Would Join With A GOP Filibuster on a Public Option?.
Chuck Schumer and Max Baucus just said that there were not 60 votes for the public option in the Senate.
The Public Option doesn’t need 60 votes. It needs 51. That is, unless the GOP filibusters it. What Baucus and Schumer are saying — explicitly — is that there are Democrats who would support a GOP filibuster to keep the public option from having an up-or-down vote on the floor of the Senate. They are saying that there are Democrats who would vote with the GOP to block a vote on something that the President says he supports — a public option.
That is a very serious charge. It’s tantamount to party treason. Schumer and Baucus need to say who these members are immediately.
It’s been EOW’s contention for some time, that this is exactly why some Senators don’t want a public option to come to the floor for a vote. Because if it does they will vote for cloture, and it will become law. That’s why killing it in committee is so important to them.