Sunday, January 31, 2010
The party of no vs. the party of 'd'oh!'
Dan Radmacher
Recent columns
- Heading back to the debate in Appalachia
- Redistricting process must be taken from pols
- A shutdown remains a very real possibility
- U.S. Navy Vets case argues for campaign limits
From the RoundTable blog
As I write this, it's unclear what is going to happen with health care reform. House Democrats seem to be warming to the idea of passing the Senate bill as is, as long as they get solid reassurances from Senate Democrats that some of their most vociferous disagreements with that bill can be resolved in a reconciliation process.
That is the clearest way for Democrats to actually pass reform now that they no longer have the 60 votes needed in the Senate to overcome endless Republican filibusters, but some Senate Democrats were balking. It wouldn't be right, they said, to pass health care reform now in a way that "only" requires 51 votes out of 100.
Those Democrats should be ignored by leadership -- and perhaps by the time you read this that will have happened, and Congress will be on its way to passing much-needed reform.
I wouldn't bet on it, though. The more likely outcome is that Democrats will squander the best opportunity to pass meaningful health care reform in generations -- even though that failure can only worsen their prospects in the upcoming midterm elections.
If that is the final outcome, Democrats will have earned the shellacking they will take in November.
By failing to pass this legislation, the Republican caricature of it -- based on misinformation and outright lies -- will be the only reality many voters know. Republican candidates will bash Democrats for the votes they've already taken, and progressive voters angered by Democrats' cave-in will stay home in droves.
Only passing the legislation can prove to the Democratic base that the party can still achieve vital policy goals -- and prove that obstructionist Republicans have been lying through their teeth about this legislation from the beginning.
Make no mistake: That's exactly what the Republican Party has been doing. From "death panels" to federal funding for abortion to claims they've been shut out of the process, practically every GOP talking point on health care reform has been an out-and-out fabrication.
Democrats can and should pass this legislation, and they can and should do it without a single Republican vote, if necessary. The opposition party long ago made it clear that it had no interest in anything other than seeing President Obama and his initiatives fail.
That hasn't stopped several Democrats from urging a renewed effort at a bipartisan approach to health care reform.
After the loss of Sen. Ted Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts, for instance, Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, said Democrats needed to "reach out to our Republican colleagues" on health care.
Perhaps Boucher has forgotten that Democrats already tried that. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., worked with the bipartisan "Gang of Six" for months on compromise legislation. No matter how much ground he ceded, it wasn't enough. At one point, the Republicans' chief negotiator, Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, admitted that he wouldn't vote for the Democratic bill even if he got every concession he asked for.
As Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina said, the Republican goal in the health care reform debate is not to create a better system for all Americans, it is to break a president. "If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo," DeMint said on a conference call with conservative activists. "It will break him."
With such a clear record of unprecedented obstructionism from the opposition party, Democrats shouldn't even worry about appearing bipartisan. Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor recently revealed that the Republican notion of bipartisanship consists of assuming the Democrats -- who currently have a larger majority in Congress than Republicans have had since the 1920s -- should adopt the GOP's lame proposal intact, even though it does next to nothing about any of the serious problems with the nation's current health care system.
Democrats have let Republicans walk all over them on this issue and most others. They've lacked the party discipline, even with 60 members in the Senate caucus, to overcome Republican filibusters without making sweetheart deals with hold-out Democrats -- deals that should have been unnecessary simply to get to an up-or-down vote on a vital issue.
Republicans and their supporters may feel good about what they've accomplished -- or rather what they've kept from getting accomplished. But by making 60 votes the new minimum for getting anything passed in the Senate, Republicans may be cutting their own throats.
The last time Republicans had 60 senators, after all, was 1909.
But until Democrats find their backbones and Republicans realize that the minority party can do more than just say no, I don't see how Congress will be able to accomplish anything meaningful.
Radmacher is the editorial page editor of The Roanoke Times.
