Deal With It

“The Republican party is a wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance industry”. With these twelve words yesterday, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) created what could be considered, at least for C-SPAN viewers, an action packed couple of minutes. The GOP leadership insisted that his words were too offensive or, more likely, too true not to be stricken from the record immediately. After revising his remarks only slightly, Weiner closed with the following well-chosen phrase, “deal with it”. His opening statement may not have fostered many bipartisan feelings in advance of today’s White House Healthcare Summit but his closing words will come to define the outcome.

The Democratic majority IS going to use reconciliation in order to pass healthcare reform legislation which combines the bill the Senate has already passed and some adjustments the White House recently put forward. It will be a done deal in a matter of weeks. Republicans are already wailing that this would be an “unprecedented” violation of Senate rules. The right has even adapted the moniker “Nuclear Option” to describe this plan, alluding to what was originally a GOP idea to amend Senate rules and eliminate use of the filibuster in certain circumstances. They proposed this because Democrats, in the minority at the time (2005), had the raw nerve to filibuster a few of George W. Bush’s most extreme judicial nominees. The kinds who believe it’s in their job description to enforce biblical law, rather than apply the US Constitution to modern legal disputes.

Passing this reform package through reconciliation may be “unprecedented” in terms of size and scope but it leaves Senate rules intact and allows the body to determine whether or not to amend or even eliminate the filibuster separately. It is most definitely not the Nuclear Option. If the Republican minority were not using the filibuster in such an “unprecedented” fashion, attempting to kill nearly every piece of work in the Senate at a time of national crisis, perhaps the Democrats would not be so likely to buck tradition, without truly going nuclear. Until their best chance at revenge, the mid-term elections this fall, the GOP will have no choice but to “deal with it”.

Ask yourself why the Democrats should consider any other alternative, given the GOP track record since Obama’s inauguration. Why should the majority believe it can scrap all of the previous year’s work, start over from scratch with the minority, during an election year, and expect a different outcome? In less than one year, the GOP disinformation machine turned end of life counseling with trained medical professionals into “death panels”. A clear provision forbidding federal funds from being used to cover illegal aliens became “You Lie!” followed by false assertions that taxpayers would indeed cover such aliens. When a proposal originally championed by Republicans, a private health insurance exchange, replaced the public option, the GOP immediately turned against their own idea and it replaced the option as the dreaded “government takeover of healthcare”. Bipartisanship? Perish the thought.

Every time, during today’s meeting, that a Republican representative cited polls showing that a majority of Americans oppose the current plan, I found myself yelling at the screen, “Of course they do, look at what you’ve been telling them all year”! The above were just a few examples. There are many more. It’s a wonder that anyone is still for it. The weakness of the GOP’s propaganda is only revealed when you poll the public on individual parts of the plan. Then you find that Americans overwhelmingly support the nuts and bolts of this package. It’s just the wrapping they’ve been poisoned against. Bipartisanship is, by definition, a two way street. If Republicans aren’t going to meet Democrats halfway, and it is crystal clear that they will not, then why should Democrats ever consider “starting over”? I have heard insanity being defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. The White House and congressional Democrats have repeatedly adopted GOP amendments and proposals along this long and winding road. Each time they reached out they have had their political hands bitten off. Now we should all start over? Utter insanity!

Republicans went to great lengths today to try and paint themselves as being concerned for “ordinary Americans” and “working for the people”. A variation of an age old saying, one which a friend recently taught me, is an appropriate response to their hollow words, “Your actions are speaking so loud that I can’t hear what you’re saying”. The two chief health reform ideas Republicans have remaining, caps on lawsuits and interstate purchasing (their version), put the lie to their pretty posturing. The former would cap ALL lawsuits and not just “frivolous” ones, thus denying the rights of legitimate victims (this from the same folks who refuse to CAP the dumping of poisons in our air, water and land). The latter idea has potential in theory, provided that you have minimum federal insurance standards in place (as the Democrats’ version proposes). Why? To burden the states with a bunch of new regulations just for kicks? No. Because, without them, insurance companies would simply relocate in states which impose the least minimum insurance practices, firing the starting pistol for the “race to the bottom” in terms of industry business ethics which the president alluded to this afternoon. So much for “ordinary Americans”, unless those Americans happen to own an insurance company.

So, here we stand. It is February 26, 2010. America has been talking, and yelling, about health care reform for almost a year. Our politicians have been trying, and failing, to enact comprehensive reform for more than a half-century. For the first time in all those years, both houses of congress have passed this kind of reform. But for one up or down vote (remember that winning slogan?), a president sits in the oval office who will sign it. Meanwhile, Republicans sit on a throne made of double standards. “We did it but you just can’t” (16 times GOP majorities used reconciliation to avoid filibuster, Democrats just 6). “But this is different, health care represents 1/6 of our economy, it’s too big”. Yes, it is different. But so is using the filibuster more often than Simon Cowell gets booed on American Idol. Watching seven GOP Senators who co-sponsored a bill authorizing a bipartisan debt reduction panel turn 180 degrees and vote to filibuster the bill they helped write, simply because President Obama said he would enact it, now that’s different.

One standard must apply to all. If the Republicans can use the filibuster more than four times as frequently as any previous Senate minority, thus damaging the very institution they represent, then Democrats can circumvent their obstructionism in an equally unprecedented manner. And if you acknowledge that Republicans are doing all of this with an eye toward shoring up their political base on the far right, in hopes of massive election gains come November, then you must allow Democrats to do the one thing most likely to motivate their own base. Pass comprehensive healthcare reform through the reconciliation process. Do it now. Get it over with so that we, as a country, can finally move on, pun intended, and deal with the many other issues we still face in the aftermath of one of the most difficult decades in American history.

Paul Roth, Jr.