|
|
Throughout much of the yearlong health-care-reform debate, political posturing and partisan vitriol often seemed to eclipse any serious discussion of policy. Who could consider the merits or dangers of the excise tax or sweeping new insurance regulations while Republicans and Democrats were slugging each other daily on cable news, shouting about "government takeovers" and the "party of no"? But in fact there were genuine debates about which ideas and tools are best for reining in health care costs or expanding access. Those days, however, are long gone.
That much is clear in the run-up to the bipartisan health care summit President Obama is hosting on Thursday -- and in the reaction to the compromise plan he put out to start the week. For better or worse, there now seems to be room only for partisan posturing, jockeying, optics and framing. If Democrats win this game, they may still be able to pass health reform. If Republicans prevail, they will hand Obama a stunning defeat that could set the tone for the 2010 midterm elections.
After months of criticism that he wasn't personally involved in shaping the health-reform conversation, President Obama finally released his own plan for legislation on Monday. Posted on a series of glitzy new Web pages, it was heralded by the White House as "the President's proposal." The plan, however, can more accurately be described as the Senate's reform bill with a series of adjustments meant to placate more liberal Democrats in the House. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said the Obama plan was "yet another partisan, backroom bill that slashes Medicare for our seniors." While the Administration has described the Feb. 25 "bipartisan meeting" as an "open" forum to facilitate "constructive debate," the event itself is a political maneuver. The White House called for it only after Scott Brown's surprise victory in the Massachusetts Senate race destroyed the Democratic supermajority in the Senate needed to break a filibuster. (Before Brown's victory, Democrats seemed poised to cut a final deal to pass a package through the House and Senate.)
Republicans, convinced that the Feb. 25 meeting would be pure political theater, have been trying to frame it as that ever since the event was announced. First, House Republican leaders John Boehner and Eric Cantor sent the White House an open letter calling on the President to scrap the existing Democratic reform bills and "start over." This idea gained no traction and Republicans realized they could not skip the Feb. 25 meeting -- it's hard politically to turn down an invitation to be bipartisan. Boehner then sent a follow-up open letter deriding Congressional Democrats for "plotting legislative trickery" to pass health reform.
Boehner was referring to budget reconciliation, a legislative maneuver that would allow the Senate to pass changes to its reform bill with only 50 votes. (Vice President Joe Biden could, in this case, cast a tie-breaking vote.) The White House has been very careful not to explicitly say it intends to pursue a reconciliation strategy, which Republicans insist is a radical, undemocratic move -- this, even though the GOP used it during the Bush presidency to pass two rounds of tax cuts. But during a briefing on Feb. 22, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said of the approach, "The avenue exists if one wants to pursue it." On an earlier call with reporters, White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer declared, "We have made no determination which process to move forward," but then said, "The President expects and believes the American people deserve an up or down vote on health reform," adding that the President's fixes to the Senate bill were designed "with maximum flexibility to ensure we can get an up or down vote in case the opposition decides to take the extraordinary step of filibustering health reform."
Click here to continue reading.
