The possibilities of a bipartisan (insert issue) bill are slim. In fact, they never really existed. Yet the marginal Democrats (I’m looking at you, Senator Nelson) continue to go around and proclaim that new legislation that doesn’t have a super-duper supermajority, somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 votes in the Senate, is not legitimate.
Bipartisanship is a virtue to strive for, but at what cost? In my last post, I chastised Democrats for failing to get their acts together, defend their values, and stop arguing with themselves. This time, it’s something more malevolent in the system. The Republicans are trying to barter their way to favorable public policy outcomes. Note: I did not say palatable, I didn’t even say tolerable, nor did I say compromise-that-reflects-their-relative-strength; I said favorable.
How does this work? How do 40 GOP Senators and 178 GOP Congressmen barter their way to favorable policies? By pledging support for ideas, then moving the goal posts. In many ways, this is a Peanuts strip. Lucy tells Charlie Brown that she’ll hold the football for him to kick, and Charlie Brown’s been duped before and is reluctant to try try again. But, Lucy convinces him that “This time, she means it.” So, Charlie gives in and takes a run at the football. Lucy, true to form, pulls it away at the last second and Charlie careens by.
The Republicans make the right noises and say the right things, indicating that they would support a (insert issue) bill if it had certain provisions. Reasonable? Yes. It’s the art of compromising. Senators will transcend party, work ideas from both sides of the aisle into the bill, then a broad, bipartisan coalition will support the bill. Right?
Wrong. At the last minute, after the Democrats have agreed to incorporate Republican ideas, the Republicans pull the football away. They proclaim, “We never liked those ideas. We like these over here instead. If you give us those, we’ll support the bill.” Just like Lucy, the Republicans taunt Charlie Brown again, saying that THIS TIME, they’ll let him kick the football.
For example:
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa:
- Then: “I believe that there is a bipartisan consensus to have individual mandates.” Fox News Sunday, June 14, 2009
- Now: “[T]here are other points as well, but let me mention other points that you didn’t mention. And one would be the individual mandate, which for the first time would have a federal penalty against people who don’t have health insurance…. I’m very reluctant to go along with an individual mandate.”October 6, 2009.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky:
“But the core point is this: At the end of the day, if the government plan is either in the bill or out of the bill, whether they will be able to argue successfully or not whether tax funds are gonna be provided for abortion, whether or not they will be able to argue at the end that dollars for health care for illegals is in or out, what we do know is what the core of the bill is going to look like. We know that for sure,” he said.
And the bottom line, said McConnell, is that Republicans don’t like the bill at all.
“It’s going to be a trillion dollar bill,” said McConnell. President Obama has said he won’t sign any bill that exceeds $900 billion over ten years, but what’s a few billion?
“We know it’s going to have half a trillion dollars in Medicare cuts. We know it’s going to raise taxes on individuals and business. So however these other issues are resolved, the core of the bill is a trillion dollar government attempt to take over one-sixth of the economy, which slashes Medicare by half a trillion dollars, and raises taxes on most Americans,” he said. September 30, 2009.
Sen. Grassey, again:
“Chuck Todd asked Grassley whether he’d vote for the bill if it was a good piece of policy that he’d crafted but that couldn’t attract more than a handful of Republican votes. “Certainly not,” replied Grassley. Todd tried again, clarifying that this was legislation Grassley liked, and thought would move the ball forward, but was getting bogged down due to partisanship. Grassley held firm. If a good bill cannot attract Republican support, then it is not a good bill, he argued.Grassley, in other words, is working backward from the votes. If the Gang of Six reaches a compromise that the Senate Republicans don’t support, Grassley will abandon that compromise, regardless of the fact that he’s the guy who built it. The Gang of Six, in other words, falls apart if it can’t assure a vote of 76. Since it seems virtually impossible that such a vote will manifest, it seems similarly unlikely that Grassley will sign his name to the final bill. And Grassley, remember, was willing to say all this publicly. His version of bipartisanship is strikingly partisan.” August 17, 2009.
And on the subject of individual mandates:
- “…When Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) asked committee members to air their disagreements with an individual mandate during a meeting on May 5, no one chimed in.” September 22, 2009.
- Senator Jon Kyl, R-Arizona: “This is a stunning assault on liberty” and Senator Jim Bunning, R-Kentucky: These provisions trample on the feedoms of Americans.” September 22, 2009. Both of these esteemed gentlemen ARE on the Finance Committee.
At the end of the day, what it comes down to is that the Republicans are (a) determined to water down and dilute any Democratic efforts at reform, (b) unwilling to lend support to any bill that does not completely reflect their views and any noises of bipartisan compromise are only misleading, ephemeral goalposts, and (c) going to vote no.
Update: 28 October 2009
From Political Animal (Steven Benen):
PAY NO ATTENTION TO LUCY WITH THE FOOTBALL…. When it comes to the various compromises as part of health care reform, there are a variety of possibilities, each on different points of the quality spectrum. Different analysts may rank them in competing ways, but to my mind, from worst to best, we have no public-private competition at all, followed by a co-op plan, followed by the “trigger,” then the state opt-in plan, then the state opt-out plan, and finally a robust, national public option.
It may have come as something of a surprise, then, to hear the far-right Senate Minority Whip signal some interest in one of the less-offensive choices.
Senate GOP Whip Jon Kyl (Ariz.) on Tuesday said he supports the idea of allowing states to decide whether to opt in to a publicly run health plan. [...]
The GOP whip said he prefers letting states decide whether to join instead of their being put in automatically. He said he didn’t know if he would offer the idea as an amendment during the floor debate that is expected to start within days.
Specifically, Kyl said, “I agree that states should have the option to opt in.” Soon after, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), a very right-wing lawmaker, “indicated possible support for Kyl’s idea.”
The Hill added that Kyl’s statement “could offer the seeds of a compromise.”
That’s extremely hard to believe, and Democrats would be foolish to start taking this notion seriously.
The truth is, if Senate Dems were to scale back their plan and go with an opt-in instead of an opt-out, Kyl would — and this is key — oppose the bill anyway. How do we know? Kyl has already said so, arguing repeatedly that Senate Republicans will reject the reform proposal no matter how many concessions Democrats make.
The state opt-in plan is not, on its face, a total disaster. There are far better ways to go in shaping a more effective policy, but as I said, on the spectrum of possible alternatives, it’s somewhere in the middle.
But that doesn’t change the underlying dynamic — Kyl is Lucy; Democrats are Charlie Brown; and a bipartisan compromise is the ball.
Please, Charlie, don’t go running and fall on your backside at the last moment.
Update: This afternoon, Kyl’s office said The Hill’s report was wrong. When the senator said, “I agree that states should have the option to opt in,” it was, the argument goes, taken out of context.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_10/020656.php
Mike Schillawski is the President of the Cornell Democrats.
Tags: Bipartisanship, Chuck Grassley, Health Care, Mitch McConnell
Which is why Republicans should be told to go screw themselves and we should just go ahead with one of the House bills. There is no sense in trying to compromise with people whose only goal is to obstruct progress.