E.J. Dionne:

At least two amendments are essential to getting the bill through the House. They involve reducing the burden of the tax on "Cadillac" health-care plans, which is wildly unpopular with House members and voters; and getting rid of the special Medicaid subsidy deal for Nebraska, which just about everyone hates. Even Nebraska's Ben Nelson, the senator for whom that deal was put together, wants it out.

(Emphasis supplied.) All the caterwauling about "Passing the Damn Bill" will not change that reality. You want to get the "damn bill" passed? Then the Senate must be pressured to gut the excise tax. It's a simple as that. You can't pass the Senate bill in the House unless the excise tax is gutted. Will the excise tax purists in the White House, the Senate and the Village insist on killing the bill if they do not get their way on the excise tax?

Speaking for me only

Ah, the "reality based community" is at it again.

They want the House to pass the Senate Stand Alone Health bill. My word, even the Villagers have given up on that one. They know it is impossible. Pelosi is 100 votes short for that.

But the delusional Pass The Stand Alone Senate Bill folks will be whining soon - about Howard Dean, about the Progressive Caucus, about Jane Hamsher - you name it. But they'll never complain about the political geniuses who stand in the way of passage of the Senate bill - the excise tax purists who would rather kill the bill than eliminate or modify the excise tax.

Here's the thing - it does not matter what they say, or I say, or what the Village says - if they want to pass the Senate bill, they'll need to gut the excise tax. It is the only chance for passage in the House. The alternative is incessant whining.

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The Witless Wonder Rides Again:

[More...]

Kevin Drum writes:

Obama has always kept his distance from both the netroots and the broader lefty base, and the congressional leadership largely did the same during healthcare negotiations. And it's not just that they ended up with a policy choice that progressives were unenthusiastic about. It's that they never even pretended to take progressives seriously. This is a mistake that George Bush and Karl Rove never made. The conservative base frequently didn't get what it wanted from them, but they always felt like they had a friend in the White House whose heart was in the right place. Progressive groups, conversely, have mostly felt like they got the back of the hand from the White House on healthcare. So it's understandable that they've either given up or, in a few cases, actively turned against the whole process.

This seems both right and wrong to me. It's true that the White House and SENATE Dems ignored the concerns of progressives on health care. And Villagers berated progressives (and unions) for not accepting political reality (now they berate the House Dems in the same fashion.) What is wrong though is the notion that the concern was about the process, as opposed to the policy. Indeed, Kevin reflects the condescension that the White House, the Senate and the Village has demonstrated throughout this health care debate. I'll give you two examples -- the excise tax and the public option. These issues are more than symbols. They are honest to Gawd serious issues for progressives and unions. More . . .

Matt Yglesias writes:

I was on the radio yesterday, for example, with a woman who said that the GOP’s Medicare privatization plan would save money by giving people vouchers to buy private insurance. [. . .] [W]hat Ryan’s plan actually does is first privatize/vouchers Medicare, and then “save money” by arbitrarily mandating that the cost of the vouchers have to grow slower than the cost of health care. In other words, with every passing year Ryancare vouchers get smaller and smaller relative to the cost of medicine. That’s just “saving” money by buying less.

(Emphasis supplied.) I am not sure why Yglesias objects to Ryan's plan while supporting the Gruber excise tax in the Senate health bill. Both work in the same way. Both are designed to encourage savings in health care by encouraging people to buy less expensive health insurance. Or, to put it in Yglesias' words - "saving money by buying less." If Ryan limited the vouchers to say insurance plans that cost $8,500 per individual and $23,000 per family, per year, with an inflation adjustment of CPI +1%, would Yglesias agree with the plan? Why not? Wouldn't the effect be the same as the excise tax in the Senate health bill?

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Paul Krugman:

[B]oth houses of Congress have passed broadly similar bills. In a normally functioning Congress, the differences would be negotiated, and a deal would be struck. But thanks to the filibuster, that can’t happen: a 59-41 majority isn’t enough.

There is, however, a fairly straightforward way to get back to more or less majority rule. The Senate has to pass a reconciliation bill — a money-related bill, that doesn’t require 60 votes — that modifies its original bill, making it more acceptable to the House. [. . .] Then the House passes both bills, and sends the combo to the president’s desk. [. . .] I’m not sure what the Senate’s problem is [. . . b]ut this is what has to be done.

For those folks who really want the Senate health bill to pass, that is the reality. If it does not happen, it will be because of the Senate.

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TPMDC:

A new Rasmussen [. . .] poll of likely voters asked: "Would you rather see a balanced budget with higher taxes or a budget deficit with tax cuts?" A 41% plurality would rather have budget deficit with tax cuts, with 36% calling for higher taxes and a balanced budget. The internals of the poll show Republicans favoring deficits and tax cuts.

"The partisan differences on the questions are notable," says the pollster's analysis. "While 50% of Republicans would rather see a budget deficit with tax cuts, a plurality (46%) of Democrats favor the opposite approach - a balanced budget with higher taxes. Voters not affiliated with either party are evenly divided on the question."

Of course in the real world, this is not actually the question presented. The real question is whether you want to reduce the deficit at all - because that requires tax INCREASES, especially on the rich. The deficit peacocks, both in the Congress (Evan Bayh) and in the Village (Andrea Greenspan, Pete Peterson and his minions) never discuss this reality. I wonder why.

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Via Booman, Mary Landrieu says:

I’m not for using reconciliation for healthcare — I’m just not.” said Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.). “If we couldn’t get a bill through the Congress that had broad support, I said we shouldn’t have a bill.”

This is an interesting position it seems to me and begs the question - what bills should pass by majority vote? What about tax cuts? Landrieu voted for the Bush tax cuts in 2001, which were passed via reconciliation. Or how about the prescription drug benefit bill? That passed 54-44. Landrieu was a yea vote.

I guess the answer is - it depends. To Landrieu, THIS bill should not pass with less than 60 votes. But other bills should pass without 60 votes. Whatever. In any event, Landrieu can vote No if she likes. And if 50 Dem Senators do not want to pass a health bill, well, that's the way that goes sometimes.

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Politico:

Sens. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Dick Durbin of Illinois have been working intensely on a jobs bill for more than a month, talking with relevant committee leaders and other members and dispatching aides to dozens of other meetings in the hopes of crafting a bill that could get through the Senate quickly. And when they walked into a meeting in the office of Reid (D-Nev.) on Jan. 22, they thought they were about to cross the finish line — the Dorgan-Durbin plan would be blessed by the small group of senators in the room, presented to the full Democratic Caucus on Jan. 28 and then taken straight to the floor for a vote.

But Montana Sen. Max Baucus had other ideas. The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, where the health care bill was debated for months last year, surprised the senators gathered in Reid’s office by suggesting he wanted a chance to mark up portions of the bill under his committee’s jurisdiction before it went to the floor, according to several people who attended the meeting.

The Black Hole that is Baucus and his committee is the path to ending the bill. If Senate Dems let Baucus get a hold of this, it is over.

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Digby descibes Joe Biden answering Andrea Mitchell (a/k/a known as Mrs. Alan Greenspan - I think she should have to disclose this whenever she "reports" on economic and financial matters):

The Vice President actually came to the set to be grilled by Mrs Alan Greenspan. Here's her first question: ["]First of all the budget ... and these deficits.. Deficits, red ink as far as the eye can see! [. . .] Have we reached a point where our deficits have become a national security issue?" Joe Biden said no, but it could happen if we don't bring down spending.

(Emphasis supplied.) Here's a thought - Mr. Vice President - why not address the deficit by raising taxes on the rich and on corporations? As it is, if you are going to exempt 80% of the federal budget from cuts or freezes, then "cutting spending" as a way to reduce the deficit is all just empty rhetoric.

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This Jason Linkins' post describes Evan Bayh's preposterous posing as a deficit hawk. But it leaves out the most important part of the story - Evan Bayh is a profoligate budget buster through other means - namely his obsession with cutting taxes for the wealthy. Ezra Klein described it back in April 2009:

What politicians say or think they want is less important than how they actually vote. [. . .] Sen. Evan Bayh cast a difficult vote against Obama's first budget, [saying] "Under this budget, our national debt skyrockets from $11.1 trillion today to an estimated $17 trillion in 2014."

[. . .] Sens. Jon Kyl and Blanche Lincoln [. . .] sought to reform the tax to exempt estates valued below $10 million and lower the rate on holdings above $10 million from 45 percent to 35 percent. This change would cost $440 billion over 10 years and accrue entirely to the wealthiest 0.28 percent. [. . .] The Kyl-Lincoln amendment, however, was quickly passed. Ten Democrats crossed the aisle to vote in its favor. Among them was Bayh. [. . .] Bayh [voted to] cut $300 billion of revenue-neutral money for health reform from the budget. He then promised to find $440 billion in the budget and, rather than directing it toward debt repayment, cut taxes on the top two-hundredths of the income distribution.

(Emphasis supplied.) Evan Bayh is no deficit hawk. He is first and foremost, the wealthy's best friend.

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Greg Sargent swallows some utter BS from Senate aides:

Senate leadership aides have identified what they see as a key roadblock to passing a fix to their bill via reconciliation — and parliamentarians in the Senate and House are hard at work trying to identify a solution, aides say. [. . .] “How do you fix a bill that hasn’t been passed yet?” one senior Senate aide asks me, stressing that reconciliation is different than the amendment process, which obviously does allow for bills to be fixed before passage. “That’s the fundamental problem.” “This is a whole bill that would amend another bill that hasn’t become law,” the aide adds. “How do we do reconciliation before the House passes the Senate bill?”

This is dishonest BS. How do you do it? Ask yourself how you would do it if the House passed the bill. That's how you do it. You pass a bill that amends the Stand Alone Senate bill, present it to the House, which then passes both bills. Then the President signs the original bill and immediately after signs the reconciliation fix. This is not rocket science. None of the bills are law UNTIL the President signs them. Hard to understand why Sargent is swallowing this nonsense. Kagro, more nicely than me, has a similar reaction. In other words, maybe there is something in the reconciliation rules that are troubling, but the nonsense Sargent is allowing the Senate to sell ain't it.

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