Now that it appears the Mike Ross-led Blue Dog Democrats have reached a deal with the House leadership on health care reform, I’d like to offer a little instant analysis based on the two criticisms from the left that I tended to hear about what the Blue Dogs were doing.
1. That they were just engaging in political cover, not worthy policy pursuit.
That is true enough considering that all elected politicians — saving the rare statesman exception — consider issues through the prism of re-election, meaning they try to achieve acceptance of their actions by the people who elected them, both to fairly represent those people and to win their votes the next go-round.
Ross represents a district that went overwhelmingly against Obama a few months ago and in which he heard, everywhere he went, vitriolic opposition to the supposed socialism and real deficit spending of the president’s health care reform plans.
Beyond that, though, and to actual policy: Creating a public insurer that would pay cheap Medicare-level rates throughout his poor rural district would, Ross believed, force Blue Cross to lower its rates as well, in which case, he feared, some of the rural hospitals in his district would go under.
So, yes, while he was covering his political behind, he was trying to pursue a policy in service to his district.
The eventual compromise seems at first blush to meet his political — and policy — objectives. The new public insurer will have its rates set some way other than equally to Medicare’s. More small business will get an exemption from mandates, up to payrolls of $500,000, as compared to a minuscule $100,000 that had been in the original bill. And the Blue Dogs are said to have found about a hundred billion to take out of the federal budget.
2. That the Blue Dogs were merely Republicans in disguise trying to stop health care reform.
They’ve plainly demonstrated otherwise.
What they were doing politically all along — what, in fact, I think they said directly to the president — was this: Don’t make us vote for this the way it is now and then go home for the August recess and get beaten up over it like a lot of us did on cap-and-trade. Let us delay it until the recess, and put some of our marginal changes on it, and then go home to sell to our people what we’re getting ready to vote for rather than defend to the people something unpopular that we’ve already voted for.
That’s the right politics.
I think I’ve long underestimated Mike Ross. Maybe it’s because I got to know him when I was a kid covering Bill Clinton running for governor and Ross was a bright-eyed kid driving Clinton around.
July 29th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
This blog post is dead on. The agreement can now create a unified Democratic push for health reform over the summer that is the last best hope for health reform.
Reputable polls show it losing steam, while I still insist the Talk Business poll was junk. I think rational concerns from moderates can now be massaged and the cooks who think Obama is sending out bureaucrats to learn how seniors want to be exterminated can flounder as their phoniness is exposed. It will be nice to have the unnecessary era of divided Democrats behind us.
July 29th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
As our rights are infringed upon by our own government, Americans and those here legally will never benefit from a decent health care plan, owing to the abomination called ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION. By an Act in United States Congress passed in 1986, Hospital and ambulance services must provide care to anyone needing emergency treatment in spite of citizenship, legal status or capacity to pay. The predicament being that 20 million plus illegal immigrant families are using this law, for even minor ailments such as the common cold. Why should foreign nationals sign up for health care or anything, when they can get Taxpayers to pay for it all..?
But this is not just an American dilemma, as it has been forcibly imposed on subjects of the European Union. This is causing a major derailment in the EU, because both legal and illegal entrants are stealing away the single payer medical care providers, to the citizens who have paid into the system from the time they first started work.
A decent controlled governmental health care benefit, can—NEVER–be established, when a startling report disclosed the details of a cloaked meeting between nationwide businesses and open-borders groups working under the radical cover of the IMMIGRATIONWORKSUSA a lobbying group. The secret Capitol Hill National Summit” took place last month and revealed the sinister intention behind the lobbying entities efforts.
Tamar Jacoby, who runs ImmigrationWorksUSA, kicked off the conference by stating the true aspiration of the coalition. The basic target is to promote THE FREE FLOW OF LABOR INTO THE USA, with—AS ALWAYS– the taxpayer being the beneficiary for corporate welfare. They want expedited cheap labor, where no American worker—NEED APPLY!
WE MUST ACT NOW, OR IT WILL BE TOO LATE! These special interest lobbyists are well furnished with money from corporate America. We must empower mandated E-Verify as part of the Save Act, where everybody is screened in the workplace. Call your lawmaker TODAY! at 202-224-3121 I Want a health care system–even government run. BUT IT”S SURE TO FAIL, IF TAXES ARE BEING EXTORTED TO PAY FOR FREE HEALTH CARE FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS?
Millions of phone calls from angry Americans are jamming the Washington Switchboards. It is making these pandering politicians to corporate welfare, very anxious. Support for the bi-partisan E-VERIFY PART OF THE SAVE Act, which will expand E-Verify and protect American Workers! We must focus on the monolithic problem in terminating illegal immigrants-and the jobs that attract illegal aliens. WE WILL ALWAYS BE PAYING FOR ILLEGAL ALIENS, UNLESS WE DO SOMETHING NOW? Many GOP members are against a Path to citizenship for lawbreakers, so we mostly need the phones ringing in the ears of Democrats, who see the millions of illegal aliens as a positive voting block. WE MUST STOP IT NOW OF SUFFER FROM IRREVERSIBLE POPULATION GROWTH.
DEMAND NO AMNESTY! NO FAMILY UNIFICATION KNOWN AS CHAIN MIGRATION! BUILD THE ORIGINAL FENCE! NO MORE HEALTH CARE OR ANY OTHER KIND OF BENEFITS FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS. CLOSE THE BORDER AND STATION THE NATIONAL GUARD. $2.5 TRILLION DOLLARS, JUST IN RETIREMENT BENEFITS? Learn uncorrupted facts at NUMBERSUSA.
July 30th, 2009 at 8:29 am
For anyone who though New England liberals were as pure as snow and just wanted to get health reform done, get ready to be disappointed. Mike Ross was worried basing the public option on Medicare payment rates would hurt health providers in his district, since Arkansas las some of the lowest reimbursement rates in the country. Now that under the Ross deal the public option will need to negotiate rates, some of the New York liberals are threatening to hold the bill up. New York has extremely high Medicare reimbursement rates. Surely liberal members wouldn’t be in it to help their providers make more money off government programs would they?
There is a reason why Congress making laws, under any circumstance, is comparable to a sausage factory.
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=news-000003181084