GOP starts the show

So much for the “nuclear” Senate showdown.

After President Barack Obama’s showy Tuesday signing ceremony, the Senate’s cleanup work this week on health care is looking more like a political strategy session, as each party tries to cement public impressions of the bill.

“It’s going to pass here,” Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said matter-of-factly. “It’s a matter of what amendments [Democrats] want to be for and what they’re not.”

To be sure, Republicans have lined up a bundle of politically embarrassing amendments and plan to wreak all sorts of procedural havoc.

“I think there’s going to be long nights, and there’s going to be anger and demagoguery from the Republicans,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). “But I think the outcome is pretty clear.”

So at this point, Republicans are simply going to continue with their key themes: that the new law will drastically cut Medicare, increase taxes and expand the government’s ballooning budget deficit.

And as Democrats try to downplay the bill as mere “fixes” to the law and vow to kill all GOP amendments, Republicans are inflating the measure’s importance by arguing it would make even more draconian changes to the newly enacted law.

GOP gears up for Senate theatrics – Manu Raju – POLITICO.com.

Speaking in the East Room of the White House, with roughly 200 lawmakers seated before him as well as Vicky Kennedy, the widow of the late Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), the president called the moment a “new season in America.”

“Today, after almost a century of trying, today, after over a year of debate, today, after all the votes have been tallied, health insurance reform becomes law in the United States of America. In a few moments when I sign this bill, all of the overheated rhetoric of reform will finally confront the reality of reform.”

“We are not a nation that scales back its aspirations,” Obama said. “We don’t fall prey to fear. We are not a nation that does what’s easy. That is not who we are, that’s not how we got here. We are a nation that faces its challenges and accepts its responsibilities.”

Obama dedicated the signing to individuals whose stories of struggle have come to personify the need for reform. Included in that list was his mother, “who argued with insurance companies even as she battled cancer in her final days,” the president said. Then he talked about his mentor in this fight, former Senator Kennedy.

“I remember seeing Ted walk through that door in the summit in this room a year ago, one of his last public appearances,” Obama said. “It was hard for him to make it but he was confident we would do the right thing”

It was, undoubtedly, a moment of jubilation and relief for the president — largely because few people in the administration anticipated how arduous the debate would be over the course of the year. Speaking just days before the House cast the deciding vote on Sunday, a senior White House official gave a hint at what kind of toll health care has taken on the administration.

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Obama Signs Health Care Bill: VIDEO, PHOTOS.

After more than a year of virulent debate, Democrats marched through a throng of jeering protesters, whose slurs recalled a Washington of the 1960s — when the party forced civil rights legislation and Medicare through a fiercely divided Congress. Against unified Republican opposition, they built on that foundation Sunday with the passage of a health care reform bill that extends coverage to 32 million Americans and tightly regulates the insurance industry.

“It is with great humility and with great pride that we tonight will make history for our country and progress for the American people,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) before the vote to a standing ovation on one side of the aisle and silence on the other. “Just think–we will be joining those who established Social Security, Medicare, and now tonight, health care for all Americans.”

Democrats passed two pieces of legislation. The first, a comprehensive reform package passed at the end of December by the Senate, now goes to President Obama for his signature, passing the House 219-212. The second piece, passed through the reconciliation process by a 220-211, makes fixes to that measure and now heads to the Senate for a final vote.

more at HuffPo

Health Care Bill PASSES.

Call Now

Interns are scrambling to get the talking points right as the phones ring off the hook. Press secretaries’ BlackBerries are running out of batteries from downloading hundreds of emails along the lines of, “Will your boss switch his vote?” Constituents asking about taxes aren’t able to get through the clogged switchboards.

In what seems to be the final (really!) push on health care reform on Capitol Hill, offices have been deluged with phone calls from across the country. They are pro-reform, anti-reform, blasting reconciliation or begging for an up-or-down vote – engaged voters who are attempting to influence the course of what will be a razor-close vote this weekend.

No one has been more targeted than the 37 House Democrats who voted “No” the first time around on health care, the majority of which did so under the mantle of fiscal responsibility. They are prime gets for Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the White House, who need to peel off a few to make up for the lost votes due to retirements and a change in the abortion provisions in the legislation.

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Busy Signal Or Breakthrough? Congressional Switchboards Flooded With Health Care Call Deluge | TPMDC.

Death Panel II

Another day in the health care reform debate brings with it another battle over parliamentary procedure, and another example of the media struggling to get some basic facts right. Today, the battle is joined over deeming resolutions, the process by which House Democrats may finally overcome hurdles and worries to get the process of passing reform moving forward.

The GOP has advanced the idea that the “deem and pass” process — also known as “The Slaughter Rule” because the idea was suggested by Representative Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) — is tantamount to passing health care reform without voting on it. The media has largely accepted, or at least lent credence to this premise.

But does that sound right to you, Marc Ambinder?

…that’s wrong. House Democrats aren’t doing that.
In fact, they ARE taking an up or down vote on the Senate health care bill. They’re just doing it AT THE SAME TIME as they’re passing the reconciliation language, which countermands several controversial provisions.

Here’s what’s going on. The House is stuck having to basically pass the Senate health care bill, because the bill cannot be reconciled in conference committee. Why? Because it will be filibustered. However, House members are averse to doing anything that looks like they approve of the various side-deals that were made in the Senate — like the so-called “Cornhusker Kickback.” The House intends to remove those unpopular features in budget reconciliation, but if they pursue budget reconciliation on a standard legislative timeline — where they pass the Senate bill outright first and then go back to pass a reconciliation package of fixes — they’d still appear to be endorsing the sketchy side deals, and then the GOP would jump up and down on their heads.

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Health Care Opponents Demonize ‘Deem And Pass’ As The Media Gets It Wrong [UPDATE].

But on the eve of their final coordinated push to kill health care reform, one of the Tea Party movements key leaders and funders — former Republican leader and lobbyist Dick Armey, head of the group FreedomWorks — said the battle was likely lost.

At a press conference on Monday, Armey acknowledged that Democrats “will most likely pass health care reform legislation that has been debated for the last year and is expected to come to a vote this week.”

“They’ll probably force this through,” he said. “But you can’t discount the number of people who can be moved by a ruthless and powerful political leader or group of political leaders.”
The FreedomWorks chairman also had harsh word for the rest of Congress – the “self-serving” people he suggests are equally to blame for the passage of health care legislation.

“The average member Congress – House and Senate – is first and foremost only a self-serving inconvenience-minimizer who doesn’t have a lot of principle they stand on the first place,” he said. “It doesn’t take much to move a jellied spine, so they’ll probably get their votes.”

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March 16 Tea Party Protests In Washington: The Final Anti-Health Care March.

Vote Them Out

A leading Democratic consultant who serves in an official capacity with the Democratic National Committee has come out in favor of primary challenges to Democratic lawmakers who help kill the president’s health care bill.

Donna Brazile, who is the Vice Chair of Voter Registration and Participation at the DNC and a top-ranking strategist within the party, said on Monday that Democrats who “decide to defeat” the health care bill “deserve to get a primary challenge” in future elections.

The one-time Al Gore presidential campaign manager told the Huffington Post that while at home in Louisiana she had “decided to stop pretending that I will go back to support anyone not backing health reform.”

Brazile declined to elaborate, but made her view clear in a tweet she wrote shortly after President Barack Obama made an impassioned health care speech in Ohio on Monday.

DNC spokesman Hari Sevugan said that Brazile’s call to support primary candidates for Democrats who vote against health care was not committee policy. Indeed, as former DNC Chair Howard Dean noted to the Huffington Post, the committee is prohibited under its bylaws from “being involved in a primary challenge.”

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Donna Brazile Urges Primaries For Dems Who Vote Against Health Care Reform.

Dennis the Menis

Traveling to the Cleveland area to make yet another major speech for passing health care reform into law, President Barack Obama chose as a travel companion one very skeptical lawmaker.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is from the area where Obama is speaking. That would normally make his appearance on Air Force One Monday morning a non-event. But the Ohio Democrat also happens to be one of, if not the only progressive holdout in the House, on health care legislation. And he has hinted strongly that his vote, which could be the deciding margin, is firmly in the “no” camp.

The White House pool reporter on the trip did not get an immediate readout of any conversation between Kucinich and Obama. Though accompanying the two on the trip was Phil Schiliro, the president’s liaison to Congress.

A White House aide said that this trip would be the last one outside of D.C. that the president will make before heading overseas on March 21. All other lobbying efforts will be conducted inside the beltway via “member meetings and phone calls” such as the one that already took place between Obama and Rep. Scott Murphy (D-N.Y.)

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Obama Brings Dennis Kucinich On Air Force One For Health Care Speech.

Waxman

The Associated Press raised a lot of eyebrows today with this piece, implying that negotiations over the abortion provision in the Senate health care bill had fallen apart.

“House leaders have concluded they cannot change a divisive abortion provision in President Barack Obama’s health care bill and will try to pass the sweeping legislation without the support of ardent anti-abortion Democrats,” they reported.

Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman of California, chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said the leadership will press ahead without reworking the abortion provision, which opponents say falls short in restricting taxpayer dollars for abortion coverage. He predicted some of the anti-abortion lawmakers in the party will end up voting for the overhaul anyway.

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Are Democrats Really Scrapping Abortion Negotiations With Stupak? | TPMDC.

Healthcare now

In 2004, I’d just finished a novel and by way of celebration had taken my family for an extended visit to Australia, where I was born and raised.

I didn’t expect that trip to save my life. But I’m convinced it did, because of Australia’s “socialized” medicine.

I retreat to my garret when I write a novel, especially toward the end. I stop going anyplace, wear sweat pants all day, neglect personal grooming. Back in the Sydney neighborhood where I’d lived for many years, I was re-entering the civilized world, and was on the way to a salon for an overdue haircut when I passed the BreastScreen van, parked in the main street.

The fact that they were getting an unbelievable deal on my Australian care didn’t stop Anthem’s gatekeepers routinely declining to pay every single bill.

This mobile service offers free mammograms, no appointment necessary. It wasn’t until I saw that van that I realized a mammogram was one of the things I’d forgotten to do. I was a year overdue, according to the guidelines for women my age, so I stepped into the van, got squished and zapped by a pleasantly efficient technician, who told me a radiologists’ report would be mailed out in a week or so.

Two weeks later, I was in a Sydney hospital, discussing treatment options for my invasive stage II cancer. According to testimony by Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) at last Thursday’s health-care summit, I should have been heading for the airport at that point. Like his unnamed Canadian state premier with the heart condition, I should have been hightailing it to the U.S., to avail myself of “the best health care in the world.”

No thanks, Senator. I elected to stay in Australia. We had ample U.S. insurance; cost wasn’t an issue. I simply wanted to remain in a humane, rational system where doctors treat a person as a patient, not a potential plaintiff, and where the procedures ordered for me were the ones shown by hard science to produce the best outcome for the most people.

Australia adopted universal health care in 1984. Since then, life expectancy for women has increased to 83.5 years from 78.7 (for males to 79.1 from 72.6), while spending on health care has risen less than 1 percent, to 4.4 percent of government outlays (in 2008-09). The scheme is funded by a levy of 1.5 percent on taxable income, and all political parties, even the most conservative, support it.

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Socialized Medicine Saved Me – Page 1 – The Daily Beast.