Harry Reid’s afternoon press conference provided a climactic and decisive resolution to all the speculation about the public option’s prospects in Senate negotiations: The Majority Leader put a (temporary) end to all rumors by making it clear that the health care bill he would send to the Senate floor would contain a national public option with an opt-out mechanism.
The day’s bottom line: For a non-triggered public option not to reach the president’s desk at this point, a Democratic senator will have to join Republicans and publicly filibuster the entire health care reform.
To block public option, a senator will have to expose himself
Centrists cannot strip the public option out of the bill now that Reid has put it in: Such an operation would require 60 votes, something they do not have since at least 52 Democrats are on record supporting some type of public option. That figure also means that this bill shouldn’t have any problem winning final passage, for which it only needs 50 votes. That means that the only moment at which the public option could still fail is over the cloture vote of the entire bill.
Let me repeat what this means. To defeat the public option, a conservative Democrat cannot just vote against an amendment that would implement it. Rather, he’ll need to take the risk to sabotage his party’s entire reform effort. No more silent filibuster, filled with innuendos and vague statements: If Joe Lieberman or Ben Nelson want to sink the public option, they’ll need to stand up and filibuster the whole bill.
Needless to say, that would expose them to a huge backlash at all levels of his party. Health care reform isn’t an issue being followed by a handful of political junkies; it is a quest that has defined the Democratic Party for the past 50 years, and it would be quite a huge political risk for any Democratic senator to emerge as a visible and irrefutable obstacle to reform itself.
More than anything else, it is this certainty of exposure that so radically changes the public option’s prospects today. Moderate senators look to be at the center of every debate and they demand huge concessions; but they also don’t want to be caught in the spotlight in the way that will make them controversial and extremist. That’s why their success often comes through behind-the-scenes threats not to support cloture - a threat they rarely have to execute since the leadership is unwilling to test them.
Now, the public option could still fail - but if it does there will be clear culprits who won’t be able to hide their responsibility behind confused reports of closed-door negotiations. For a senator to block the public option will require a non-subtle and high-profile act, one that would will make him make the focus of all the attention, the target of tremendous liberal rage and isolate him from the rest of his party. What centrist senator wants to take that risk?
Of course, the premise of this argument is that there aren’t more than a handful of Democrats who might even consider filibustering the entire health care bill. If the cloture vote fails by 5 or 6 votes, it could give the no-voters cover to claim they represent a broad centrist constituency and that the leadership behaved recklessly in including the public option; but most indications suggest that no more than a couple of Democrats might buck their party, which would put them in an untenably isolated position.
Who might vote against cloture?
5 Democratic senators might conceivably join a Republican filibuster - and as I will say specify below, a number of them have made it clear they’re unlikely to do so. They are: Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh.
Reid has talked to all of these senators in recent days; if just one had warned Reid they were likely to oppose cloture, would the Majority Leader have gone through with today’s press conference? Furthermore, all press reports have Senate aids saying that Reid has locked down 56 or 57 cloture votes, which would mean between 1 and 2 of these 5 senators have pledged not to filibuster.
That could most conceivably be Landrieu, who recently stated “I’m not right now inclined to support any filibuster.” Lieberman also said he was “inclined” towards supporting cloture, though he played up his indecision. Nelson’s recent statement that he was “not excited” about the opt-out mechanism isn’t quite the type of thing you say if you’re looking to torpedo a measure - especially one you were on record praising just a few days before. That leaves us with Bayh and Lincoln, who’ve kept a low-profile.
Of these 5 senators, 4 have clear electoral reasons not to do filibuster. On the one hand, Lieberman has to find some coalition willing to re-elect him in 2012. On the other, Landrieu, Lincoln and Nelson are all vulnerable; though they represent red states, they certainly can’t afford having progressive groups out to destroy them. That leaves us with Bayh as the only senator about whom I can think of no specific reason he’d be reluctant to filibuster the bill.
Two Democrats who do not support the public option but who I do not expect to pose much of a problem for Reid are Mark Begich and Mark Pryor. I can’t envision Begich being an ‘no’: would a freshman senator would dare jeopardize his entire career by blocking his party’s chief priority within 9 months of coming in office? Pryor has made it clear enough he is highly unlikely to join a filibuster in most circumstances, let alone when we’re talking about an opt-out mechanism many centrists have praised.
Another non-supportive Democrat who looks highly unlikely to even entertain the thought of a filibuster is Kent Conrad. The North Dakota senator is primarily concerned with bringing back as much federal benefits as possible to his state; isolating yourself from your entire party by filibustering health care reform is quite an obvious obstacle to that. Furthermore, Conrad is a committee chairman, a Baucus ally and has had a hand in shaping the legislation; Reid mentioned today that he would leave co-ops in the bill, in what is obviously designed to keep Conrad on board.
Finally, this post would not be complete without a few words about Reid. Last week, I wrote about how the decision was almost entirely up to the Nevada Senator. Since then, the often derided Reid has emerged as unexpectedly willing to force the hand of centrist Democrats by demanding that they go on the record and surprisingly unwavering in defying the White House - either by going against Obama’s wishes or at the very least in proceeding without the president’s blessing.
Whatever the public option’s ultimate fate, Reid undoubtedly helped his own cause among liberals today: Progressive groups had made it clear just how huge an electoral cost he would pay if he was responsible for letting the public option go, but the Majority Leader gave them what they wanted by including it in the floor bill. Now, any demise of the the public option can hardly be held against him - and that at least allows him to hope for the help of unions and activists in his tough re-election campaign.
Such a liberal you are
Politically, this was clearly the right move. Balancing the needs of the base and the center while at the same time getting decent policy is a challenge, especially on as difficult an issue as health care. Including the opt-out public option in the bill assuages the left of the party while Democratic senators in red-leaning states get to punt and say that the decision is in the hands of state government.
While I personally would have preferred to see a more robust, Medicare-like public option, similar to what Pelosi was proposing in the House, politics is the art of the possible. Hopefully a strong public option will still be passed there, so that she goes into House-Senate negotiations with as strong a hand as possible.
While there has been much to criticize about Harry Reid’s tenure as majority leader, he must be given credit for making the right move here.
I am virtually certain that my state, Washington, would join the public option. Thank God Dino Rossi didn’t become our governor.
It’s pretty ironic the fact that the man who pitched the opt-out compromise and literally saved the public option was a business friendly (some would say corporatist) Democrat like Tom Carper.
I reckon that Reid must have also taken into account the fact that Snowe’s seeming veto power over the bill had infuriated many of his fellow Democrats.
I think Obama has played this PO debate perfectly. He has not placed himself firmly in any one position re the PO and allowed the Democratic leadership to work it out themselves and take credit for the successes. I’m pretty sure Reid would not have put out the PO+opt-out option against the express wishes of the WH.
With each step forward the moderate Democrats are placed in a tougher position. In the end I think there will be 60 Democratic and 3 Republican (Snowe, Collins & Voinovich) votes for cloture and only one or two defections for the actual vote on the bill.
There are three proposals I still am waiting to find out about: the Wyden amendment(the PO now covers only 10% of the population, his plan would open it up to everyone); the antitrust removal proposal and will they introduce parts of the plan in 2010.
Over to you Nancy.
Great summation. As I mentioned in a previous comment the state opt-out is a great “compromise”. It allows some Conservative Dems to say states rights whilst essesntially allowing most of the country to have the option. Most deep red states are fairly small in population (WY, ID, UT etc) whilst the big states are blue or at least progresive enough to have the option available (CA, NY, NJ, PA, IL, NC). Obvious exceptions are Texas and Georgia but we will see how these work in practice and then states can choose. It at least shoots the lie that the Federal Government will determine your options.
You might have to redo your headlines to “American Victory”, Lieberman just announced he will not support this bill and will vote against cloture. Snowe is also against and it’s only a matter of time before other centrist Dems start abondoning the sinking ship. Real health care reform that the majority of Americans want starts with allowing insurance companies to sell insurance across state lines. Remember 20% of Americans view themselves as liberal, so when is congress going to get the picture. No wonder why they have like 15% approval.
Supporter of Real Health Reform, I assume you are aware of polls showing a majority of Americans support a public option, for instance last week’s Washington Post poll in which 76% said they supported a public option with an opt-out mechanism?
Look at the raw numbers of the poll and the wording of the question. Check out realclearpolitics for a good article on polling of the public option. Bottomline, a free market solution of allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines is a far superior and more effective solution than a socialist gov’t option. You lose a lot of credibilty when referencing the Washington Post.
Supporter of Real Health Reform - I am not sure Taniel loses credibility when referencing the Washington Post since you reference realclearpolitics which has its own bias.
The polling does bounce around but virtually all polling I have seen by many companies shows a majority 55%-75% depending on the poll support a public option of some description.
You also have ot remember that the Dems won the right to try their ideas - it is a democracy and they won hansomely in 2006 and 2008.
If it’s an opt-out, I really don’t care. I doubt that Butch Otter will go with it, unless he has sense enough to realize the dire poverty in a lot of areas. Plus none of the miners up North can get health insurance (unless they started working early enough to get it through the mine), and they’re the ones who really need it, too. Why in the world coundn’t it have been a personal opt-out, where everyone gets it unless they don’t want it? This is just frustrating for a liberal red stater.
And on another note, this makes the gubernatorial races that much more important.