Blue Dog Days Of Summer

Tennessee Blue Dog Democrat Rep. Jim Cooper says we really should just go along with the Daschle plan for health care reform, abandon the public plan, and avoid a reconciliation fight, the argument is reconciliation in the Senate will get us a bad reform plan, or one subject to sunset rules that will be used to kill the program when Republicans eventually get back in power.

Reconciliation is just what the trillion dollars of vested interests who want to kill health care reform are hoping for. That's because they know something that few people in Washington have figured out: the Senate's very restrictive reconciliation rules will prevent a true health care reform bill from passing.

Has anyone here actually looked at the reconciliation process and the Byrd rule? Every committee would have to report a bill that reduced the deficit by $1 billion in five years. It would have to be deficit-neutral each year after that. It couldn't include "extraneous" material -- like all the vitally important changes to our health care delivery system. Or, if we couldn't find the savings, our grand health care reform achievement would have to sunset.

In short, health care reform under reconciliation wouldn't be health care reform at all. It would be a deficit reduction bill relating to health care. Or a reform package with an expiration date.

And hey, you know me, I think deficit reduction is great. But this is about passing a robust health care reform bill. One that provides every American with low-cost, high-quality health insurance. One that focuses on prevention. One that keeps people healthy. One that gives them choices. One that modernizes our delivery system. And one that lowers cost. After all, the out-of-control cost of health care is bankrupting the American people.

Something major happened yesterday. Democrats and Republicans, working together, unveiled a bipartisan comprehensive health care reform plan. Tom Daschle, Bob Dole and Howard Baker did what Congress is failing to do. They met all of President Obama's goals, and they fully financed their proposal.

Here's the problem: Jim Cooper (and the entire Blue Dog caucus for that matter) is more worried about being bipartisan and reducing the deficit than he is having actual health care reform, and once again there's no mention of a public option.

With no public option, the health care industry wins. There will be no reform whatsoever. The Blue Dogs are trying to argue that 76% of America is wrong and that it'll never pass.

Which is exactly what they want. It won't be Republicans that kill health care reform. It's spineless Democrats like Jim Cooper. Needless to say, the Wingers are backing the Blue Dogs all the way on this.

And it's looking more and more like the Blue Dogs are going to win.

Keep that in mind in 2010.