Making The Case For September

BooMan enlists Ezra Klein to help make the argument that a post-August recess health care bill will be better for all.

Contrary to common wisdom in Left Blogistan, I do not think the House should attempt to pass health care reform before they recess. I am aware of all the reasons for doing so (mainly, to pass something before opponents can rally a defense), but Ezra Klein explains perfectly my reasoning.

Some sources are speculating that the Blue Dogs are getting cold feet as they watch Max Baucus dither. Many of them felt burned by the hard and damaging vote on the cap-and-trade bill, as it looks like nothing will come of it in the Senate. Committing themselves to a health-care bill before the Senate shows its hand carries similar risks, and they're no longer in a risk-taking mood. The worst outcome for conservative Democrats in the House is that they're on record voting for a health-care reform bill that dies in the Senate and is judged a catastrophic example of liberal overreach.

The problem, of course, is that the more dissension there is among Democrats in the House, the less pressure there'll be on the Senate Democrats to make a hard vote on health-care reform. This makes health-care reform something of a prisoner's dilemma for conservative Democrats. If Blue Dogs in the House and centrists in the Senate both put it on the line to pass the bill, they're both better off. But if one puts it on the line and the other whiffs, then the other pays the price.

If the House passes a bill in this atmosphere, it will probably receive the bare minimum of votes (218-220), and that will only serve to highlight the intraparty squabbling on the Democratic side along with the monolithic opposition of the Republicans. That does not create a good dynamic for Max Baucus to work with in trying to get something through the Finance Committee.

Remember that the only vote that that the electorate will really remember is the vote on final passage of the conference report. That means that House Dems can get an almost free vote against the House bill now and make up for it later by voting for final passage. It would be far preferable to have the Senate pass their bill first so that centrist Dems don't feel like they are taking a difficult vote that might not be translated into law. But, even if the House goes first, they should have a better idea than they have now of what is going to be in the Baucus bill.

So the argument at this point is which is more dangerous, the threat of the anti-Obamacare forces having four weeks to get their free shots in while they know that no Congressional action will occur, or the threat that the President and progressives spending all their political capital to force Congress working through August to get a bill will backfire?

BooMan and Ezra Klein are arguing that the Senate will really decide this bill one way or the other, not the House. That means Max Baucus has to make his deal first before the House should vote. But the assumption is that Obama and progressives can find a way to keep this bill alive until September. Given the events of the last two weeks, I'm not sure that's possible anymore. It was two weeks ago that the Senate made the call that getting through the legislation before the August recess was unlikely, and really the problem started three weeks ago just after July 4th, when the Centrists started realizing Obamacare had a real chance and decided to pressure the White House to take progressive groups out of the equation. A couple days later, Rahmbo took their advice and released the trigger option trial balloon, which got shot down in a hail of blogstorming. A day later, the President made it clear that he wanted a public option and that Democrats like Chuck Schumer were backing him on it.

The next day, the CIA secret program/assassination squad story broke, and the combination of Obamacare and an Eric Holder investigation into the CIA was simply too much for the Village Centrists to handle. That led to this July 11th story in Newsweek about Eric Holder considering an investigation into Unfinished Bush Business, and the warning that doing so would "roil the country, would likely plunge Washington into a new round of partisan warfare, and could even imperil Obama's domestic priorities, including health care and energy reform."

July 12, one day after that story broke, the Centrists were all over the Sunday shows proclaiming that they had better things to do than try to pass health care. The entire exercise took 8 days.

Since then, the odds of Obamacare passing have steadily dropped, and the Village has gone into full attack mode, with the President being savaged on all fronts. July 13 saw the President first call for Congress to work through the August recess, but Henry Waxman then upped the stakes by calling for healthcare reform by the end of the year a day later. The Sotomayor hearings got underway that week too, taking the Senate out of the health care picture for the week, but allowing the GOP to play the race card repeatedly. By the time July 16th rolled around, Max Baucus was telling the press that the President "wasn't helping".

July 17th brought the latest wave of personal attacks on the President, staring with the Birther nonsense on multiple fronts. That led to the next day's character assassination in the WaPo editorial secton and the Gang Of Six threatening to kill Obamacare altogether. WaPo picked up the ball again last Sunday, and that led to this week's blistering attacks, Skip Gates, the Village assault on Obama's presser, even more Birther nonsense, another racist email attack on the President, and today's attacks.

That's a hell of a lot of Obama Derangement Syndrome to pack into three weeks. Now, can you imagine what another four weeks of this will achieve for the folks who want to see health care reform die screaming on the table, not to mention his entire agenda?

I know the reality is Obama cannot control Congress. I know we need a strong bill. But at some point, the Democrats in Congress have to make a choice to support the President or not. And those that do not support the President are trying to string this along so that they don't have to make that hard decision.

My question is if we have to wait through the recess (and all indications are now that we have no choice), what is Obama prepared to do to keep the momentum going? How far is he willing to go to get this bill passed and signed into law? With the GOP savaging him and the Village doing everything they can to refuse to call fouls on the Republicans while refereeing this little fracas, what does the White House plan to do? How will they get their message out, when the Village is trying to distort it and the GOP is trying to bury it in bullshit?

What, in short, is Obama's play here? If we're going to trust him to get this passed in September, I want to know.

[UPDATE 6:41 PM] Yggy notes that it's not a Prisoner's Dilemma if the "prisoners" are members of Congress, fully able to communicate with each other.

House and Senate Democrats can all get together in a room and talk this stuff out. So while the dilemma is real, it’s a perfectly surmountable problem. Surmountable, that is, if moderate members in both houses of congress actually want health care reform to pass. If the will isn’t there, then there are plenty of ways—this dilemma is one of them—for indifference to kill reform even while everyone claims to want to see it happen.

The will is there, actually. It's the reality of the other side that frightens me.

[UPDATE 7:03 PM] My other fear is of course how many more of these "Health Care Reform plan suffers new setback/blow/problems" stories are we going to see between now an September when they aren't setbacks, and they aren't new either. The muddier the waters get, the worse off we'll be.