Over The ‘Precipice’

This from the WSJ this morning, on the shameful health-care machinations currently underway in Congress:

Change Nobody Believes In
A bill so reckless that it has to be rammed through on a partisan vote on Christmas eve.

And tidings of comfort and joy from Harry Reid too. The Senate Majority Leader has decided that the last few days before Christmas are the opportune moment for a narrow majority of Democrats to stuff ObamaCare through the Senate to meet an arbitrary White House deadline. Barring some extraordinary reversal, it now seems as if they have the 60 votes they need to jump off this cliff, with one-seventh of the economy in tow.

Mr. Obama promised a new era of transparent good government, yet on Saturday morning Mr. Reid threw out the 2,100-page bill that the world’s greatest deliberative body spent just 17 days debating and replaced it with a new “manager’s amendment” that was stapled together in covert partisan negotiations. Democrats are barely even bothering to pretend to care what’s in it, not that any Senator had the chance to digest it in the 38 hours before the first cloture vote at 1 a.m. this morning. After procedural motions that allow for no amendments, the final vote could come at 9 p.m. on December 24.

Even in World War I there was a Christmas truce.

The rushed, secretive way that a bill this destructive and unpopular is being forced on the country shows that “reform” has devolved into the raw exercise of political power for the single purpose of permanently expanding the American entitlement state. An increasing roll of leaders in health care and business are looking on aghast at a bill that is so large and convoluted that no one can truly understand it, as Finance Chairman Max Baucus admitted on the floor last week. The only goal is to ram it into law while the political window is still open, and clean up the mess later.

As Mark Twain said: “No man’s life, liberty, or property is safe when Congress is in session.” A majority of Americans — as well as all the doctors whose opinion I have managed to gather — now oppose this dog’s-breakfast of a bill. At this point we can only hope that it bleeds to death in conference.

Read the rest of the editorial here.

14 Comments

  1. bob koepp says

    Although I’m keenly interested in “healthcare reform”, I take it as a virtual given that meaningful change will not come from above. What’s going on in Washington, as well as in news rooms around the country, is a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.

    Posted December 21, 2009 at 2:56 pm | Permalink
  2. Malcolm says

    I do hope you’re right.

    Posted December 21, 2009 at 2:59 pm | Permalink
  3. JK says

    So far as I can tell, the only “bi-partisan effort” this bill garnered was in saving the timber industry. Wall Street and the auto industry already being “saved” every Republican legislator had to have their very own copy of the bill to cart in whilst they stood by the stack and “pronounced.”

    And of course, the Democrats had to have their individual copies so as to perform their “due diligence” by studying this monstrosity.

    Of course there’s alway unintended consequences. Global warming comes to mind.

    It takes a whole bunch of timber to make that much paper.

    Posted December 21, 2009 at 3:07 pm | Permalink
  4. the one eyed man says

    Note to WSJ: Boo fucking hoo. Please pardon the language.

    What the Wall Street Journal and its Republican cohorts in Congress fail to point out, of course, is that when they ran things in Washington, they routinely took bills to the floor minutes before they were to be voted on, or rammed bills through without debate. Among these bills was the Patriot Act, which was one of the worst pieces of legislation to emerge from the Republicans during the Bush years (and that’s a high bar). Now they are shocked — shocked! — that Congress works this way.

    However, the rest of the editorial fits nicely within the Journal’s tradition of smug superiority, vitriol, ad hominem arguments, and lack of a basis in fact or reason.

    1) It’s not a “narrow majority” of Democrats. It’s a super-majority of sixty votes: all 58 Democrats, plus Lieberman and Sanders. Given the fact that it was a foregone conclusion that not a single Republican would vote for the bill, this is the only way the bill would pass. Had Reid failed to get sixty votes, the Journal would have crowed that Obama can’t achieve anything, the Democrats are in disarray, etc.

    2) It’s an “arbitrary deadline” only in the sense that all deadlines are arbitrary. Health care reform has been debated for months on end. The aim of the GOP was to drag it out endlessly so the bill would suffer the death of a thousand cuts. Obama will be judged on what has been achieved during his Presidency, and he campaigned and won on a platform of health care reform. Depending on how you phrase the questions, a majority or near-majority of Americans support the reforms. Given the Republicans’ refusal to play a meaning part in the legislation, it was inevitable that the Journal would accuse Obama either of jamming the bill through or being unable to deliver. In the Journal’s eyes, it’s a lose-lose situation for him.

    3) The Republicans’ dilatory tactics — threatening to filibuster the defense bill to delay the health care bill (why do they hate our troops?), insisting on reading the bill line by line, and so forth — are childish and counter-productive. The meme of reading through the bill so “we know what’s in it” is ridiculous: does anyone really think that after hearing the bill recited, a single Republican Senator would say “you know what, I think I’ll vote for it?”

    4) The Republicans have shown themselves to be completely irrelevant to the legislative process, except insofar as they acted in unison as a dead weight to try and prevent anything from happening. They demagogued the bill to death, with phony claims about what was in it and what it would do. Because health care is a complex and nuanced issue, it is easy to mischaracterize in bumper sticker arguments. They reversed the positions they had before Obama was elected (I guess we can ignore John McCain’s endless blather about making the “hard choices” about entitlement costs and “finding savings in Medicare:” he did all he could to prevent these savings from being realized. Or how Joe Lieberman was for a public option before he was against it.) The same Senators who happily passed Bush’s unfunded prescription drug benefit seethed at the cost of Obama’s (less expensive and partially funded) health care reform. They didn’t lead, they didn’t follow, and they didn’t get out of the way. They had no ideas or counter-proposals. They didn’t want to defend the status quo, but they did everything they could to maintain it.

    I’m not thrilled with the bill, as in my view it was watered down too much in order to get the sixty votes. As noted in a previous thread, I would fault the bill for not rationing health care: in my view, there is not a sacrosanct right for unlimited medical care once you reach 65, and there are wiser ways to allocate finite resources than the way they are allocated now. However, I think that it is a far better solution to the health care mess than what we’ve got today, with significant achievements which will benefit many people for many years to come. There are plenty of good reasons to oppose the bill, and there are many ways it could have been improved. However, by abdicating their responsibility and removing themselves from the legislative process, the Republicans and their water carriers in the right wing media have nothing to complain about.

    Posted December 21, 2009 at 6:55 pm | Permalink
  5. Malcolm says

    There! Doesn’t that feel better?

    Posted December 21, 2009 at 7:15 pm | Permalink
  6. the one eyed man says

    Much better. I suffer from MMDS (Mitch McConnell Derangement Syndrome). Better than McConnell, who suffers from cranial rectal inversion.

    Look: I don’t claim that Democrats are all saints and Republicans are all sinners, and I am not here to bang a drum for the Democratic party (or, as Republicans love to call it, the Democrat Party.) However, it is infuriating to me that the Republicans consistently put their perception of partisan advantage above the national interest and oppose all of Obama’s agenda simply because they are his agenda. This is one sin which the Democrats are not guilty of: during the Bush administration, they regularly voted for Republican legislation and appointments, extending even to his mediocre Supreme Court nominees. There is the loyal opposition and the mindless opposition. The current set of Republicans exemplify the latter.

    Posted December 21, 2009 at 8:10 pm | Permalink
  7. Malcolm says

    I disagree. I think the opposition from the Right on this matter is due to a completely different view of the proper role of government. And nobody likes this bill. You don’t think that ramming it through like this — with secret dealings and middle-of-the-night votes — is anything other than a power play?

    Pah. And if you think the Democrats never reflexively opposed anything just because president Bush supported it, I have a bridge to sell you.

    Posted December 21, 2009 at 8:37 pm | Permalink
  8. the one eyed man says

    I don’t think it’s a power play at all. They had the votes to pass the bill. That’s what happens when you have majority rule (or, in this case, super majority rule). Negotiations concerning pending legislation always occur behind closed doors. The bill was passed in the middle of the night only because the Republicans used delaying tactics to force it (because the 1:00 am Monday vote was required to get it passed before Christmas).

    The Democrats supported AUMF, the Bush prescription drug bill, the funding for Iraq (both in the budget and through special appropriations), the Patriot Act, two Supreme Court nominees, and lots more. Without Democratic votes, Bush’s TARP funding would never have passed. So it is incorrect to suggest that Democrats reflexively opposed Bush’s agenda. Voting down TARP would have been the easiest thing in the world: everybody hated it and it’s easy to demagogue. Do Democrats ever vote in a partisan way? Of course. Have Democrats supported major Republican legislation? Often. Have Republicans supported major Obama legislation? No.

    Posted December 21, 2009 at 9:26 pm | Permalink
  9. bob koepp says

    I think Democrats need some legislative success stories to carry them into the next round of elections; Republicans are intent on preventing this. That “healthcare reform” is emblazoned on the game ball is of little significance.

    Posted December 21, 2009 at 10:18 pm | Permalink
  10. the one eyed man says

    Paul Krugman’s column today makes the case that Republican obstructionism is tantamount to dsyfunctional governance:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/opinion/21krugman.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

    Posted December 21, 2009 at 10:47 pm | Permalink
  11. Malcolm says

    Well, we may be at a standoff here — or, to paraphrase something I read somewhere recently: “Wake me up if Paul Krugman is ever right about anything.”

    Of course the Democrats supported TARP; it was, after all, a big-government operation at the largest possible scale. What is far more unsettling was that Mr. Bush himself, ostensibly a conservative, supported it.

    As for the Patriot Act, clearly it was not just a question of “going with the flow” in the gentle Democratic spirit of bipartisan chumminess; it obviously was sensible enough legislation that it was recently renewed by the Democratic Congress, at the behest of their Democratic President.

    When our elected officials, of whatever party (I’m a registered Democrat, after all) support good legislation, they have my blessing. And when they obstruct egregiously bad legislation, they shall have it as well.

    Posted December 21, 2009 at 11:56 pm | Permalink
  12. Malcolm says

    Yes, Bob, there is no question that this is an important factor on both sides.

    Posted December 21, 2009 at 11:57 pm | Permalink
  13. the one eyed man says

    1) I’m not sure what you mean about Paul Krugman. He is right about everything. In any event, if there is anything amiss with yesterday’s column, I am eager to know what it is. He presented a cogent argument based on fact and reason.

    2) You can thank the Democrats for passing TARP. It saved the economy. Had Bush’s hitherto conservative economic policy continued, the economic freefall which began in 2007 and 2008 would have continued and accelerated, leading to an economic nuclear winter. It was only because of TARP and other “big-government operations at the largest possible scale” which stabilized the economy and banking system, allowing the economy to reverse direction and start to expand again.

    3) Far from being a “sensible” piece of legislation, the original Patriot Act had elements which were blatantly and obviously unconstitutional. (If you want to talk about a power grab, here is your poster child. Civil liberties which are protected by the constitution were expropriated by the government in a massive increase in the state’s power of surveillance and detention). Its most egregious elements were thrown out of court or eliminated when the bill came up for renewal in 2006. Even so, the slimmed down version was overwhelmingly opposed by Democrats, so it was not bipartisan. However, this is irrelevant to the simple fact that when the Republicans controlled Congress, lots of bills were rammed through without debate or deliberation. Perhaps you recall the times when Democrats were accused of not supporting the troops because they wanted to see what was inside defense appropriations bills. Their feigned shock at similar tactics being used now would make Peter Lorre blush.

    Posted December 22, 2009 at 9:17 am | Permalink
  14. Malcolm says

    To paraphrase once again: boo etc. hoo.

    What’s wrong with Krugman’s piece? You mean besides the usual whining, ad hominem barbs, and demonization as immoral anyone who disagrees with his statist agenda? I’ll say it again: oppositions oppose. That’s how politics works. And when they oppose bad legislature, and grandiose expansions of collectivist government entitlements and regulation, they have my blessing.

    Well, I’m too busy here to expound at length, but topping the list is his grotesque enthusiasm about ramming down America’s throat a bill that even he — even he! — admits is a “seriously flawed”, one that we “will spend years if not decades fixing”.

    And we’ll see about TARP, and its long-term effects. I wouldn’t get to crowing about it just yet.

    Posted December 22, 2009 at 12:03 pm | Permalink

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