They should call it the Obama Doctrine and we should thank the Democratic leadership in the Senate for making its nature clear – most recently in their efforts to craft a health care reform (actually an insurance company enrichment) bill.
The Republican leadership, such as it is, follows just the opposite tack. Either out of guile or because they are controlled by the useful idiots they’ve been recruiting for decades, they play to those idiots, aka the Republican base. Whether this is a recipe for winning elections in 2010 remains to be seen. Maybe not because there’s a limit to how buffoonish Republicans can be and still win back the apolitical middle they lost thanks to George Bush and Dick Cheney. But as a recipe for influencing policy – which is, after all, what anybody who is not a party functionary or one of their media hacks cares about – it is a sure winner. It was Republican obduracy that empowered the Democratic right. Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson were the lucky beneficiaries; but for Republican nay saying, they’d never have been able to act out their obstructionist strategies or to stick it to their colleagues (never mind the voters).
Mainstream Democrats responded like the cowards they are. At a time when “bipartisanship” means surrender, they were happy to oblige.
It should now therefore be clear to all that, win or lose, Obama and his Congressional comrades are weak and unable to govern; that all they can do is betray the hopes of their base. The Petreus-McCrystal-Gates axis realized this long ago; so has the Israeli Right, which could have been tamed but is instead, as usual, calling the shots. And despite their moral and intellectual deficiencies, Congressional Republicans have figured it out too. The time is long past due for the Democratic base to realize what has been going on and to react accordingly – which means taking initiatives and restricting Obama’s choices, as much or more than Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson do.
Meanwhile, even if Obama finally gets a bill that is not, on balance, an unmitigated disaster, what a difference a year makes!
Showing posts with label Senate Health Care Bill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Senate Health Care Bill. Show all posts
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Could Be Worse
Forget about anything with the word “change” in it: “could be worse” should be the motto of the Obama administration. That is faint praise – after Dick Cheney and George Bush, everyone knows, or should know, that it could indeed be worse, much worse – but “could be worse” is about the best that can be said on Obama’s behalf.
Examples abound from every corner of the planet, but especially in Afghanistan and the Middle East, where the Obama administration is, so far, only flirting with disaster; not plunging into it. And, in at least one case, on management of the economy (minus the controversial and unforgivable bail outs of Wall Street profiteers and other “too big to fail” predators) conventional wisdom now agrees. But for Obama’s stimulus package, “Main Street” would be in even worse shape than it now is. Thus it could be worse, but it could also be better because the stimulus was too meager, especially with state and local governments, required by law to balance their budgets, producing counter-stimulus packages of their own.
The inclusion of a public option in the Senate’s health care bill is another, especially timely, example. On the one hand, there will be a public option in the bill because “progressives” in the Democratic Party (I use the term loosely) stood firm. Could it be that after decades of unadulterated pusillanimity the majority party is finally developing a backbone? But Harry Reid’s public option is not a single-payer system (Medicare for all) nor is it a National Health Service type of public option (Veterans Administration health care for all). Thus while it may help many of the 40 million plus uncovered Americans to get health insurance, it will not do very much to lower health care costs.
It would do more in both respects if everyone, not just the uninsured, could buy into it, and if states with reactionary governments (and also, not incidentally, worse health outcomes than is the American norm) were not free to “opt out.” But, as presented yesterday, the Senate bill severely restricts who can buy in and does permit states to opt out. The bill would be better too if it had a real employer mandate and if it didn’t tax so-called Cadillac health plans, many of which unions won for their members by sacrificing wages and other benefits.
Still, we have to look on the sunny side. What will be in the Senate bill is better than nothing, and better than what we would have if Democrats were still determined to cower, for “bipartisanship” reasons, before Olympia Snowe, their one possible Republican collaborator. And, since Reid is nothing if not shrewd, if he decided to include a public option in the bill, it probably means that he has persuaded the most right-wing Democrats in the Senate, Snowe’s co-thinkers, not to hold their colleagues hostage to a Republican filibuster.
Thus Obama will very likely get the kind of health care bill he has been promoting. It’s not much of a solution for what ails us, but it could be worse.
Examples abound from every corner of the planet, but especially in Afghanistan and the Middle East, where the Obama administration is, so far, only flirting with disaster; not plunging into it. And, in at least one case, on management of the economy (minus the controversial and unforgivable bail outs of Wall Street profiteers and other “too big to fail” predators) conventional wisdom now agrees. But for Obama’s stimulus package, “Main Street” would be in even worse shape than it now is. Thus it could be worse, but it could also be better because the stimulus was too meager, especially with state and local governments, required by law to balance their budgets, producing counter-stimulus packages of their own.
The inclusion of a public option in the Senate’s health care bill is another, especially timely, example. On the one hand, there will be a public option in the bill because “progressives” in the Democratic Party (I use the term loosely) stood firm. Could it be that after decades of unadulterated pusillanimity the majority party is finally developing a backbone? But Harry Reid’s public option is not a single-payer system (Medicare for all) nor is it a National Health Service type of public option (Veterans Administration health care for all). Thus while it may help many of the 40 million plus uncovered Americans to get health insurance, it will not do very much to lower health care costs.
It would do more in both respects if everyone, not just the uninsured, could buy into it, and if states with reactionary governments (and also, not incidentally, worse health outcomes than is the American norm) were not free to “opt out.” But, as presented yesterday, the Senate bill severely restricts who can buy in and does permit states to opt out. The bill would be better too if it had a real employer mandate and if it didn’t tax so-called Cadillac health plans, many of which unions won for their members by sacrificing wages and other benefits.
Still, we have to look on the sunny side. What will be in the Senate bill is better than nothing, and better than what we would have if Democrats were still determined to cower, for “bipartisanship” reasons, before Olympia Snowe, their one possible Republican collaborator. And, since Reid is nothing if not shrewd, if he decided to include a public option in the bill, it probably means that he has persuaded the most right-wing Democrats in the Senate, Snowe’s co-thinkers, not to hold their colleagues hostage to a Republican filibuster.
Thus Obama will very likely get the kind of health care bill he has been promoting. It’s not much of a solution for what ails us, but it could be worse.
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