Voices from the Flats – Reconcilliation at Last?
Are We There Yet, Senator Begich?
Senator Mark Begich arrived back in Alaska Friday afternoon and I had a chance to ask him about Open Left reporting he was the 50th Senator for reconciliation.
“Health care reform has already passed the Senate by a 60 vote super majority. If the comprehensive health care bill passes the House, the ‘clean-up’ reconciliation could be passed through the Senate with an up or down vote. I am waiting to see the wording of the reconciliation before voting. I am well aware of the more than 100,000 Alaskans who are without health insurance and the rising costs for those who do.”
Reported earlier today, the Senator is open to using reconciliation for health reform. From a letter to a constituent:
Thank you for contacting me regarding health care reform.
The reconciliation process is a budgetary tool used to address spending and deficit issues with a simple majority vote. The budget reconciliation process has been used 22 times by both parties since 1980. Action to clean up the health reform bill will further reduce the deficit.
Comprehensive health care reform has already passed the Senate with 60 votes. If the House passes the Senate bill, the President could sign that version of comprehensive reform into law. I believe reconciliation would only be used as a tool to take out special backroom deals and to eliminate concerns raised by many Alaskans I’ve talked with. The President has proposed narrow changes which I support, including completely closing the coverage gap for seniors’ prescription drugs, eliminating the special Nebraska funding provision, providing additional federal financing to all states to help pay for the expansion of Medicaid, and strengthening the Medicare waste, fraud, and abuse provisions.
Again, thank you for contacting me. As the 111th Congress moves forward, please continue to be in touch with your thoughts and concerns.
Sincerely,
Mark Begich
U.S. Senator
That makes 50 Senators publicly open to using reconciliation to finish health reform without any maybes. There will be a reconciliation fix to the Senate health bill, as long as the House first passes one.
thank you, mz shannyn.
keeping our collective fingers crossed
His letter is a far cry from the one I got from Lieberman on the same issue.
Well done, Senator Begich.
Good work, folks. We’re all waiting and hoping!
There are 100,000 Alaskans without health insurance? And Murky is still in the Party of No? Geez.
It’s going to happen! It’s like watching an Alfred Hitchcock thriller. I can’t look. I can’t not look. I’m holding my breath.
The ramping up of lies and hatred and misinformation from the Republicans makes me feel that they are running scared now because they know it’s going to happen and they can’t stop it.
Please everyone stay strong and stay focused and we shall prevail.
Senator Begich’s office wrote me that he will NOT join the Senators advocating for inclusion of a strong public option in the health care insurance legislation.
As of yesterday……35 senators and…..no word from Begich about the P.O.
See story below:
Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) became the 35th senator to commit to voting for a public health insurance option if it comes to a vote on the floor under the rules of reconciliation. That leaves advocates of the option 15 votes short with no official whip action from either the White House or Senate leadership.
Senate leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) have expressed support for the movement, but the White House has concluded, according to press secretary Robert Gibbs, that the public option doesn’t have “political support.”
The steady climb in named supporters undermines the White House’s conclusion.
While it refuses to push for the public option, the White House is attempting to muscle through several measures that have almost no political support within the Democratic caucus and, in fact, are vociferously opposed.
The excise tax on benefits, which hits unions hard, has extremely little support yet the White House has managed to include it. The administration is now pushing to include health savings accounts, a GOP priority that amounts to the creation of significant tax shelters for the wealthy. Democrats have fought hard in the past to oppose them and weaken them but the White House now intends to give them to the GOP in exchange for nothing.
“I find that ironic — something that we had fought to keep out, and indeed were successful, gets back in as part of reconciliation. And a public option that enjoys great support in the House and up to 30 senators gets left out. That’s something I just don’t understand,” Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) the co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told Salon Wednesday.
Obama’s campaign arm, meanwhile, is arguing that “at this point, the public option is detrimental to our efforts,” according to Chris Bowers.
The administration’s efforts notwithstanding, Cantwell said that if the parliamentarian determines that the public option can be voted on under the rules of reconciliation, which require only 50 votes, she’s on board.
“If the parliamentarian says you can and it can all work, yes,” she told HuffPost when asked if she’d vote for it. “If it works, fine.”
Progressive groups pushing for the public option are keeping a running tally here.
“This is great news,” said Adam Green, a lead organizer with Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which has been pressuring senators to commit. “I think a lot of Americans are wondering: Why are senators like Ted Kaufman and Maria Cantwell showing more leadership and being more in touch with where the American people are than the White House? As Anthony Weiner asked yesterday, ‘What votes did President Obama win by retreating on the public option?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/04/public-option-picks-up-35_n_485369.html
How healthcare reform will improve out economy? Here is the “best graph ever” from Maddow’s Blog, great for visual learners. Comments were good too. There is a FaceBook link to share the page.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/03/04/3978658-best-graph-ever
And when I’m feeling blue (about politics) it helps to read the encouraging comments at the OFA site, which updates developments in the White House.
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/hqblog
Here is something interesting!!
Only 10 questions and the answers will surprise you !!
How much do you know about the census?
Test your knowledge of U.S. facts and figures
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35709817/ns/us_news-life/
This is great news and Nancy Pelosi is giving all indications that the bill will pass in the house. I’m nervous about that one, but she seems confident and possibly knows more than she is letting on. In any case, I feel better knowing this news. Thanks for sharing Shannyn!
I like Nancy….she has liberal views, but is pragmatic about “the situation”…
It is good to see this post right next to the counter of how many people have lost their health care coverage. I can hardly wait to see those numbers reverse!!! I’ll be one of them.
The former Cigna CEO was on Now with Bill Moyers again on Friday night. His view on the current legislation is that we should pass the bill we have and the public option could alwasys be added by congress later should the insurance companies fail to keep costs down.
Yeah! Fingers crossed here…
I concur!!
Well, it was a nice little tutorial on reconciliation without a direct answer to the question.
Word blizzard.
Mark Begich had a phone-in real time telephone conference a few nights ago…somehow we got a call to participate, maybe because we had written him with various views. I’d like to encourage those interested to contact him in case there is another next month…it was a call out of the blue and quite interesting hearing from people all over the state presenting their concerns to the senator, and have him there to answer…
At this point I’m for pass it any way you can. Good or bad, pass it and fix it later.
Right now it’s a bad bill. But it can be fixed. We need the camel to get his nose in the tent, we’ll worry about the baggage when it gets here.
Congress has demonstrated its very worst with this health care issue. No matter what, the insurance and pharmaceutical companies are pulling way too many strings in their direction.
Actual health? Healthy environment? Healthy food? Healthy watersheds? Clean air? Clean water? Healthy planet? Fair access for all? Way down the priority list.