Washington – This is the paradox of the moment: President Obama’s speech on Afghanistan and his subsequent jobs summit underscored why it’s essential to get a health care bill done quickly. The calendar of politics has an urgency that the dilatory pace of the U.S. Senate doesn’t match.
Here’s the deal. If Obama gets to sign a health care bill before he gives his State of the Union address, he starts 2010 with a historic victory to proclaim before the country, and then can pivot quickly to the issue likely to dominate the midterm elections: jobs and how to create them.
The Afghanistan speech showed that a president’s power to control the agenda is limited. The last thing Obama wants is for the public discussion to focus on a war that is neither popular in his own party nor particularly loved by the middle of the electorate.
His speech on the troop buildup last week was thus from the head, not the heart. He was doing what he felt he had to do, not what he yearned to do. He wasn’t elected to be a war president. But circumstances require him to be one anyway. Indeed, the line he recited with the most passion was: “The nation that I’m most interested in building is our own.”
Getting a health care bill is important on its own, but it’s central to establishing Obama’s credentials as a domestic reformer and to proving that Democrats are capable of governing. This is why the president made an unusual visit to Capitol Hill on Sunday to push fractious negotiations forward. Senators need to get their version of a health care bill done before the end of this year so the House and Senate can come to a speedy agreement on a final bill in January.
This logic will create two dramas over the next two weeks.
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid has been struggling to light a fire under members of his party. He needs moderates to understand they are part of a majority and progressives to figure out what they want in exchange for concessions to moderates who oppose a public option.
Liberals are absolutely right in their frustration with the Senate. It’s become an absurd institution, perhaps the least democratic legislative body in any country calling itself a democracy. It makes no sense that four or five votes can trump 54 or 55 votes. But the Senate is what it is. For now, liberals have to live with this.
Republicans, in the meantime, know that delay is their friend, and they will delay and delay — and delay some more. The emergence last week of a memo from Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire to his GOP colleagues outlining all the ways they can slow action should put spine into Democrats.
In a nicely diplomatic cover letter, Gregg argued that Republicans “must use the tools we have under Senate rules to insist on a full, complete and fully informed debate on the health care legislation.” Translation: Let’s keep this turmoil going until the Fourth of July, or, heck, all the way to Labor Day.
The best news for advocates of health care reform is that Reid has sought to force action by convening a group of 10 Democrats, five moderates and five progressives, to work out a compromise. After several meetings over the weekend, they were focusing on an alternative to the public option modeled after the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan, even as progressives sought further expansions in coverage.
It’s a shame that a public option might be stopped by a small number of senators. But the compromise would still give government a role in promoting competition as the overseer of an alternative that would likely focus on not-for-profit insurance plans.
The core issues of this debate have been settled. The Congressional Budget Office has swept away the major arguments that opponents of reform have been trying to make. The bill before the Senate would cut the deficit, not increase it, and would stabilize or reduce health care premiums for most people, not raise them. The proposal contains serious cost-control measures that can be built on over time. Passing health care reform is thus not only morally necessary, but also fiscally responsible.
But getting there will be much harder if the Senate doesn’t act this year. Obama is right that nation-building should begin at home. Health care reform will mark the beginning of domestic nation-building.
(c) 2009, Washington Post Writers Group
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today during our fundraiser. We have 72 hours to add 273 new monthly donors. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.