Washington – Until 8:30 a.m. on a snowy Saturday, few outside Senate majority leader Harry Reid’s conference rooms knew exactly how he amended the $849 billion Senate healthcare bill in order to satisfy the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the 60 senators needed to stop a potential Republican filibuster.
Yet by 3:48 p.m. Saturday, Senator Reid had filed a key procedural amendment to end debate on the bill, with a formal voted scheduled for 1 a.m. Monday.
In those seven hours and 18 minutes, Senator Reid had finally won the 60th vote, with Sen. Ben Nelson (D) of Nebraska announcing his support, and Senate clerks had finished reading Reid’s 383-page amendment aloud – a delaying tactic by minority Republicans.
Now, a bill that only days ago looked as likely to fail as succeed is on a fast track to pass by a self-imposed Christmas deadline.
But what is the rush to pass a bill that will impact one-sixth of the American economy?
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Wednesday that not completing House and Senate bills before a break would be “very bad for the American people and very, very bad for us.”
The prospect of losing momentum is what’s driving Democrats to complete the bill even in the face of blizzards, late nights, and ruined holiday plans, says Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.
“At this point, momentum has a virtue, almost like a law of physics that has kicked in and is propelling this to a climax, and they don’t want to do anything to arrest that momentum, including a break,” he says.
August’s Town Halls: Lessons Learned
For weeks, Democrats have been pounded by new polls reporting that public support for healthcare reform is below a majority and falling. Democratic leaders did not want their members to go home to face angry town hall meetings, as many did in August, without legislation in hand that will allow them to counter angry allegations with hard facts.
“It’s very hard to merchandise healthcare until we have a bill,” Speaker Pelosi added Wednesday.
Now, it seems, they might be able to.
Nelson’s support makes passage of the bill through the Senate virtually assured. And the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released a score of the revised bill Saturday. With Reid’s changes, CBO analysts project that the bill would cut the federal deficit by $139 billion over 10 years.
Democrats responded by promptly beginning their offensive. “This is the greatest deficit reduction bill in the history of the United States,” said Sen. Richard Durbin, the majority whip, Saturday on the floor of the Senate.
From 2020 to 2029, “it will reduce the deficit of the United States by $1.3 trillion,” he added. “At the end of the day, 94 percent of the people in the United States will have health insurance – the highest percentage in our history.”
The Fine Print
Meanwhile, lawmakers on both sides the aisle – and their snowbound staff – are digging into the details of the Democratic revisions for grist for the floor debates expected to run into Christmas eve.
Key changes include:
• Dropping a public option run by the Department of Health and Human Services in favor of multistate plans.
• Expanding the small business tax credit
• Increasing payroll taxes on higher-income workers
• Increasing penalties on individuals who don’t purchase mandated health insurance
• Dropping provisions to increase payment rates to physicians treating Medicare patients.
Senate Republicans aim to highlight the deals in the revised bill that favor some states over others.
“Democrats say they have 60 votes, but we’ll see after people read this bill,” says Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Republican leader Mitch
McConnell. In the revisions introduced today, “Virginia has to take second seat to Nebraska and Vermont, which both got extra Medicaid money,” he adds.
Just Like the Days of Wilbur Mills
Republicans hope to peel off Democrats like Sen. Jim Webb (D) of Virginia, who voted with Republicans on an amendment to drop proposed cuts in Medicare.
GOP moderates, such as Sen. Olympia Snowe (R) of Maine, pushed for more time to understand changes in the bill, build support across party lines, and propose amendments to improve the bill. But Democratic leaders say they have seen little evidence that Republicans, even with more time, would support this bill.
“What we saw in the floor in the last two hours is very reminiscent of how they passed Medicare in 1965,” says Julian Zelizer, a congressional historian at Princeton University in Princeton, N.J. “When [House Ways and Means Chairman] Wilbur Mills released the text of the bill, most committee members didn’t even know what he was about to do. It was a big surprise to everyone and that was standard practice in the 1950s and ’60s.”
“It’s not democratic, but it facilitates doing things,” he adds.
Despite the closed door negotiations that produced the final version of this bill, leaks and the power of the Internet made the process this year more open than in the heyday of Wilbur Mills.
“To the chagrin of the White House, many of the deals that produced this legislation were up on the Internet within hours,” Professor Zelizer says.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We’re presently working to find 1500 new monthly donors to Truthout before the end of the year.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy