“A Private Understanding”

Well isn’t this interesting:

Sen. Joe Lieberman has reached a private understanding with Majority Leader Harry Reid that he will not block a final vote on healthcare reform, according to two sources briefed on the matter.

Chris Bowers asks what people think the “private understanding” is. Booman guesses that Reid threatened Lieberman with taking away his position as Homeland Security Committee Chair if Joe voted against cloture at any procedural point in the Senate debate.

Lieberman would have to get something in return for not voting against cloture on a health care reform bill he opposes. Keeping his Committee chairmanship, something that Lieberman has repeatedly bet he could do anything to retain (remember, he campaigned for John McCain), isn’t likely to be considered something by Joe Lieberman. He thinks he owns it already and there has been essentially zero will publicly expressed by the Democratic Senate caucus towards removing Lieberman from his chair as a consequence of his actions.

It’s also worth pointing out that while Lieberman has already said he won’t oppose a Motion to Proceed to the bill and sources are now saying he won’t oppose cloture on final passage, there is a third major cloture vote that has not yet been discussed. As I wrote on the SEIU blog, there is a cloture vote on the manager’s amendment to substitute the debated and amended healthcare bill onto a bill from the House Ways and Means Committee.

Cloture Motion on Manager’s Amendment (Substitute Amendment): After considerable debate and amendment to the substitute, the Majority Leader will file Cloture on the Substitute. If there are 60 votes here, the Merged reform bill/Substitute as amended will get an up or down vote after 30 hours of post cloture consideration.

So, in some sense, it seems that both Senator Lieberman and Leader Reid are weaseling on process questions right now. At least, neither are speaking publicly about Lieberman’s expected stance on the cloture vote that will occur between the Motion to Proceed and the cloture motion on final passage of the measure.

Getting beyond the weaseling on process, I don’t know what Lieberman is seeking to extort from Reid. Job security is clearly something he already thinks he has in the bank. More job security would certainly be helpful for Joe, but would it really be enough for him to vote with the caucus on procedural votes that he already sees as tantamount to the substantive vote on the bill itself on final passage?

Lieberman’s real problem is with the public option. Perhaps what Reid promised Lieberman was an opportunity to vote on an amendment to remove the public option from the bill, with a threshold of only 51 votes. This would increase the likelihood of it getting stripped out, as well as the likelihood that Lieberman will actually vote with the caucus on all cloture votes (as he said he would if he was happy with the underlying bill). The flip side, obviously, is that if Reid were to push for a 51 vote threshold for an amendment to strip the public option in the Unanimous Consent agreement governing the debate, he would essentially be guaranteeing its removal from the bill, after showed rare leadership by fighting alongside Chris Dodd for its inclusion. If this is the case, expect a huge uproar from the people who have worked to get the public option as part of health care reform legislation.

Of course, I think Open Left commenter bento is probably most right about what the private understanding means: “Reid, in the privacy of his head, understands Lieberman will not filibuster. Joe in his privacy understands he will. ”

Update:

Lieberman spokesman Marshall Whitman has strongly denied the reporting of a “private understanding” in a quote to the National Review.

…Adding, Reid’s office is now denying the report of an understanding as well.

On Senate Cloture Process

Yesterday I wrote a long memo on the process surrounding the health care legislation in the Senate, focusing on cloture votes. It is up on the SEIU blog and is reprinted below.

* * *

The health care debate has been long and hard fought. As we near the time when we expect the Senate to take up a bill and vote on reform, there are a lot of questions about what exactly will be happening from a procedural standpoint. After all, the Senate has a lot of complicated and misunderstood rules. Foremost among them are cloture and the filibuster.

First, filibusters really don’t happen the way they did when Mr. Smith went to Washington. Instead, the word filibuster is commonly used to refer to any time a bloc of 41 or more senators vote against considering a piece of legislation or letting it come to a floor vote. This week Andy Stern wrote in an op-ed on Huffington Post that there is no such thing as a Republican filibuster, because the GOP caucus only has 40 votes. As a result, the only way health care reform can be blocked is if members of the Democratic caucus join the Republicans to oppose moving forward.

Second, the Senate is governed largely by consensus. Things don’t get done without either everyone agreeing to them or there being a vote to see where the members of the Senate stand. One of the tools the Senate uses to keep the wheels turning is cloture. Cloture is simply a vote on whether or not to end consideration of an issue or piece of legislation for the time being. In our one hundred member Senate, there must be sixty votes in favor of cloture for a cloture motion to pass and the Senate to move forward. The Congressional Research Service has a great, detailed report on filibusters and cloture (PDF link), but I’m going to try to distill some of it here to explain what we expect to come during the health care debate.

To understand the procedure on cloture votes and filibusters on health care, it’s important to look at the general process. After the Senate HELP Committee and Senate Finance Committee bills have been merged, the final bill will need to be brought to the Senate floor. Because the health care reform bill deals with funding, the Senate will need to use a bill from the House Ways and Means Committee in order to introduce the legislation – the Senate health care reform bill will be offered as a substitute amendment to that House bill. Offering a new bill as a substitute to a bill from the House is common Senate procedure and the House bill in question doesn’t even have to relate to health care.

There are likely going to be three big points in the Senate debate of health care reform legislation that will almost certainly be subject to cloture votes. Each one of these votes will require sixty senators in favor of moving forward, yet none of them will be on the actual health care reform bill itself!

1.Cloture Motion on Motion to Proceed to Measure’s Consideration: This will be the first step, where the Senate will ask itself: Do enough of us want to start debating specific health care reform legislation on the floor? Assuming that 60 senators do, the process will continue;

If Cloture on the Motion to Proceed is “invoked” (a fancy senate term for saying 60 Senators voted yes) then the Motion to Proceed will be adopted by a majority vote and the Senate will start debating the House bill that I mentioned above. Next the very first thing that will happen is that the “merged” Finance/HELP Committee bill will be offered as a complete substitute to the House bill. Then the fun really begins. Senators offer dozens of amendments, the Majority and Minority Leaders try to work out Unanimous Consent agreements, which I will explain below, to get lots of the amendments votes and sometimes Senators even filibuster each other’s amendments. But sooner or later the Majority Leader says that is enough. That’s when…

2.Cloture Motion on Manager’s Amendment (Substitute Amendment): After considerable debate and amendment to the substitute, the Majority Leader will file Cloture on the Substitute. If there are 60 votes here, the Merged reform bill/Substitute as amended will get an up or down vote after 30 hours of post cloture consideration. Then…

3. Cloture Motion Filed on Measure (Final Passage): After the Substitute Amendment is adopted, the Senate still needs to bring debate on the entire bill to a close, so in oder to get to final passage of the health reform bill in the Senate, there will be one more cloture vote — on the final bill (or to get super technical, on that old house bill as amended by the Substitute). Assuming 60 senators support getting to a final vote on the bill they’ve just spent days and weeks amending and debating (not to mention months doing the same in Committee), then there will be an opportunity for the health care reform bill to receive a straight up-or-down vote.

What should you expect when you see a cloture motion? Lots of debate and delay. After cloture is filed, it takes one day and an hour to ripen. So if a cloture motion is filed on Monday, it cannot be voted on until Wednesday. After the motion for cloture is voted on, there is then 30 hours of debate for post-cloture consideration. This time period includes debate, roll call votes, and quorum calls. Basically each of these three big procedural steps prior to a cloture motion and vote on cloture will add a number of days before the next soonest step can be reached. This is why we expect the entire Senate floor debate of health care reform to be a process that could last, at minimum, a couple of weeks.

Now I haven’t talked at all about amendments…and we should expect to see dozens or hundreds filed. The reality is that anything that is debatable is subject to cloture, so that includes amendments to the bill that is brought to the floor. While it’s possible that the entire floor debate and amendment process is filled with cloture votes (making it a very long and drawn-out process), it’s more likely that the Senate will agree to a Unanimous Consent Agreement to govern debate and amendments. The UC Agreement sets out exactly how much time every amendment will be given for debate, how much time Republicans and Democrats will get to speak, and how many votes it will take to pass that amendment. Expect more controversial amendments to require 60 votes to pass, while less controversial ones will take a simple majority.

How does all of this process relate to the goal of passing meaningful health care reform legislation? The opponents of health care reform in the Senate will be given at least three major opportunities to stop this bill from getting a simple up-or-down vote. In each case, they will use procedure to try to stop legislation that the American public overwhelmingly supports. Health care reform is so important that it must receive an up-or-down vote to determine its outcome. Anything less is unacceptable.

Between now and the first Motion to Proceed to health care reform, there will be many twists and turns in the fight. The substance of the bill will change. The number of people that it helps will hopefully grow larger. But at the end of the day, this is vital legislation that deserves a straight up-or-down vote from the Senate. Even those members who are opposed to the underlying bill itself should not hide behind procedural hurdles to prevent it from receiving an up-or-down vote. If they oppose reform, that can best be expressed through debate of the bill, through the amendment process, and on final passage. The issue of health care reform is simply too important to be defeated by a minority of the Senate, hiding behind procedure.

We’ll have more updates on Senate and House procedure as the legislative fight progresses. Stay tuned for updates!

Bringing Lobbyists Along

Sheryl Gay Stolberg really missed the point here:

The story of these two lobbyists — a Republican who found favor with a Democratic White House and a Democrat on the outs — illustrates the complexities Mr. Obama faces in the health care endgame. The president had some early success in bringing industry on board. But as the experiences of Mr. Tauzin and Ms. Ignagni suggest, keeping it there will be easier said than done.

There’s really no other way to say it than Stolberg doesn’t get the players in health care reform. Billy Tauzin represents the pharmaceutical industry. Karen Ignagni represents the health insurance industry. That is, the two of them represent industries whose constituents have overcharged the American public through sky-high pricing, unfair rate increases, rescission, and stranglehold patents that are responsible for the fundamental problems in health care in America. Their clients are petrified of reform and have hired them – admittedly two very competent lobbyists – to stop reform from cutting into their bottom lines (or ideally, growing their profits).

Ignagni and Tauzin brought AHIP and PhRMA “on board” with the Obama administration’s reform efforts because they believed that being at the table would allow them to slow any changes that would affect their clients, reduce the impact of reform, and ensure that the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries maintained their sky-high profits. While there is obviously value in the Obama administration keeping these two moneyed lobbies on the sidelines during the ad war, in the end both have become huge roadblocks in the path of reform…just as anyone with half a brain would have predicted.

Ignagni and Tauzin are lobbyist hacks who are working for a paycheck. They have access and they have been given even more. But they are corruptly fighting against the needs of the American people. Fighting these interests is certainly a complex process, but not in the way that Stolberg casts it above. Once you recognize that Ignagni and Tauzin exist to stop reform, the complexity becomes how do you out-maneuver them and their massive corporate war chests? The Obama administration does not have to bring AHIP and PhRMA along. It does not need their approval to pass reform. This is not a fascist government. This is a democracy and whatever is passed by Congress and signed by the President will have the force of law, regardless of how it affects the bottom line of the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Ignagni and Tauzin may be doing their best to protect their clients, but to say they are anything other than K Street profiteers who are benefiting from the exploitation, pain, and suffering of the American public is to ignore the realities of who they work for and what legislative agenda they are advocating.

Benen on Milbank

Steve Benen is pretty spot-on in his spanking of Dana Milbank’s idiotic column attacking Harry Reid for caving to the left on the public option. Benen writes:

Obviously, Milbank is entitled to his opinion. If he thinks Reid agreed to a public option compromise — a public plan with a state opt-out — primarily to make MoveOn.org happy, Milbank is welcome to the make the case.

But it’s not exactly a persuasive pitch, and Milbank doesn’t bolster his assertions with much of anything.

Reid had to reconcile two committee bills — one with a public option, one without. To merge the two, the Majority Leader went with a compromise that enjoys the backing of most of his caucus and most of the country.

Milbank sees Reid as caving to liberal groups who don’t care that, as he sees it, the measure doesn’t have 60 votes. I see a Majority Leader going with a proposal that Reid, the White House, most congressional Democrats, and most Americans have already embraced. And incidentally, it happens to be “good public policy.”

In fairness, I believe progressive activists definitely played a role in getting the Senate’s reform bill to where it is. Indeed, I don’t think there’s anything especially wrong with Democratic leaders shaping a public policy plan in a way that meets the expectations of the voters who elected them.

But Milbank makes it sound as if the Majority Leader yelled “How high?” because “liberal interest groups” told him to jump. And that’s just not what’s happened.

Liberal interest groups, labor unions, progressive bloggers, and Democratic voters have all spent a lot of energy convincing the Senate Democrats of the importance of including the public option in the underlying Senate bill. But frankly, I think the number one reason it’s there now is because it’s damned good policy that is easy to explain to the public. It would be great if groups like MoveOn, DFA, SEIU or AFL-CIO could dictate the actions of Harry Reid and the Senate Democratic caucus. But anyone who has spent more than a passing minute watching political dynamics between the left and elected officials in Washington know that this simply is not the case.

Shortsightedness Is A Problem

I understand that there’s always a strong desire for folks at the White House to never hear public criticism from allied groups or Democratic politicians, but this assault on AFSCME’s president Gerry McEntee by an anonymous White House official is really absurd. There are going to be many fights, health care is just one of them. But it is one that the White House has waged with the benefit of surrogates and allies like McEntee and his union members’ dues fighting in the field. AFSCME is one of the coalition partners of Healthcare for American Now (HCAN), the leading Democratic/progressive field campaign that has been working in support of reform (disclosure: my employer, SEIU, is a member of HCAN). That is, McEntee’s union is one of many that has been helping create the political environment necessary to allow for a strong reform bill to land on President Obama’s desk.

McEntee is one of the labor leaders who has been pushing most publicly back against the administration for not fighting harder for the public health insurance option and other key reforms Obama promised his health care agenda would contain while on the campaign trail. Gunning at him through anonymous quotes isn’t just petty, it’s stupid. It makes it harder for AFSCME to be an effective advocate for change on health care and it makes it less likely that AFSCME or any other progressive organization will want to be the tip of the spear for the administration’s agenda again. After all, no one is going to appreciate being attacked as McEntee was by an anonymous White House official.

David Waldman points out that there is a real imbalance here between the pressure the White House will publicly put on allies like McEntee and the complete lack of pressure being placed on Democratic senators who are actually holding up key parts of the reform package.

“Allies” don’t pass this thing. Senators do. Keeping “allies” in line is about keeping up appearances. Keeping Senators in line is about getting results.

Now, you could certainly argue that you use the soft touch with Senators, since they’re a prickly bunch. But what does a hard line with “allies” get you, really? What’s “unity” worth, exactly? What’s it good for?

You’ll get unity if you pass decent reform and are seen fighting for it. You’ll need unity if you plan to shush critics, pass a piece of crap and call it a win.

This is not a sustainable model for governance. The Obama administration is at risk of burning out their allies, while showing Democratic Senators that they have little to fear for being obstructionist and forcing reform to the right. Hopefully they realize this is the case and will cut this frustratingly short-sighted behavior out soon.

Lieberman & Vote Counting

Yesterday I wrote about some lessons from Robert Caro’s biography of LBJ’s years in the Senate, Master of the Senate, especially as they regard to the health care reform fight and Harry Reid’s failures of leadership. I wrote:

One thing that Caro’s coverage of LBJ’s Senate tenure makes clear, segregation was preserved and civil rights were delayed for upwards of half a century because of the dominance of conservative Southerners over liberals when it came to understanding the rules and procedures of the Senate. Time after time, liberals were out maneuvered in the civil rights fight. Often their troubles came from an inability to properly count their votes; other times they simply were outsmarted by the master legislators of the South who knew Senate procedure cold. The South had to know how to use the rules to their advantage and they had to know how to count their votes, because they did not control the majority on civil rights and they hadn’t for decades.

Well today it looks like liberals have a golden opportunity to show whether or not we learn our lessons from LBJ or from our liberal predecessors who repeatedly lost civil rights fights in the first 60 years of the last century. Joe Lieberman has come out with a half step in the right direction:

Lieberman said he was “inclined to let the motion to proceed” (or cloture) go forward, but “I haven’t decided yet.”

So he’s saying he might not vote against cloture, but he hasn’t decided. Sadly, my friend Jonathan Singer at MyDD thinks this is equivalent to Lieberman “walk[ing] back his threat” to oppose health care reform. Sorry Jonathan, but this is exactly the sort of vote counting mistake liberals of LBJ’s era made.

I’m much more inclined to take a page from LBJ and not put Holy Joe in our column until we definitively know how he is voting on cloture. As there is still doubt, he should remain in the Nay column.

Lieberman is someone who loves being the center of attention. He loves being the deciding vote. His statement to the New Haven Register today, which shows that he is open to voting for cloture on a bill he will ultimately oppose, is something that might get people to think he’s no longer relevant in the horse trading for cloture votes. I wouldn’t be shocked to see Lieberman wait while Nelson, Landrieu, and Bayh get their price and back off hard when his vote is finally the critical one. Remember, for Lieberman it is all about him, his ego, and his place as a Serious Bipartisan Gentleman. Everything else is the path to his increased importance.

The Silent Filibuster: Already in Progress

Jane Hamsher has a must-read post on the culpability of Harry Reid in the possibility that there is a silent filibuster of the public health insurance option. Jane writes:

There are 51 Senators who will vote for a public option, something 77% of the country wants. It would win a majority in a floor vote. We were told that we needed 60 votes in the Caucus so we’d have a filibuster-proof majority — so that the GOP would never block a bill from getting to the floor. The only reason not to put the HELP Committee public option in the Senate bill is because Joe Lieberman and other “ConservaDems” are conducting a silent filibuster — they won’t say it publicly but they’ll say privately that they will vote with the GOP to filibuster the bill.

That means the Democratic caucus will now filibuster itself.

I only have one thing to say: Don’t even fucking think about it. We were told we had to suck up all manner of corporate whoredom for that 60 vote filibuster proof majority — that’s what we supposedly got in exchange for letting Lieberman have his committee chair, right? Except now I guess he gets all the power and the perks just because you like him, with none of the responsibility to stick with the caucus on procedural votes.

Sadly it already looks like Reid is going to not stand up to the silent filibuster. What makes me say this? Well, yesterday following the passage of the Senate Finance bill, Reid’s office committed to keeping Olympia Snowe involved in the process by giving her a spot on the negotiating team that will merge the SFC and HELP bills. From the NYT Prescriptions blog:

Jim Manley, a spokesman for Mr. Reid, said that Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, the lone Republican on the Finance Committee to vote in favor of the bill, would be invited to future sessions. And Mr. Manley said the Democratic leader was prepared to go to substantial lengths to keep Ms. Snowe’s support.

“He is prepared to do what he can to keep her on board while putting together a bill that can get the 60 votes necessary to overcome a Republican filibuster,” Mr. Manley said.

But here’s the thing: if Reid were stopping the silent filibuster of the public option, he would not need Snowe’s vote to “overcome a Republican filibuster.” He would need Snowe’s vote if and only if he has to overcome a Democratic filibuster.

Snowe is only necessary when Reid cannot or will not maintain Democratic caucus discipline. By Manley’s admission, Reid is not going to do this. Hopefully at some point soon Manley and other representatives for Senator Reid will begin to honestly speak about their decision to not hold caucus discipline and instead prioritize letting Snowe write the legislation that she wants to see come to the floor of the Senate. The sole virtue in this – the sole thing that might actually lead this to more than 60 votes – is that it will be so bad it will satisfy the concerns of people like Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson. But that’s not what Democrats promised and it most certainly isn’t what the country wants.

Bust Them If They Filibuster

Rachel Maddow reported last night that “two major power brokers” from the left, presumably from outside the Senate, are insisting that Democratic Senate leadership require all Democrats to vote against a Republican filibuster of health care reform. Any Democrat who joins the GOP to block health care reform should lose their committee chairmanship or subcommittee chairmanships as punishment. In effect, it’s time for the Senate leadership to bust some heads and show recalcitrant conservative Democrats that they simply will not be allowed to join a Republican filibuster of health care reform.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee has a petition up to Senator Reid calling on him to revoke the chairmanship of any senators who join the Republicans to filibuster health care reform. Sign it here.

Grayson, Republicans & the Press

Bravo, Representative Alan Grayson. Grayson is speaking truth to power and standing up for what he believes in.

What’s particularly sickening is how offended, how incensed Wolf Blitzer and his pundit colleagues at CNN are that Grayson had the gall to actually challenge Republicans for bald-faced opposition to any reform. But beyond that, what makes me want to pull my hair out is that the press is freaking out over Grayson’s words, but never once said a peep when Republican members of Congress said similar things. The Huffington Post reports:

By contrast, charges that the opposition’s health care plan will kill people have been about as common on the House floor lately as resolutions naming post offices.

Take Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite (R-Fla.), who said in July: “Last week, Democrats released a health care bill which essentially said to America’s seniors: drop dead.”

Or Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.), a doctor, who reviewed the public health insurance option in July and diagnosed that it is “gonna kill people.”

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), not one to pull punches, suggested on the House floor that Congress “make sure we bring down the cost of health care for all Americans and that ensures affordable access for all Americans and is pro-life because it will not put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government.”

July was a busy time for House floor death sentences. Also that month, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), noted: “One in five people have to die because they went to socialized medicine…I would hate to think that among five women, one of ’em is gonna die because we go to socialized care.”

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) had a similar assessment. “They’re going to save money by rationing care, getting you in a long line. Places like Canada, United Kingdom, and Europe. People die when they’re in line,” he said on the House floor in July.

So far, none of the members of Congress who made such charges have apologized.

Of course they haven’t, because it would never occur to either the press or Democrats to demand apologies for the lies and smears Republicans have used to obstruct reform. But as soon as a Democrat finds the spine to say something that is functionally correct, all hell breaks lose. No one could have predicted…

Stop Negotiating with Republicans

Contra Ben Nelson, there is no need for Senate Democrats to negotiate with Republicans to craft a health care bill that they will vote for. But what does negotiating with Republicans look like? It involves taking key parts of the legislation, watering them down or eliminating them to the point where that specific issue might be acceptable to some cohort of Republican Senators. But what is compromised in that specific policy case has no bearing on the larger question of whether Republicans will vote for health care reform.

Steve Benen puts it aptly, “The Senate is considering a variety of Republican-led changes to a bill that Republicans intend to reject anyway.”

Continuing to do this is functionally pointless. There may need to be steps taken to weaken a bill to attract conservative Democratic support. But weakening the legislation beyond that, which is what negotiating with Republicans does, means that we are doing it solely to make the bill worse. The Democratic Party gains nothing from this. The American people gain nothing from this. Republicans, on the other hand, get to go home and brag about how they suckered their Democratic colleagues into caving on another critical policy piece, which still didn’t earn their vote.

It’s simple – Republicans don’t want health care reform at all. Or, as Rep. Alan Grayson put it yesterday, the GOP plan for health care is a two-pronged prescription of “Don’t Get Sick” and if you do, “Die Quickly.” The Republicans have not taked a reasoned position that Democrats can negotiate with — they just want to kill health care reform. It’s time for Dems to stop negotiating with Republicans.

And let’s be clear about another thing: The law is the law is the law. In the Senate, it takes 51 votes to pass a bill. Legitimacy is not at issue if a bill lacks some kind of super super majority in the Senate. Legitimacy is determined by Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution and by the rules of the Senate. Nelson is making shit up and the weak-kneed Democratic leadership is seemingly more than happy to go along with it. First 60 was an excuse. Now, in some quarters, 65 will be an excuse. But excuses don’t have any weight when it comes to the actual legitimacy of a law and health care reform cannot be an exception to that rule.

Hold Fast

A blog by Matt Browner Hamlin

Category: Health Care