ObamaCare: What Went Wrong?

Don’t both houses have to pass the bill before it can be reconciled? The House has never passed the Senate version.

By reconciling its own bill, the Senate would just be amending it, and that takes 60 votes.

Of course, who knows how much influence Harry has at this point over the Senate parliamentarian.

Wethal on February 6, 2010 at 2:12 PM

Reid may decide to push this again next week. But if the Left wants to be honest about what went wrong so far, they will have to do better than blame the process. They need to face the problems raised by the substance of their efforts, their supposed leaders, and the lack of planning for an endgame.

They are incapable of this level of self-examination. As one of the Headline posts discusses, the condescending liberals think it’s the sheeple’s inability to understand that this is all for their welfare. The liberals cannot doubt the content of their programs and policies. The policies are articles of faith with them.

Wethal on February 6, 2010 at 2:15 PM

So it’s worth pondering why Democrats, with huge congressional majorities, were unable to carry the day.

Fundamentally, polls showed that the public didn’t like the health care plans, with tea partyers and other opponents far more passionate than supporters.

But Democrats allowed the opposition to develop with their drawn-out legislative process. And that was due in large part to two liberal lions of Congress with a knack for deal-making being sidelined.

The late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s brain cancer, first announced in 2008, was a major blow to ObamaCare. And not because Kennedy’s passing last year led to the election of Republican Scott Brown in January. It mattered because there was probably no senator both more committed to a national health care plan and as skilled at cutting bipartisan deals. But the cancer sidelined him until his death.

Had he been part of the process, odds are that Kennedy would have worked on a deal that at least a few Senate Republicans could have supported. That would have given Democrats at least a veneer of bipartisanship, blunting GOP attacks. And it would have reduced the time Majority Leader Harry Reid had to spend coaxing the likes of Sens. Mary Landrieu, D-La., and Ben Nelson, D-Neb., to get on board. Christmas might have come much earlier for Senate Democrats.

The second major blow occurred Nov. 20, 2008, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi succeeded in deposing Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee in favor of Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. The panel was one of several with health care jurisdiction. Dingell had a history of cutting deals with the moderate (Blue Dog) and liberal wings of the Democratic Party. Waxman too has had a reputation as a deal maker. But on health care he was a fierce partisan, resulting in a Blue Dog revolt:

On the conservative side of the equation, Mr. Waxman has unrelentingly antagonized the rural Democratic members who make up the majority of his committee. He wrote a climate bill without their input, loaded it with provisions that hurt their districts, and left them to vote on Republican amendments designed to inflict maximum political damage. … This high-handed treatment already had Blue Dogs loaded for bear, not that Mr. Waxman heeded warnings. When he again ducked into secret meetings to craft health-care legislation, a group of 45 members sent a letter complaining. “We don’t want a briefing on the bill after it’s written. We want to help write it,” declared Arkansas’s Mike Ross, chair of the Blue Dog health-care task force. Rebuffed, conservative Democrats delineated for Mr. Waxman what they saw as an acceptable bill. Rebuffed again, they asked Mr. Waxman to let the Senate go first. Rebuffed yet again, Mr. Ross took his case to the nation, with a revolt that has beat down the House bill for weeks.

Dingell seemed to understand that bridging differences between liberals and Blue Dogs needed to be a primary concern when drafting a health care bill, not something to be dealt with after the fact:

By this week, Hill newspapers were reporting on an increasingly prominent presence in the Waxman negotiations: John Dingell.

“These guys gotta fight to stay,” explained Mr. Dingell of the Blue Dogs, after one such peacemaking session. “They can warn us about pitfalls that we, in our arrogance, may not see. Their concerns are legitimate.” He refrained from adding: “Duh.”

With Dingell sidelined, it took longer for House leaders to address Blue Dog concerns. That meant the chamber wasn’t able to vote on a bill before the August recess, giving the tea partyers time to make their presence felt. That, in turn, meant Pelosi had to spend more time rounding up the necessary votes to pass the bill, an effort that dragged on until early November. Of course, that was a mess of her own making.

Investor’s Business Daily (HT: Amspec blog)

Blame Pelosi. And Obama (and Reid to some extent) for letting her do it “her” way.

Wethal on February 6, 2010 at 4:03 PM

Second, Obummer didn’t really know what thugs and partisans Reid and Pelosi were. Being a Dem, he wouldn’t be able to recognize partisanship in his own end of the party. None of them can. They are all to ‘enlightened’ and ‘caring’ to be partisan. At least in their own minds. Also, was he ever really in the Senate long enough to learn anything about Reid?

trigon on February 6, 2010 at 4:04 PM

I expect he thought they would be enchanted by the wonderfulness of the One, just like the Middle East nations, the Iranians and North Koreans would be. He apparently really thought his personality would trump anything else, including Pelosi and Reid’s personal agendas.

Wethal on February 6, 2010 at 4:07 PM