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BEN NELSON AND ARLEN SPECTER OPPOSE THE PUBLIC PLAN. SHOULD ANYONE CARE?
I understand why people might be angry over Ben Nelson's decision to come out against a public insurance option in health care reform. But not why they'd be surprised. Nelson, after all, voted to cut the stimulus, voted against the budget, is fighting to retain the breaks to student loan middlemen, is loudly broadcasting his skepticism with cap and trade legislation, and has been cool to the very idea of health care reform. He's been about as kind to Obama's agenda as the critics have been to the new Wolverine movie.
There was, in other words, simply no precedent for him to support the most progressive element of the overall plan. In fact, there's no precedent for him to support the plan itself. The question is really whether he'll be able to force a substantially more conservative "compromise" plan, as he did with the stimulus.
Similarly, it's no surprise to see Arlen Specter come out against the public insurance option, as he did on Meet the Press yesterday. When I say the guy was a Republican till, like, yesterday, I'm exaggerating by a matter of days. What you need from Specter -- and for that matter, from Nelson -- is not support for the plan's particular provisions or even its overall structure. You just need them to vote for cloture.
That's part of the beauty of having 60 votes. If you can mass the necessary senators to break the filibuster, then you can actually lose up to 10 Democratic votes on the actual bill. People confuse the fact that you need 60 votes to vote on a bill with the idea that you need 60 votes to pass a bill. You don't. You still only need 50 votes to pass a bill. You need 60 votes to pass cloture. If Nelson and Specter vote for cloture and then vote against the bill, they will, so far as Harry Reid is concerned, have done their jobs. If they decide, instead, to form a coalition of moderates that demands a watered down bill before they'll vote for cloture, that's rather different. The impressive majority Democrats now possess gives their members room to go a bit rogue. But only a bit.
COMMENTS (5)
Ok! So will they, in fact, vote for cloture? That at least isn't a foregone conclusion, is it?
Posted by: Brodysattva | May 4, 2009 9:48 AM
If they decide, instead, to form a coalition of moderates that demands a watered down bill before they'll vote for cloture, that's rather different.
Since that is exactly what happened with the stimulus bill, I am going to go out on a limb and predict Specter and Nelson do the same thing on health care.
Posted by: Ron E. | May 4, 2009 10:17 AM
If you think a bill is bad and should not be law, and you know there's enough votes to pass it, but there's a routine cloture vote where you could block it, why on Earth would you vote for cloture? I can see voting for cloture but against the bill in a GOP-controlled Congress where opposing cloture is treated as a big deal that required expending political capital. And I can see doing it if you support the bill but want to have a vote against it that you can put in your reelection commercials. But neither of those things describes Specter or Nelson's situation.
Posted by: Stentor | May 4, 2009 1:22 PM
What's the incentive to vote for cloture, though? I actually think Republicans have more incentive to vote for cloture if they think it's crummy- get it passed, then hang it around the Democrats' necks 'cause no one cares about procedural BS like cloture. But Specter and Nelson, ostensibly, don't want to hurt the Democratic Party, so why would they vote for cloture?
Posted by: colby | May 4, 2009 8:30 PM
I'm loving the optimism but it seems pretty unfounded at the moment.
Posted by: Brian | May 5, 2009 2:44 AM