Passing the Senate HCR Bill in the House is not a big loss

The prospect of passing the Senate bill is not a big loss because we are only "losing" things we lost weeks ago... things that were never going to make it into the final bill. It was baked in the cake From the moment we got the 59th and 60th votes (Nelson and Lieberman) that the House was going to end up passing something almost identical to the Senate bill.

There has been a lot of talk from the House lately about what was acceptable, what must be changed— tough talk about the abortion language, about the nature of funding, about public option.

It was all posturing. It was negotiation… a vain attempt to shape the conference environment a little and a way for liberal representatives to show their constituents that they were fighting. But none of the talked about improvements were ever going to happen unless Lieberman had some Ebeneezer Scrooge epiphany or something.

The House never held any cards. Every conservadem in the senate had effective veto power over every line of the conference bill so the House's real choice was always whatever bill Senate conservadems signed off on or no bill at all.

There was only one unavoidable hurdle, and that was labor. The “Cadillac-plan” tax had to go. So a deal was worked out with labor and Joe Lieberman signed off on it.

That was the last deal we were going to get from the senate conservadems. And restoring that deal is about the only thing I expect to be fixed in a fix or patch, along with some funding measure to replace whatever that deal costs. (To stay deficit neutral.)

If you don’t think the senate bill should become law on its objective merits I get the argument. It is problematic.

But the House passing the senate bill and then tweaking it is not a step backward from where we already were. It is almost exactly the same as what we were going to get back when we had 60 votes.

So anyone who wanted HCR passed 5 days ago should be okay with what will probably go down because it’s the same (sub-optimal) deal we already had.

rolling-over for the right wing that has been ongoing the past few months. The progressive base is FED UP.

If there's not a robust public option or medicare for all, to hell with the insurance cartel MANDATES. :thumbsdown:

The Admin was hesitant to use the reconciliation process because, I think, they believed it would appear unfair somehow to skirt normal Senate rules. But now that the WH hesitancy appears to have vanished, out of necessity if not panic, all that would be needed for budgetary changes are 51 votes. So as long as we have the 51 votes why not add things back into it that the public finds acceptable like a public option? So screw Lieberman, Baucus, Nelson, et als. Sure we would need them on other votes but right now the Democratic Party is on life support and if HCR doesn't pass it is curtains for them all anyway.

The fix or "patch" will be very modest and stuff that is no-doubt-about-it reconciliation material. May even be in an omnibus budget deal rather than something tackled individually.

The WH doesn't care about what House progressives want but the WH has to restore the deal they reached with labor. If it were not for that deal I think the WH would not be allowing talk of any fix at all.

(When labor said they wouldn't work for candidates in 2010 if the cadillac-tax went through that was a nuclear option... labor must be appeased.)

"but the WH has to restore the deal they reached with labor."

That stinkin', back room deal the WH struck with labor is one of the reasons the public opposes HCR.

You can't seriously think the American people are going to warm to HCR with these sorts of deals in it do you?

Predictions are not endorsements.

For political reasons the WH has to restore that deal.

I make no claim that it will make Americans happy.

It just frustrates me to think that one of WH's priorities would be to get that horrendous labor-excise tax deal back into the bill. That tax needs to be stripped out period. Go bend the "cost curve" somewhere else. People don't want HCR full of mechanisms to drive down the quality of their care.

the Obama Administration their Progressive Base. On that, you can BANK on. :grr: