Rocky's "Brave, Painful Stand on the Public Option"

A Brave, Painful Stand on the Public Option


A famous political science article describes the legislative battle over a 1956 House bill, HR7535. The bill would have provided federal aid to the states to build schools. Democrats sponsored the bill, which was popular ten years into the baby boom. For familiar pre-election reasons, Republicans wanted HR7535 to die. They got lucky when Harlem Congressman Adam Clayton Powell dropped a hand grenade into the process by proposing an amendment mandating that grants could only be used by states with schools "open to all children without regard to race in conformity with the requirements of the United States Supreme Court decisions."

Urban liberals could hardly oppose this amendment. Yet its inclusion would doom the final bill by driving away critical southern Democratic votes. Democratic leaders understood this perfectly well.

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Republican leadership happily supported the Powell Amendment. African-American politicians and many liberals voted with them. The amendment passed, with precisely the anticipated result.

Only (one) African-American Congressman, veteran Chicago Representative William Dawson, voted against the Powell Amendment. One interpretation is that Dawson, "the dean of the black delegation," had unique personal standing to make, and explain, this tough vote to pass an important bill.

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Now here we are at the 11th hour. Democratic leaders in both houses are assembling a gigantic jigsaw puzzle to make things work. Holding together 50 Senate votes and securing crucial House blue dogs and progressives will be a real challenge. If the day is to be won, a succession of daunting political and legislative obstacles must be quickly overcome.

The public option is a complex venture in every political and substantive way. (Ironically, its ideologically moderate versions are more complicated and organizationally radical than a straightforward Medicare buy-in, which I believe is best). I just don't see this happening in a quick reconciliation bill. When I read between the lines at the Democrats' game-plan for this Thursday's summit, I don’t think Democratic leaders see this, either. I don't see groundwork being laid down to present the public option in a way likely to command the necessary public or insider support.

Senator Rockefeller, perhaps the leading public option supporter in the United States Senate, stepped up to the plate and said what needed to be said. It's time to lock the President's plan down, and not to put health reform at risk by trying to pass the public option at this moment in this way.

I'm not sure who was right in that 1956 debate. I can't criticize Adam Clayton Powell's amendment, even if it killed that school construction bill. Whatever liberals of that time were thinking, blocking or delaying federal education money seems a small price to pay in return for pushing, every day in every way, the civil rights cause.

Many of my friends believe the same about the public option. I strongly support the public option myself. We should return to it next year. I just think that comprehensive health reform is too important, its fate too precarious, to put everything at risk by trying to insert the public option into this moment's crucial reconciliation bill. Much of the Obama presidency hangs in the balance. So does health insurance coverage for more than 30 million people. Someone with impeccable progressive health credentials needed to step up and say that. We can't have any hand grenades explode right now. We are so close to a historic final bill.

http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-treatment/brave-painful-stand-the-public-option