As nothstine aptly noted this morning, there's some national blogger blowback hitting Senator Ron Wyden in the face today: Atrios has named him the Wanker of the Day, and Digby goes into somewhat more detail that concludes the same thing--the continued obsession of Wyden for bipartisan results on health care reform is bizarre, pointless, and decidedly NOT conducive to getting effective reform passed.
The original source of their ire is a piece published last night by Huffington Post's Sam Stein, showing that indeed, Wyden continues to operate under the assumption that inter-party comity is the prime directive. That may have been relatively stomach-able when it was Gordon Smith and Mt. Hood Wilderness, but it's just damned foolish on health care. Some relevant bits from Stein:
In an interview this week with the Huffington Post, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) maintained that there was still "great interest in the Finance Committee for a bipartisan bill on both sides of the aisle" and he urged lawmakers to continue to pursue a collaborative path. He would not comment directly on news that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had urged the Committee's Chairman, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) to drop efforts to attract Republican support. But he also didn't hide his own preferences.
"I'm committed to the priority that the president laid out," said Wyden. "I think the president got it right. He said 'I want to get it done this year' and he also indicated that his first choice is to have a bipartisan bill because he recognizes that a bipartisan bill allows the country to come together."
Asked whether he would support cloture on health care legislation that he would ultimately oppose -- so as to preempt a Republican filibuster -- Wyden was noncommittal.
Funny thing, how the President's directive on bipartisanship is to be heeded no matter what--but his directive on including a public option to be ignored, much like his opinion that Wyden's bill is 'too radical' to be considered among reform options. Does anyone else find it extremely weird for an otherwise intelligent Senator to brush off contending with serious policy choices, but is ready to go to the mattresses over process--and a fully meaningless process at that?
What really chaps me, however, is the last line of that excerpt: asked whether he would support cloture, Wyden could not commit. Every Democrat in Congress, House or Senate, from ultralib Keith Ellison to newjack freak Arlen Specter, should be compelled to have a kneejerk answer ready every time this question comes up: Of COURSE I'll support cloture, even if I might vote against the bill. Failure on this point is to allow that maybe the absurd manipulations of a rump regional party have some merit, and should possibly be supported.
I have to say, while I've showed repeated and strong disappointment with Senator Wyden on this issue, I've defended his integrity and committment to doing his job in the best way he knows. As much as I think he's dead wrong and showing a seriously poor grasp of what Democrats were elected to do the last two cycles, if he thinks Broderism reigns supreme all I can do is bitch. But there is no logical justifiation--NONE--for hemming and hawing over whether you'd vote for cloture so that the concept of majority rule can actually start getting applied like it used to be. Under what circumstances could he possibly see for voting to prolong debate on a Democratic health care bill?
Reid, whose leadership is considered crucial if President Barack Obama is to deliver on his promise of enacting health care reform this year, offered the directive to Baucus through an intermediary after consulting with Senate Democratic leaders during Tuesday morning’s regularly scheduled leadership meeting. Baucus was meeting with Finance ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) Tuesday afternoon to relay the information.
According to Democratic sources, Reid told Baucus that taxing health benefits and failing to include a strong government-run insurance option of some sort in his bill would cost 10 to 15 Democratic votes; Reid told Baucus it wasn’t worth securing the support of Grassley and at best a few additional Republicans.
As I said, if you're among the 3/4ths of Americans who would like a full and robust public healthcare option (FRPO), this is potentially very good news--a bloc of Senators has apparently made it clear to Reid that they will not support any bill that fails to provide a FRPO.
But what does this have to do with Oregon, specifically? Look at the particular positions Reid is redlining in his "advice" to Baucus: a "strong government-run insurance option"" and "taxing health benefits." Who can think of an existing health care proposal that lacks a FRPO and taxes health care benefits?
If you said "Ron Wyden's Health Americans Act," you've been paying attention. Despite protestations that his bill allows for states to create their own, much smaller public exchanges, and that only people with "Cadillac benefits" will see their benefits taxed, what you still end up with is a non-FRPO plan with a benefit-tax funding structure (among other things that I DO in fact like, such as capital gains and estate tax reform--but those things should be happening anyway).
I've said all along that a plan failing to include what Americans most want (FRPO) and including what they do NOT want (a tax on benefits), is not going to make much political headway. And now Reid has validated that analysis, declaring 10-15 immediate defectors on those grounds alone. Couple that with the evisceration that the President did on the central feature of HAA--shifting the insurance process from employers to individuals--and Wyden's plan starts to look an awful lot like the Black Knight in Monty Python's Holy Grail:
{more, including fresh comments from Wyden in today's WWeek, below}
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