Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden isn't saying how he'll vote when the Finance Committee takes up Chairman Max Baucus's 10-year, $829-billion plan next Tuesday.
"I am not going to characterize where I am (on the bill) in any way," Wyden said Friday as he headed to the airport for a trip back to his state.
"I'm going to be doing everything I can to make sure hardworking Americans aren't forced to buy unaffordable coverage from monopolies," he added, making his discomfort clear.
Narrated by former health insurance executive Wendell Potter, the spot accuses private insurance of trying to "kill health reform" and whacks the committee for not including a public option to keep the industry honest.
"Take it from me," Potter says, "the Senate Finance bill is a dream come true of the health insurance industry. If there is no public option insurance companies aren't going to change. The choice of a public health insurance option is the only way to keep insurance companies honest."
"I want to continue to work with colleagues on both sides of the aisle," he said in remarks before the Finance committee, emphasizing that he did not want to do anything to promote groups trying to halt healthcare reform this year.
"My vote today to advance this bill forward is a judgement that there is enough goodwill in this committee and this Congress to move this bill forward," Wyden told colleagues.
Wyden asserted that Baucus and other Democratic leaders had vowed to work with him to ameliorate concerns about the bill as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) works to meld the Finance proposal with the one in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.
"I am convinced every one of those colleagues is anxious to get real health reform, while we have spirited debates about how to get that done," the Oregon Democrat said.
Always the optimist, the cute little dreamer believing that working with people like Chuck Grassley and Joe Lieberman is an exercise in good faith.
Today, millions of Americans are one step closer to the healthcare reform they need. We disagree with Senator Wyden on some of the principles of healthcare reform, but we stand with him and many of his colleagues today in saying that, while the Senate Finance Committee bill is not perfect, it is important to ensure that the process does not stop. There is still time to make changes, and we hope changes will be made; we hope that all Oregonians will be ensured access to affordable healthcare, that a public option will be available and that employers who support their workers by providing health insurance will be rewarded, not discouraged. As the Senate and House bills move to the floor we are counting on Oregon's delegation to continue to stand with middle class Oregonians and support the real reform we need, reform that, for the first time in a decade, is now within our reach.
I suppose a bit weirdly, I agree with both Potter/MoveOn, and OR-AFLCIO: it's a horrible, bogus, POS gift to the insurance industry, and if it's what largely ends up as the Senate version that crowds out a more robust House plan, we're all doomed and Democratic electeds will start feeling the pain next year. However, while I'm not as sanguine as Wyden is about all the good-feelin's within the caucus and across the aisle for health care, it's true that the SFC bill is simply batter waiting to be made into cake. There WILL be modifications; I'm just scared about what they will be. The truth is that a solid bill was never going to come out of that committee, and in fact Baucus and Co have been a tremendous hindrance all summer. At least this way he's gotten his moment in the sun, and while he'll definitely have a big seat at the table, there will be several other players working with/against Baucus to create something that might actually help American citizens instead of Humana shareholders.
So the vote today was almost entirely meaningless, for perhaps everyone except Snowe. She now has to endure what will surely amount to furious pressure from her own caucus, who has reportedly threatened to keep coveted chair assignments away from her for this vote. Equally furious effort will come from those still obsessing over the mercurial value of "bipartisanship," hoping to keep Snowe in the Yea column when it comes time for a floor vote. Again, what's it worth? Not a lot, but that's where we are. Onward! And screw it, let's just put the MoveOn ad here at the bottom, above the fold:
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}
No, it's not a typo. As the health care debate quickly becomes a core schism between tweaking the current private insurance scheme and establishing a robust public option to compete against it, not only are the President and Oregon's senior Senator currently holding opposite ground on the matter, both are beginning to harden their rhetoric and dig in their heels. What's even more surprising is that Senator Wyden is slowly emerging as the standard bearer of REPUBLICAN opposition to a public option, gathering supporters for (or allowing them to hide behind) his significant but ultimately nontransformational proposal for reform.
Think I'm making that up? Read what The Hill wrote three weeks ago on the subject, in an article I missed at the time but which retroactively adds a lot of weight to the current analysis:
And while Democratic Sens. Edward Kennedy (Mass.) and Max Baucus (Mont.) may chair the committees charged with shepherding the bill through the Senate, Wyden, a 6-foot-4 former college basketball player, has his own advantage: a standing invitation to play hoops with the president at the White House, which may come in handy when hashing out the final details behind the scenes.
For Wyden, the key to passing lasting healthcare reform is finding a legislative solution that can win at least 70 votes in the Senate — and he’s not shy about letting Democrats know that means dropping thoughts of a government-run public plan for the entire nation.
OK, let's back up a moment and establish the fault lines in the discussion, below the fold... {come on down!}
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