"It's not about the votes, people. It's about leadership," says John Aravosis about the mess in D.C. on health care (and much else)

Change we can believe in -- right!

"It's not about the votes, people. It's about leadership. . . . When you have a President who is constitutionally, or intellectually, unable to stand for anything, and a congressional leadership that, rather than disciplining its own members and forging ahead with its own agenda, cedes legislative authority to a president who refuses to lead, you have a recipe for exactly what happened last night. Weakness, chaos, and failure."

-- John Aravosis, in an AmericaBlog post yesterday, "The GOP had at most 55 Senators during Bush's presidency"

by Ken

The mess that the health care reform has deteriorated into has left a lot of us in the position we least wanted to be in: trying to figure out whether the bad in the bill taking shape is really outweighed by the good. In other words, despite all the urgent reasons we got into this fight, is the kind of "reform" likely to be adopted worse than doing nothing?

I hear arguments both ways, now including Howard Dean's description of the gutting of the public option and Medicare buy-in from the Senate bill as "essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate," with the recommendation that the whole farrago be dropped and replaced with a simpler new bill designed for adoption via reconciliation. None of this leaves me feeling entitled to a shred of optimism -- and regular readers will know that I've entertained precious little optimism throughout the whole bill-forging process.

Assuming I can pick myself up off the mat, I'll talk about some of that later. Meanwhile, for the benefit of those who haven't seen it, under the heading of "How We Got into This Mess" I want to pass along a piece by our colleague John Aravosis of AmericaBlog which has deservedly gotten a lot of attention.

I've got some answers for John's argument, mostly having to do with Democrats still not being exactly the same as Republicans, thank goodness, but in the face of what has passed for "leadership" this year among Democrats on Capitol Hill and in the White House -- a veritable high-stakes game of "Go Fish"? -- I think most of John's finger-pointing aims at richly deserving targets.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

The GOP had at most 55 Senators during Bush's presidency

by John Aravosis (DC) on 12/15/2009 11:17:00 AM

I've heard people say that it's not fair to criticize the Democrats for botching health care reform because the Democrats never truly had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Sure, they have 60 votes in principle, the argument goes, but with Lieberman, Nelson, Landrieu, and Bayh counted as four of those votes, it's not really a solid 60.

Perhaps. But then how was George Bush so effective in passing legislation during his presidency when he never had more than 55 Republicans in the Senate? In fact, during Bush's most effective years, from 2001 to 2005, the GOP had a grand total of 50, and then 51, Senators. The slimmest margin possible.

And look at what George Bush was able to accomplish in the Congress with fewer Senators than the Democrats have today:

- John Ashcroft nomination
- Iraq war resolution
- Repeated Iraq funding resolutions
- 2001 & 2003 tax cuts
- Patriot Act
- Alito
- John Roberts
- Medicare Part D

I'm sure some people will argue that Bush had September 11, and used it to pass lots of laws. Yes. But September 11 had nothing to do with the Ashcroft nomination, the 2001 tax cuts, with the Alito and Roberts nominations, nor with Medicare Part D. And in each case, Democrats rolled over and gave the Republicans the votes they needed to ensure there would be no effective filibuster. (And let's not forget, Obama had the economic meltdown and the recent memory of the failed Bush presidency to use as his rallying cry to smother opposition, and he didn't.)

So what's the difference? Why with 60 votes are Democrats so ineffective, but with 50 votes Republicans excel?

What the GOP lacked in numbers, they made up for in backbone, cunning and leadership. Say what you will about George Bush, he wasn't afraid of a fight. If anything, the Bush administration, and the Republicans in Congress, seemed to relish taking on Democrats, and seeing just how far they could get Democratic members of Congress to cave on their promises and their principles. Hell, even Senator Barack Obama, who once famously promised to lead a filibuster against the FISA domestic eavesdropping bill, suddenly changed his mind and actually voted for the legislation. Such is the power of a president and a congressional leadership with balls and smarts.

How did they do it? Bush was willing to use his bully pulpit to create an environment in which the opposition party feared taking him on, feared challenging his agenda, lest they be seen as unpatriotic and extreme. By going public, early and often, with his beliefs, Bush was able to fracture the Democratic opposition (and any potential dissent in his own party) and forestall any effort to mount a filibuster against the most important items in his agenda.

It's not about the votes, people. It's about leadership. The current occupant of the White House doesn't like to fight, and the leadership in Congress has never been as good at their jobs, at marshaling their own party, as the Republicans were when they were in the majority. The President is supposed to rally the country, effectively putting pressure on opposition members of Congress to sit down and shut up. And the congressional leadership is supposed to rally its members to hold the line, and get the 51 votes necessary for passing legislation in a climate where the minority is too afraid to use the filibuster. When you have a President who is constitutionally, or intellectually, unable to stand for anything, and a congressional leadership that, rather than disciplining its own members and forging ahead with its own agenda, cedes legislative authority to a president who refuses to lead, you have a recipe for exactly what happened last night. Weakness, chaos, and failure.

We lost real health care reform not because we don't have a "real" filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. We lost health care reform because we don't have a real leader anywhere in our party. It's not going to get better if we elect more Democrats to the Senate and it's not going to play out any differently should we try to revisit this issue in the future.

And one final point. What do you think is going to happen if, during the House-Senate conference, a combined bill is returned to the Senate that even vaguely improves upon the garbage they're currently debating? Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu and Evan Bayh will threaten the same filibuster. We're not getting anything better than the crap they just came up with last night. It's over. The next three years are going to be about mediocrity, broken promises, and striving for second best. That's not the America I grew up in. And it's not what I voted for, or was promised.

Note: The link in the second paragraph, which seems to link back to this very piece, in fact links back to a piece of John's from the day before, prompted by the latest round of late-night health care "compromises": "This isn't what we were promised." That piece, also very much worth reading, includes this:

It's an effective tactic to play on liberal guilt, arguing "don't you want to save all those poor people who are going to die?" But the fact remains that we the people handed this President and this Congress control of the White House, the US House of Representatives, and filibuster-proof control of the US Senate. We handed them a GOP that was in tatters, and a populace that desperately wanted change. And they blew it. They gave us weakness and cowardice and fear in return. The President went back on his promises from almost day one, and then stayed out of the entire debate until - well - he's still not really involved in the debate, other than to occasionally have his staff secretly try undercut his own campaign promises.

It's not a success when you could have had an A, and instead get a D+, strive for a D+, and then have the nerve to say "look mom!" It's really getting tiresome hearing Democrats suggest that because their bill does more than George Bush would have done, but otherwise they've gutted their most important campaign promises, we should suck it up and be happy. I voted for change, not pennies.

You had the best chance in decades to make a difference in all of our lives, and you chose to blow it. You don't deserve our praise. Or our votes.

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