Can Donna Edwards Save Health Care Reform? What About Afghanistan?

Donna Edwards (D-MD) has been one of the most outstanding organizers within congressional progressive circles in favor of holding leadership's feet to the fire when it comes to making sure health care reform is genuine and not just a sop to a confused electorate and a giveaway to the wealthy corporations who have financed the confusion. Recently I spoke to another member, a very senior member, of Congress who was getting a little weak-kneed about holding out for substance over form. He told me that when he was a freshman he was as idealistic and driven as Donna. "She's as pure as the first snow of winter," he told me... wistfully.

It probably isn't going to be easy for progressives after the House passes a strong bill with meaningful reform, including a public option, and then the House of Lords obliterates it at the behest of the special interests that run the show over there. Seven powerful senators have been tasked with killing meaningful health care and each has been paid a tremendous amount of money by the Medical-Industrial Complex and the Insurance Industry. These 7 senators will fight like vicious pit bulls to prevent meaningful health care reform from passing; together these 7 took in over $20,000,000 in thinly veiled bribes from the powers behind the status quo that will stop at nothing to squelch the kind of real reform Obama has been working to pass:

Max Baucus (D-MT) $4,087,094
Mitch McConnell (R-KY) $3,713,625
Joe Lieberman (I-CT) $3,428,771
Chuck Grassley (R-IA) $3,025,103
Richard Burr (R-NC) $2,886,140
Ben Nelson (D-NE) $2,306,065
Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) $2,154,492

(The three whose names are bolded happen to be up for re-election next year; just sayin'.)

So what's all this got to do with Donna Edwards, a forceful, intellectually powerful but very junior member of the House of Representatives? Good question; glad you asked. Most experts think that the Baucus Caucus (see above) will be able to kill any semblance of real reform in the Senate and report out something akin to the shameful Insurance lobbyist bill that Baucus' Finance Committee vomited out last week. It's likely that Pelosi will appoint compromisers to the House-Senate conference committee charged with bridging the gap between real health care and Baucus' corporate welfare for the Insurance Industry bill. Harry Reid will not appoint compromisers; he will appoint the worst of the insurance industry shills to the conference committee-- forgot to mention that Reid's role in all this has earned him a handsome $2,232,911 from his pals at the Medical-Industrial Complex and the Insurance Industry-- and most observers expect an especially bad bill that has no relation to what was passed in the three House committees or the Senate Health Committee (all 4 of which include a public option). At that point Democrats will have to make a decision-- to join the obstructionist Republicans, who just want to kill any kind of reform at all and vote against their own president's #1 domestic priority and a bill that achieves a few goals towards reform and will actually save the lives of thousands of poor working people by offering them some kind of subsidized, stingy coverage, or to say a half loaf (a quarter loaf?) is better than nothing and bite the bullet and vote for the crappy bill.

Donna has been one of the most vocal opponents of accepting Baucus' anti-family, pro-corporate approach, and she is working inside the Progressive Caucus, along with Raul Grijalva and several other stalwarts, to keep progressives who have vowed to oppose any bill without a public option together. Friday the Washington Post sat down with Donna in her office to talk about the battle over health care reform. The Post found that "the public option remains a line in the sand for Edwards, and she thinks the thud with which the much-anticipated bill by Sen. Max Baucus's committee fell this week helps the chances of including the option in a final bill." When asked what she thought about Baucus' horrible bill she was very direct:

Middle class and poor people are bearing the burden and the brunt of this failed health-care system, and in my view, the bill that Senator Baucus is introducing really cuts at the core of the very people we're trying to help. ... This idea of cooperatives as an alternative, I think most experts have completely debunked those as any kind of alternative to a robust public plan, and I agree with that. ... [The bill] has no Republican support, and it's bad policy. ... We have three bills in the House that are far stronger than the Baucus proposal. I think we're on solid ground here. ... Our job in the House of Representatives is to get our work done. We can't worry about what the Senate is doing. Our job for the people is to get the strongest bill possible out of the House. That's how we create legislation. ... One of the things about the president's speech last week [to Congress] ... and the town hall meeting speeches that he's held since then is the president has been very clear: "If you all have better options out there to alternatives to meet the goals of lowering costs and increasing competition and providing accountability for the insurance companies, I'm happy to hear them." The thing is, nobody has put any of those ideas on the table, and the idea that we have on the table that will meet those goals is the public option.

...I've joined with 60-some of my colleagues who signed a letter to the president and to our leadership saying very clearly that if there's not a public option in the final bill then I won't support that bill. I haven't changed my position.

How many will stick with Donna and follow through on that pledge? The last time there was this kind of a showdown in Congress, 90 Democrats had said they would vote against any supplemental war funding that didn't include a clear timetable for troop withdrawals from Afghanistan. Donna was one of the 90. So when the first vote came up 52 Democrats voted no. The margin of victory-- with Republicans not in obstructionist mode for a change-- for the White House was so huge that Rahm Emanuel saw it as an opportunity to attach another crapistic piece of legislation-- an IMF bailout-- and get that passed. But when the Republicans said "no way" and said they would vote against the supplemental if it included the bailout, the White House could no longer afford to lose 52 Democrats without losing the whole bill. They could only lose 39. In the end 32 Democrats voted "no," Donna among them. The rest had their arms twisted or were bribed into submission in the same way that Emanuel engineered passing NAFTA for Bill Clinton (and Republican special interests). Those who voted yes the first time and then peeled off under pressure were:

Yvette Clarke (NY)- $5,823
Steve Cohen (TN)
Jim Cooper (TN)
Jerry Costello (IL)
Barney Frank (MA)- $12,984
Luiz Gutierrez (IL)- $4,674
Jay Inslee (WA)
Steve Kagen (WI)
Ed Markey (MA)
Doris Matsui (CA)
Jim McDermott (WA)- $7,456
George Miller (CA)
Grace Flores Napolitano (CA)- $3,865
Richard Neal (MA)
James Oberstar (MN)
Jan Schakowsky (IL)
Mike Thompson (CA)
Edolphus Towns (NY)- $3,281
Nydia Velazquez (NY)- $3,848
Anthony Weiner (NY)- $10,784

The members bolded are also on the Standing For the Public Option list and the dollar figures represent how much they've taken in from donors who took their pledges seriously on health care reform. For whatever reasons, these people failed to honor their pledges when it came to the war in Afghanistan. (How can a nut like Ron Paul sound so much more sensible than so many Democrats?) I'm guessing they will blow any semblance of credibility if they do it again over health care reform.

The members, like Donna Edwards, who took the Afghanistan pledge and then stuck by it are on a brand new ActBlue fund-raising page being officially unveiled next week, No Means No!, which I invite you to get a first look at today. Several of these people are in tough districts and this was a vote that could cost them dearly. Alan Grayson, Eric Massa and Carol Shea-Porter are big time targets in Republican-leaning districts. And Donna? We hear she was promised a primary opponent if she didn't go along. She may actually wind up with two, Prince George’s State’s Attorney Glenn Ivey and Delegate Herman Taylor. It's the end of the quarter and I've been inundated with requests for contributions from Democrats. Last night I donated to Donna Edwards, Alan Grayson, Eric Massa and Carol Shea-Porter, not so much because of what they are promising to do, but because they already kept a promise they made. You want to join me? We'll be talking a lot about Afghanistan in the coming weeks.