Who'll Be Left Standing In The Battle For Meaningful Health Care Reform?

Yesterday I spent about 30-40 minutes on the phone with an awfully nice congressman from the Progressive Caucus-- awfully nice and awfully honest... and, alas, awfully wrong. Allow me to refer to him as Congressman X. He was one of the original signatories of the Progressive Caucus letter to Nancy Pelosi vowing to vote against any bill that includes mandates without a public option.

To offset the increased costs incurred by adopting the provisions advocated by the Blue Dog members of the Committee, the agreement would reduce subsidies to low-and middle-income families, requiring them to pay a larger portion of their income for insurance premiums, and would impose an unfunded mandate on the states to pay for what were to have been Federal costs.

In short, this agreement will result in the public, both as insurance purchasers and as taxpayers, paying ever higher rates to insurance companies.

We simply cannot vote for such a proposal

57 of them signed that-- enough, when combined with the obstructionist Republicans-- who will oppose anything that helps America and makes Obama look successful-- to kill the legislation. Blue America launched a netroots-wide campaign to thank the signatories. We've managed to raise over $415,000 so far.

Congressman X, who holds a safe, stable seat and never wins by less than a 2-1 margin, has reaped around $5,000 from the effort. He's grateful. He also wondered if he really belonged on the list. He signed the letter, sure, but he said he was reluctant to sign it and felt like he got talked into it against his better judgment. Does he think that without single-payer that the public option is the best way to proceed? Absolutely-- and he's willing to fight for it... to a point. But, apparently explicitly, not to the point of killing a bill without a public option. He believes in insuring as many people as possible and going back and fixing the problems once the public recognizes them. Like I said, he has a very safe seat; he can afford that kind of strategy. (And, he and his family, are already covered with a decent health insurance policy.)


Digby didn't have to talk to Congressman X to see the writing on the wall. She's been warning me about it all summer. Yesterday she let the cat out of the bag at Hullabaloo.

I have never been particularly sanguine that congressional Democrats would ultimately vote against Obama on health care if it didn't contain a public option and I'm not even sure how many people in the progressive coalition would want them to. Unless it was a cave of such massive proportions that it was essentially a Republican wet dream (expanding health savings accounts and nothing else, for instance)I figured they would feel they have to vote for a bill that substantially expanded coverage and regulated the excesses of the insurance industry, even if it was less than what they'd wanted. My feeling has been that for progressives, something like a public plan, while important, doesn't ground itself in principle enough to trump a serious move to universality-- and loyalty to a new president of their own party.

Basically, that summarizes what Congressman X told me; it also summarizes pretty much what Alan Grayson, arguably the most thoughtful progressive in Congress, told me when he explained why he hadn't signed the letter to Pelosi and had no intention of taking any pledges or vows he knew he would eventually break. He had had the same pressure from the same respected colleagues that Congressman X had had. He also favors the public option. But universality is the name of the game for Grayson-- saving as many people's lives as possible through health care, even if the means was less than ideal.

In an interview this week with Jane Hamsher, Progressive Caucus co-chair Raúl Grijalva, explained the ongoing pressures and explained why it's worth fighting and fighting and fighting and not giving up. Please read what he had to say it's inspirational:

As I tell people over and over, we're just trying to be consistent with what we started to say a long time ago. When single payer got taken off the table, the last toe hold we had left was the public plan. With that removed, then you're basically replicating what's already there, and that's not going to work.

We're going to get pressure that additional people will be brought on to the rolls for Medicaid. We're going to get pressure that the reforms being instituted on the insurance companies, regulatory issues. We're going to get pressure that the law will include no preexisting conditions denial. And, all that being said though, without an independent, competitive, consumer-driven public plan, fundamentally we're going to end up subsidizing the same companies to pick up more poor people now. We're going to subsidize... Plan D gets left alone, so we never close that donut hole, and so we continue to spend $850 million a year to subsidize the pharmaceuticals to give the benefit that they should give anyway.

I think there's going to be tremendous pressure on all of us individually that a win is a win. I think that enough time has passed that we get the opportunity to evaluate what a win is. I understand the intentions; they're good, but now I think the American people want results.

...We have been good soldiers. We have been good accommodators. We have swallowed things that were bitter. And that's OK, that's part of the process. But, there come some principled issues that if we hang together, I believe we can be very formidable. And this is a test.

The list of 57 names on the Blue America page was based on who signed letters to Nancy Pelosi and Katherine Sebelius and made pledges to FDL. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) said there could be as many as 100 progressives who vote against the legislation if it doesn't include a public option. I hope he's a more savvy analyst than I am on the matter. I don't know how many members will actually be left standing in the end, how many will risk the wrath of Rahm, who may not have any clout when it comes to Republicans or even Blue Dogs but has always reveled in kicking the shit out of progressives.

Congressman X told me that when he was first elected he was "as pure as the first snow of winter." He said Donna Edwards still is. And he said he has no doubt that she'd vote her conscience no matter what kinds of abuse and threats Rahm Emanuel sends her way. (A reactionary Democrat with Emanuel connections has already started a primary against her.) So will Grijalva, Keith Ellison, Maxine Waters, John Conyers, Eric Massa, Yvette Clarke, Lynn Woolsey, Dennis Kucinich, Barbara Lee... I had a long talk with Mike Capuano this week and I got the feeling he's not going to cave. Who else?

Perhaps it would be instructive to look at the list of the 32 Democrats who had the guts to vote against the supplemental war budget on June 16. These members were under immense pressure from Emanuel to back the president. But they backed the American people instead:

Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)
Mike Capuano (D-MA)
John Conyers (D-MI)
Lloyd Doggett (D-TX)
Donna Edwards (D-MD)
Keith Ellison (D-MN)
Sam Farr (D-CA)
Bob Filner (D-CA)
Alan Grayson (D-FL)
Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ)
Mike Honda (D-CA)
Marcy Kaptur (D-OH)
Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)
Barbara Lee (D-CA)
Zoe Lofgren (D-CA)
Eric Massa (D-NY)
Jim McGovern (D-MA)
Mike Michaud (D-ME)
Donald Payne (D-NJ)
Chellie Pingree (D-ME)
Jared Polis (D-CO)
Jose Serrano (D-NY)
Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH)
Brad Sherman (D-CA)
Jackie Speier (D-CA)
Pete Stark (D-CA)
John Tierney (D-MA)
Nikki Tsongas (D-MA)
Maxine Waters (D-CA)
Diane Watson (D-CA)
Peter Welch (D-VT)
Lynn Woolsey (D-CA)