Will Obama Sell Us Out To His Big Campaign Donors? Anyone Have Rahm Emanuel's Phone Number?

My contacts on Capitol Hill won't point the finger at who's screwing up the health care/insurance reform bill. They want to put all the blame on the Republicans, of course, but with a filibuster-proof, 60-member Democratic majority in the Senate, that's pretty tough. Then there's the meme that Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln-- perhaps Lieberman, Landrieu and Baucus to boot-- who will join the Republican filibuster and kill the reform bill and not even let it get to the floor for an up or down vote. In recent days Lieberman and Landrieu have inched away from that threat and its a misread of Baucus to think he'd do any such thing. Nelson's highly untrustworthy-- and an ex-insurance industry exec on top of that, who probably sees his post-electoral future tied to that industry-- and Lincoln has already voted against a public option twice in the Finance Committee and needs to do something dramatic to turn around her dismal re-elect numbers. (Odd that she seems to think that voting against the interests and expressed preference of Arkansas voters will get her re-elected.) The way to handle her, though, would be a threat to the just-attained career dream, the unexpected chairmanship of the Senate Agriculture Committee, a fount of unending bribes and goodies. For Blanche Lincoln-- who was already the #1 recipient of legalistic bribes from AgriBusiness for the current electoral cycle, even before the chairmanship fell into her lap-- either Emanuel or Reid could easily have a private word with her about keeping that chair... or losing it.


Late last night two of the best connected reporters I know on Capitol Hill, Sam Stein and Ryan Grim, reported at the Huffington Post that the Obama White House is not pushing for a public option but for the deadly Snowe Trigger that the Insurance Industry is insisting on. If it's true... well, then we know. We only thought we were voting for Hope, Change and Audacity. We really did wind up with Rahm Emanuel instead. Stein and Grim:

President Barack Obama is actively discouraging Senate Democrats in their effort to include a public insurance option with a state opt-out clause as part of health care reform. In its place, say multiple Democratic sources, Obama has indicated a preference for an alternative policy, favored by the insurance industry, which would see a public plan "triggered" into effect in the future by a failure of the industry to meet certain benchmarks.

The administration retreat runs counter to the letter and the spirit of Obama's presidential campaign. The man who ran on the "Audacity of Hope" has now taken a more conservative stand than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), leaving progressives with a mix of confusion and outrage. Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill have battled conservatives in their own party in an effort to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. Now tantalizingly close, they are calling for Obama to step up.

"The leadership understands that pushing for a public option is a somewhat risky strategy, but we may be within striking distance. A signal from the president could be enough to put us over the top," said one Senate Democratic leadership aide. Such pleading is exceedingly rare on Capitol Hill and comes only after Senate leaders exhausted every effort to encourage Obama to engage.

"Everybody knows we're close enough that these guys could be rolled. They just don't want to do it because it makes the politics harder," said a senior Democratic source, saying that Obama is worried about the political fate of Blue Dogs and conservative Senate Democrats if the bill isn't seen as bipartisan. "These last couple folks, they could get them if Obama leaned on them."

But with fundamental reform of the health care system in plain sight for the first time in half a century, the president appears to be siding with those who see the Senate and its entrenched culture as too resistant to change. Administration officials say that Obama's preference for the trigger, which is backed by Maine Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe, is founded in a fear that Reid's public option couldn't get the 60 votes needed to overcome a GOP filibuster. More specifically, aides fear that a handful of conservative Democrats will not support a bill unless it has at least one Republican member's support.

The president's retreat leaves Reid as the champion of progressive reform-- an irony that is not lost on those who have long derided the Majority Leader as too cautious.

"Who knew that when it came down to crunch time, Harry Reid would be the one who stepped up to the plate and Barack Obama would shy away from the fight," emailed one progressive strategist.

Odd, this professed worry about the Blue Dogs when all the polling of Blue Dog districts-- all 52 districts were polled by Anzalone Liszt Research-- shows that not only is the public option preferred but that the worst possible position for an incumbent to be in would be to be seen as opposing the public option while taking campaign contributions from the Medical-Industrial Complex and Big Insurance.

Many of us fighting against retroactive immunity for the Big Telecoms last year remember how Obama publicly guaranteed that he was onboard-- and then shocked progressives by abandoning the fight when it was time to vote in the Senate. It was another in a series of betrayals that showed us what we were unwilling to see. It was a huge part of the decision by Blue America to not solicit campaign donations for Obama, not that he needed them though. At $42,302,442 he's taken in more "donations" from Wall Street than any other member of Congress in history (and far more than either McCain, who was already taking bribes from Wall Street when Obama was transitioning from student to professor, or than Hillary, who, respectively got $33,348,058 and $29,805,416). And Obama did more than twice as well as any other member of Congress when it came to extracting contributions from the generous folks in the Medical-Industrial Complex. Senator Obama took in $20,116,428, while #2, Senator Hillary Clinton, wound up with $9,178,242 and #3, Senator McCain a paltry $8,722,266. If you don't think Emanuel is working frantically to keep those contributions headed Obama's way in the run-up to the 2012 election, you've probably never read DWT before.

It is not philosophical, one White House aide explained, but is a matter of political practicality. If the votes were there to pass a robust public option through the Senate, the president would be leading the charge, the aide said. But after six months of concern that it would be filibustered, the bet among Obama's aides is that Reid is now simply being too optimistic in his whip count. The trigger proposal, said Democratic aides, has long been associated with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

"He's been so convinced by his political people from the beginning that we can't get a bill with a public option, he's internalized it. Even though it's now become obvious we can get a bill without selling out the public option, he's still on that path," said a top Democratic source. The White House, he said, continues to assure progressives it'll improve the bill in conference negotiations between the Senate and House, but advocates are unconvinced.

"If we're this close in the Senate and they're not helping us, I have a feeling they could screw us in the conference," said one.

Advocates of a public option largely consider a "trigger" the equivalent of no public option at all. A trigger would implement a public option only if insurance companies failed to meet certain benchmarks over time and it would only be implemented in the regions of the country where those benchmarks weren't met. The Medicare prescription drug proposal passed in 2003 includes a "trigger," but the public provision has never been activated despite soaring drug costs. The industry can help craft the trigger language and can game its stats to prevent it from becoming reality.

"The current state of our health system should be trigger enough for anyone who's paying attention," said a congressional aide in the middle of the health care battle. "The American people pulled the 'trigger' in November."

The intellectual father of the public option, Yale Professor Jacob Hacker, told HuffPost that the trigger proposal is a betrayal.

"The trigger is an inside-the-beltway sleight of hand that would protect private insurers from the real competition that a strong public health insurance option would create," he said in an e-mail. "It is unworkable in the current Senate bills, unwise as public policy, and unwanted by the substantial majority of Americans who say they want a straight-up public option."

I guess Emanuel is figuring liberals will just suck it up because the alternative is... well, after unrelenting pressure from Alan Grayson, the Republicans actually have come up with a health care reform plan of their own. Congressional clowns Roy Blunt (R-MO) and Paul Ryan (R-WI) failed miserably but one of their caucus' dimmest bulbs, reactionary Georgia physician Paul Broun has finally come up with the goods. And the goods are exactly what Grayson said it would be: "don't get sick or, if you do, die quickly." Broun is a bumbling backbencher and widely considered an embarrassment, not just to Georgia and his constituents but to the House Republican caucus, where he sits all day mumbling to himself and Lynn Westmoreland about Obama being a Nazi (or a Marxist) and about Muslim-American interns trying to subvert the government. Lunatic fringe perhaps, but he's still the only Republican who has come up with the GOP alternative to the meaningful health care reform most Americans are looking for:

U.S. Rep. Paul Broun introduced his own health care reform bill last week that would, among other things, privatize the Medicare insurance program for seniors.

Broun's bill would replace government benefits with vouchers that could be spent on private insurance or put in tax-free medical savings accounts.

"We've got to fix Medicare," he said. "It's headed in a direction that's unsustainable."

Broun, R-Athens, long has held that entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security are unconstitutional, although he has said he wants to reform rather than eliminate such programs.

The AARP, a group that represents millions of seniors, opposes privatizing Medicare, especially at a time when beneficiaries are facing higher premiums, shrinking savings and rising drug costs and other medical expenses, spokesman William F. Brown III said.

"Vouchers would force current or future beneficiaries into an individual insurance market without any guarantee of coverage or assurance of affordability, which runs counter to the very healthcare improvements for which AARP has been advocating for Americans of all ages," Brown said in an e-mail.

UPDATE: White House Disavows The Rumors-- But Emanuel Is Still Chief Of Staff So...

Dan Pfeiffer, Obama's Deputy Communications Director, sent this out tonight at just before 9pm, EST:

A rumor is making the rounds that the White House and Senator Reid are pursuing different strategies on the public option. Those rumors are absolutely false.

In his September 9th address to Congress, President Obama made clear that he supports the public option because it has the potential to play an essential role in holding insurance companies accountable through choice and competition. That continues to be the President's position.
 
Senator Reid and his leadership team are now working to get the most effective bill possible approved by the Senate. President Obama completely supports their efforts and has full confidence they will succeed and continue the unprecedented progress that is being made in both the House and Senate.

OK, he always said he prefers a public option-- way back when he was running for president in fact-- but a willingness to fight for it, to spend some political capital on it, to tell Reid to explain the facts of life to Blanche Lincoln... where does that come in? And when does he say "triggers" is just a way of making sure there won't be a public option?