Chats With Jerrold Nadler And Nancy Pelosi... And Then There's The Parliament Act of 1911

Everyone's the 41st vote now, but where's Blanche & Ben... just in case?

I jumped onto a conference call with Nancy Pelosi today, but I was late, and I hope I didn't miss any ground rules about it being off the record. She was so upbeat about passing healthcare reform, predicting all this great stuff, I think I believed it. "If the gate is closed, we will go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we will pole-vault in. If that doesn’t work, we will parachute in. But we are going to get healthcare reform passed for the American people for their own personal health and economic security and for the important role that it will play in reducing the deficit." I wonder if that Churchillian stuff scares Republicans these days. How about senators?

Oh yes, them. Everything Nancy said was so right on, except that there is, alas, still a Senate. The other night Jerrold Nadler was waxing quite eloquent when he talked about the U.K.'s Parliament Act of 1911. Though the U.S. isn't quite there yet, it's still something to work toward. The Act that brought such a lively twinkle to Nadler's eyes "asserted the supremacy of the House of Commons by limiting the legislation-blocking powers of the House of Lords (the suspensory veto). Provided the provisions of the Act are met, legislation can be passed without the approval of the House of Lords."

The 1911 Act was a reaction to the clash between the Liberal government and the House of Lords, culminating in the so-called "People's Budget" of 1909. In this Budget, the Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George proposed the introduction of a land tax based on the ideas of the American tax reformer Henry George. This new tax would have had a major effect on large landowners, and was opposed by the Conservative opposition, many of whom were large landowners themselves. The Conservatives believed that money should be raised through the introduction of tariffs on imports, which they claimed would help British industry. Contrary to British constitutional convention, the Conservatives used their large majority in the Lords to vote down the Budget, but for the Liberals built on the widespread unpopularity of the Lords to make reducing the power of the Lords an important issue of the January 1910 general election.

The Liberals returned in a hung parliament after the election: their call for action against the Lords had energised believers in hereditary principle to vote for the Conservatives, but had failed to generate much interest with the rest of the voting public. The Liberals formed a minority government with the support of the Labour and Irish nationalist MPs. The Lords subsequently accepted the Budget when the land tax proposal was dropped. However, as a result of the dispute over the Budget, the new government introduced resolutions (that would later form the Parliament Bill) to limit the power of the Lords. The Prime Minister, Herbert Henry Asquith, asked Edward VII to create sufficient new Liberal peers to pass the Bill if the Lords rejected it. The King refused, so Asquith went back to the polls to obtain an explicit mandate for the constitutional change.

The Lords voted this 1910 Bill down, so Asquith called a second general election in December 1910, and again formed a minority government. Edward VII had died in May 1910, but George V agreed that, if necessary, he would create hundreds of new Liberal peers to neutralise the Conservative majority in the Lords. The Conservative Lords then backed down, and on 10 August 1911, the House of Lords passed the Parliament Act by a narrow 131–114 vote, with the support of some two dozen Conservative peers and eleven of thirteen Lords Spiritual (who normally do not vote).

Sorry about that little tangent, but blame it on Nadler-- and my own hope that we catch up to the English soon on that one. I mean, starting in 1911 their House of Lords lost the ability to stymie progress by vetoing everything that challenged the status quo, the way our own House of Lords does. And the legislation Nancy promised us on the call for next week-- what was it again... um... ah, yes-- to "repeal the waiver for anti-trust for the health insurance industry."

It’s a special anti-trust exemption, enjoyed by only one other industry-- Major League Baseball-- and it’s given to America’s health insurance and medical malpractice insurance companies. Health insurers will no longer be shielded from liability for price fixing, dividing up territories among themselves, sabotaging their competitors and the marketplace, in order to gain monopoly power-- all of which reduce competition, limit consumers’ choices, lower the quality of coverage and increase premiums and out-of-pocket costs for consumers. It’s very important legislation. Next week the House of Representatives will pass legislation which will enable the federal government, finally, to be able to investigate any evidence of possible collusion. So, this has been 65 years-- they’ve had this exemption and the result has not been good for the American consumer. So, in any event, we’re pleased with that prospect for next week as we continue to work on comprehensive healthcare-- health insurance reform.

Doesn't that sound great? Hurray for Nancy! Hurray for the House of Representatives! Hurray for the Democrats! But what about Ben "Over My Dead Body" Nelson and Lieberman and, oh yeah, 41 Republicans? Cue up "Another One Bites The Dust." And we're left pissed off and angry once again. (Send Democrats A Message They Can Understand.)

You might recall that last Thursday we were talking about Chellie Pingree (D-ME) and Jared Polis (D-CO) putting together a letter to Harry Reid over at Lords and asking him to use reconciliation to pass healthcare reform and, since no Republicans were going to vote for it anyway, put a public option in it. I think they had 28 signers at the time. It's become pretty popular, and before I went to sleep last night, that had gone up to 107 signers. (Now up to 118 and including anti-healthcare voters Tom Perriello and John Adler!) Soon it will be easier to say who won't sign than who did!

After Marcy Winograd, the progressive running against reactionary Blue Dog Jane Harman (CA), came out with a strong and stirring statement in favor, Harman was panicked into signing on. Four other (less reactionary) Blue Dogs-- Leonard Boswell (IA), Mike Michaud (ME), Patrick Murphy (PA) and Scott Murphy (NY), who actually voted against the bill first time around-- have also signed the letter. And so has almost every progressive in the House. Almost. Exciting, right? And then there's the still unreformed American House of Lords. Sorry to be such a skunk at the party. At least we'll know which House members aren't our friends.