Oct 15 2009
I Salute You Senator Snowe
Major Update Below
Alternative Title: Rise of The Petulant Partisans
Senator Olympia Snowe has risen to the challenge of being a political leader for the people in her efforts to remain in the fight over  which health care reform options could become law. Unlike those who went the petulant partisan route and took their marbles home, Snowe’s vote in the Finance Committee kept one lone Republican in the battle, able to ally with Democrat centrists who are the best hope for thwarting government rationed health care from destroying our premier health care system.
First, a very important fact that mutes the hysteria from the right: the bill was going to pass. Democrats have the votes to pass whatever they want. The only thing stopping them from destroying our health care is the fact many democrats don’t support the ‘public option’, where government accountants dole out treatment to those deemed worthy (using our hard earned money no less). So Snowe’s vote did nothing to the outcome. It does give her a huge media stage – which she has been using quite well:
Snowe made it clear after Tuesday’s vote that her position could change.
“So there should be no mistake, my vote today is my vote today. And it in no way forecasts my vote in the future,” she said during Tuesday’s Finance Committee deliberations.
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Snowe said she doesn’t support a public option or a government-run insurance program because it would give government a disproportionate advantage over private insurers.
But Snowe said she would support a government plan that could be imposed if insurance companies did not make their plans more affordable.
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But it probably won’t be the last time she breaks ranks with her own party. Snowe said she has done it before and the reason is simple: She always tries to make sure that her constituents’ needs are being met.
“That’s what motivates me every day. It’s my anchor,” Snowe said. “When I get up in the morning I don’t think about the committee. I think about, am I going to get this right.”
Remember, the American people are fed up with zero-sum games. Petulance is out. Results are being demanded. The GOP got tossed for not producing instead of being petulant (and rude to others). It is easy to sit back and pretend not doing anything in the process washes your hands of the result. But the fact is doing nothing is a crime of omission and dereliction.
Snowe can now give some backbone to those moderate Democrats (and independents in the case of Lieberman) who want to keep the government rationed health care option out of any final bill. These Democrats are under incredible pressure – Snowe gives them cover. More importantly, she will be checked in with regularly by the news media. She can reiterate the serious problems with the public option.
And if need be, she can orchestrate a emotional and riveting change of heart in opposition to any future bill that goes too far – staining the Democrats with the bad bill, instead of staining herself with the image of taking her marbles home because she couldn’t dictate terms.
She holds a lot of political clout right now.
But to succeed as best she can she needs support, not insults from the petulant ones who took their marbles home. In classic far-right screw up fashion, the lone defender of making sure the Democrats don’t destroy our health care is being pilloried for not doing the dumbest thing of all by walking out of the debate pouting. I understand many people cannot abide the nonsense the Finance Committee put out, but it is the least offensive of the bills and the one place Democrats really fractured. What we don’t need to do is undercut the last line of defense.
The bill coming out of the committee was inevitable. Now we have (or had) a champion on the right who is opposed to government rationed health care, but who has also made it crystal clear to the insurance industry they need to make care affordable and accessible (e.g., control costs, remove barriers like pre-existing conditions). She can push a centrist coalition to support measured reform, she can keep the insurance companies honest and she can shore up the centrist democrats against the pressure from the liberals to cave in on the public option.
Snowe lives to fight another day, you cannot say that of the petulant ones. She deserves a salute, not derision.
I don’t like any of this (doubt that? go here and start reading). And Snowe may be willing to accept some things I do not support (like I was going to get my way?). But I can recognize a smart political move verses a dumb one. We need to remember most Americans think health care needs some fixing.
Look at the data in a recent Pew Poll, you will see Americans do not think the system is so broken in needs radical change. Look at these numbers and you see two important stories (click to enlarge)
Pew looks at those who think our health care is “best/above average” and only sees that 39% admire our system while 59% says it is “average/below average”. It is one reasonable conclusion to draw from the data: Americans are not cheering the current system.
But if you look at the number who think it is seriously broke enough to warrant a risky government take over scheme you would have to conclude there is no ground swell there either. Pew doesn’t ask the question (or maybe they don’t want to see the answer), but to insist on a wild take over scheme would pretty much put you in the ‘below average’ category. I don’t think everyone in that category is fighting for government rationed care, but even if they did they only tally 27% – leaving 70% in potential opposition.
Snowe, and the centrist Dems who oppose a government rationed health care option, have the numbers on their side to thwart this insanity. And right now that is priority one in this battle.
Senator Snowe is taking the hard road for the right reasons. If we had more like her in Congress we would get better results. Not more partisan results, but results focused on what is a reasonable consensus space comfortable for most Americans. And that is what democracies are about. That is what petulant partisans keep forgetting. It is not about dictating to others, it is about finding common ground and giving up some goals in order to move to the common ground. The partisans are welcome at the table, but they don’t get tell everyone else what to do or how to do it.
Major Update: As I expected, Snowe’s move stiffened the spine of the centrist Democrats (while the naive and biased news media expected her vote to move the republicans??):
Senate Democrats took their newfound momentum for health reform into closed-door talks with White House aides Wednesday but still faced a months-old problem: centrist Democrats who aren’t sold on Obama-style reform even now.
If Democratic leadership hoped Republican Olympia Snowe’s decision to cross party lines Tuesday would inspire her fellow middle-of-the-roaders, they were mistaken.
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Moderate Democrats did draw plenty of inspiration from Snowe – but instead of using her “yes†vote as a reason to embrace health care reform, fence-sitters hailed the caveats in her public statement Tuesday as a rationale for withholding their own judgment.
No, the only ones ‘mistaken’ are the liberals pushing for government rationed health care. They did not get the message in 1993 and are not getting it now. No one wants Post Office class health care at a higher cost than now, with lesser care than now. Hello!
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Good for Ms. Snowe, she put her stamp on an idea. In the end it will not matter because if the government wants to go to public run health care it is easy to mandate private insurance companies out of business. Gosh, what will America look like when the government owns our health, our banks, scholarship funding to Universities, all energy out put, our housing market through Fannie and Freddie, two thirds of our car industry, but lets not be obstructionists when the Democrats want some other piece of America and Americans for our own good. Please don’t stand up and be counted because we must all work together. But in the end it will not matter because the outstretched hand was not really an outstretched hand ……IT WAS A BIG LIE. But who will tell the truth? Who will call out the Democrats, who will call out the President? FNC, the outfit the President calls his opposition? What a world we live in!
I am not a big Sen. Snowe fan, that said I give her a big kudos this was politicaly brilliant.
One other thought. Republicans got thrown out for the same reason Rush can’t buy the Rams. Lies, lies, and more lies. But the lies was about President Bush, they were effective, virulent, and made by many of the same people in power now and repeated by the same people repeating Rush lies.
It wasn’t just lies, Kathie – Congressional Republicans got caught up in the same big government big spending ways that they had supposedly been against, and they destroyed their own credibility with that. Hastert, for one, was an incompetent disaster. Now, of course, the shoe is on the other foot and the dem’s who railed against deficits and corruption are going to have to explain why things are 4 times as worse (deficit) than they were under the Republicans.
AJ is probably expecting some blowback from taking a stand on Snowe like this, but I also agree that Snowe’s vote was a good political move with little actual significance. In terms of the vote, it just meant that the final committee vote was 14-9 instead of 13-10. Now she retains the leverage she can use to pull back her support if the House tries to stick public option back in. And, of course, the real rub (As Karl Rove wrote this morning) is that all of the revenue assumptions made in this bill are laughably bogus, and as this bill is hashed out that will become increasingly apparent.
It’s the California budget all over again, which you may have noticed this week slipped back into red-zone money losing deficit territory just six weeks (6 weeks!) after the grand legislative fix that was supposed to save it. I think the real significance of this is that the frauds being perpetrated throughout the country are having shorter and shorter half lives, which to me looks like a sign that we’re coming up on some kind of poltiical singularity in the very near future.
As far as this health bill, lots of thinkers and writers around the net are now coming to the conclusion that there are only two options left:
1) it sparks a civil war inside the democrats and negotiations fail dramatically within the next 3 months, or
2) democrats find a way to load it up with enough smoke and mirrors to barely get it passed this fall, and then because of the financial smoke and mirrors the plan itself fails disastrously over the next 18 months, bringing this administration down with it.
I much prefer option 1 since one of the side effects of option 2 almost certainly will be a second great depression, beginning in earnest next summer. Looking at unemployment rates, some would say it has already begun.
OK WWS, Republicans spent too much money. We threw them out because we thought the Dems would spend less? I don’t think so. It was about the WAR, not money. It was about discrediting Bush, and it was about our first Black President, both very compelling.
My Senator was in the room til the end (Grassley) and he says it will take a huge push by the American electorate even bigger than before to hold the Blue Dogs to their words. The lying has become the way of doing business in DC and the payoffs to them to buy their votes will be enormous. They will be threatened with primary oppostion and Fed dollars galore.
This is Pinnochios’ signature issue he has told them if this fails his Presidency fails.
I have very little faith in the lyin dems, any of them. Well will soon find out if the Blue Dogs lied to get elected or are there to represent their constituents, I am not opptomistic.
Snowes vote made little difference as it would have passed anyway as will the ultimate product if Dems align. We will soon know if she can be trusted when given the option to vote for a public option or if she’s a grandstanding sellout!
Kathie, where this was most significant was in the 80 or so congressional districts where Bush and McCain both won majorities but a Democrat congressman was elected. THIS was the margin of victory in terms of the Congress, and these are the famous (or infamous) “blue dogs” elected from mostly southern states.
If you look at their campaigns, the Blue Dogs generally did *not* campaign against the war or the other things you named – they campaigned on fiscal responsibility, an end to corruption, and a promise to respond to their constituents instead of to Washington. Many of them were in favor of the Iraq surge, in fact.
Yeah, I know, you look at this today and it looks like a sick joke. But this is the campaign that won Congress for the Democrats. The failure of the congressional Republicans on a host of topics left the road wide open for them.
It won’t do Republicans any good to win unless they realize just how badly they screwed up the last time.
dhunter,
The point is that all your invective is not supporting either Snowe or the centrists dems to stand tall. If you want to stop this take over you have to support ALL of those who are on your side and stop insulting them.
I am a fan of trust but verify. So I am not promising or expecting them to hold their word. But I will support them as long as their goals and mine coincide. On other issues we will respectfully disagree.
WWS you have a much better grip on politics then I have. Maybe you are right. I just hate the idea of government run health insurance. I hate the idea of fundamentally changing America to look like old Europe. In a funny way the Wars we are fighting may save us. It will be hard to cut the defense budget to finance government programs Obama wants. There is no way this country can afford a $1.6 trillion Health Insurance program with our debt. That’s a good thing.
It is easy to sit back and pretend not doing anything in the process washes your hands of the result. But the fact is doing nothing is a crime of omission and dereliction.
Nicely put, AJ.
I get as rankled as most over the compromises made by our politicians, but politics is the art of compromise, and refusal to accept that (and work with it) only leads to self-immolation; thus handing over victory victory to your opponents.
You seldom EVER achieve final victory in politics; you just have to recognize it as a Forever war where you just have to keep fighting. You may not be able to actually WIN it, but you can certainly lose your part of it by quitting.
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Let me add, Kathie, that *this* is the reason Pelosi will probably turn out to be such a disaster for the Dems – she has her heart set everyday on proving that the Blue Dog’s campaigns were all a massive lie and a fraud on the constituents who voted for them. Their only hope of saving their seats will be to split from her.
Of course, to capitalize on this faultline the Republicans need 80 strong, well financed challengers in these 80 (or so) House districts, and that hasn’t happened yet. That’s the #1 reason that while victory for the Republicans in 2010 is possible, it certainly is not guaranteed.
Circumstances create possibilities. Good planning and strong leadership are what create a positive reality. The republicans have good circumstances, but so far that’s all.
they campaigned on fiscal responsibility, an end to corruption, and a promise to respond to their constituents instead of to Washington
Hey, how’s that working out?
Well expressed and provocative.
I live on the street in a small rural community. That is, my livelyhood depends upon the mom and pop businesses that represent 90 percent of this area’s economic activity.
The general expression of fear over plans to nationalise health care are universal among owners. But most will tell you that their employees believe that there are great positive changes out there, just over the horizon.
Living this close to the abyss, one wishes to expunge the current debate from our national conversation. Senator Snowe’s titular support moves us a step closer to implementing a national fix of healthcare.
That she seems more reasonable to members of the Left than other Republicans is inarguable. Is the upheaval in structure inevitable? My suggestion would be that Senator Snowe’s vote moves us one step closer. Her opposition would have helped to set a firewall.
I don’t believe in magic. Destruction of the private health care insurance sector will not, and cannot, reduce the cost faced by consumers of increased and higher quality health care.
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I am all for health care “reform” but I am not at all for government health care. That is not “reform”.
The simple fact is that this is all a bunch of smoke and mirrors. In order to keep Medicare from going broke then need to find a way to force EVERYONE onto Medicare.
It is a scam of gigantic proportions.
WWS:
Oh come on, do you really think that the GOP was replaced by the likes of Pelosi and Reid because they spent too much money? Please, the American actually liked programs like the drug prescription plan and No Child Left Behind. And when Bush vetoed a farm bill because it was too costly, the Democrats over rode that veto without any bad political repercussions. The truth is, the corruption of people like Cunningham and the extremism of people like Tancredo did a lot more harm to the Republicans in Congress than their spending did.
In fact when the Democrats took control of Congress in 2006, the entire budget deficit was about $ 168 billion…they run more than that in a month now.
I think a lot of Republicans just look at Snowe as a traitor, plain and simple. They see no compromise on this issue.
I do think that Snowe’s home state of Maine has some really serious problems with its state sponsored health care system. Dirigo. It has blown up in their faces and the state is not large enough or rich enough to pay for it. The premiums are averaging over $1400 a month. The state raised the medicaid income level to $44,000 so that people could get health care.
I think Snowe is trying to bail out Maine.
Why did Olympia Snowe vote for Obamacare? One reason could be that Maine has a “public option” insurance plan that is going broke, and state officials are hoping Obamacare can save it:
The skewed economics of DirigoChoice [Maine’s “public option”] have left it highly dependent on government financing, which has created a series of problems for policymakers. The program’s initial funding mechanism was nothing short of bizarre: Each year, the Dirigo Health Agency had to come up with a number that (according to its experts) represented the amount of money DirigoChoice had “saved†the Maine health-care system; the law then required Maine insurance companies to pay that amount to the state. Needless to say, those calculations ended up being something less than rigorous, and the insurance companies objected. Employers argued that insurers were simply passing on the bill for these “savings-offset payments†to private policyholders. Last year, the furor over the payments led the agency to downgrade its savings estimate by $40 million, making the whole process look like an arbitrary sham.
The Democratic legislature tried to replace this funding mechanism with a tax on beer, wine, and soda, but Mainers exercised a “voters’ veto†and repealed this tax via referendum. Running out of money, the legislature went back to taxing Maine insurance companies (and, by extension, private policyholders), enacting a 2 percent tax on all paid insurance claims. The state also has capped enrollment in order to keep costs from spiraling further out of control. The program’s supporters are now looking to Washington for help. “We have a very limited capacity because of limited resources,†Maine Office of Health Policy and Finance director Trish Riley said recently. “With federal money, more people would become eligible and the federal government would require people to have coverage.â€
Obamacare would relieve a handful of northeastern states, including Maine, of the burden of funding their broken, heavily regulated and subsidized health-care systems while imposing new burdens on the South and Midwest in the form of expanded eligibility for Medicaid. Of course Snowe voted for this bill. It’s a bailout for Maine.
I believe that Democrats took the House in 2006 because Independent swing voters abandoned the House Republicans over their failure to compromise with the Senate on immigration reform.
House Republicans dug in their heels and were thrown out of office. House Democrats will have the same thing happen to them this time because of the “public option”. Independent voters will kick them out of office in 2010. The Senate bill will not contain a public option, House Democrats will dig in their heels and they will be sent home. Same as happened with House Republicans over immigration.
As I look through the Constitution, I can’t find the section on Government Health Care. I think my copy must be a misprint.
Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”
–James Madison
“A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”
–John Adams in a Letter to Abigail Adams (July 7, 1775)
“If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one….”
— James Madison, letter to Edmund Pendleton, January 21, 1792
I know, I know, the folks here never really cared about the Constitution or the Rule of Law.
Snowe never did either.