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‘Nuclear Option’ Better Than Reconciliation
President Barack Obama recently urged Congress to use "reconciliation" to enact medical reform legislation. Reconciliation rules allow legislation related to taxes and spending to be enacted by a simple Senate majority without the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster. Democrats no longer have the 60 votes. Reconciliation therefore appears to offer the only hope of enacting medical reforms.
There is an alternative to reconciliation, however: the "nuclear option." It seems more extreme but would be better than reconciliation in several ways. The nuclear option would have Vice President Joe Biden, presiding over the Senate, rule that the Senate is not a "continuing body." Senators would then adopt procedural rules anew for each two-year term. Rules would be enacted by simple majorities. The majority could then adopt rules that do not include a filibuster. When filibusters were rare, they allowed decisions to reflect not just how many senators were on each side of an issue but also how strongly they felt. Weak majorities could sometimes be trumped by passionate minorities. To some extent, this may have been a good thing.
Recently, though, filibusters have become the rule rather than the exception. This reflects the weakening of moderates in both parties, an unfortunate side effect of using primary elections to select party nominees. Since those voting in primaries are mainly party extremists (or "base"), the Senate has fewer moderates willing to make the compromises needed to produce the 60 votes allowing that body to vote on an issue. Before primaries, nominees were selected by party leaders and were more likely to be moderates.
Since we are unlikely to get rid of primaries, we have to eliminate the filibuster if the Senate is ever going to be able to function again as a normal legislative body. For health care, the nuclear option would make the unseemly deals needed to pick up the votes of key senators less necessary, since no one Democratic senator could derail things. It would also allow all details of the proposed legislation to be amended, not just those related to taxes and spending. Even better, the nuclear option would allow Democrats to accept Republican demands to scrap the current bills and start drafting reform legislation all over again.
The current bills do not make a lot of sense. The most important provision prevents insurance companies from denying coverage due to preexisting conditions. For this to work the legislation also mandates that (nearly) everybody must buy insurance, but it does not back up this requirement with sufficiently strong penalties for non-compliance. The mandate to buy insurance is constitutionally dubious, at best, but even worse, it creates an unnecessarily complicated and expensive system. Instead of mandating that everyone buy insurance, why not just provide that insurance and finance it with the tax system? The savings on transaction costs alone would be enormous.
Whether we call the new system "Medicare for all" or "single-payer" or "socialized medicine" is beside the point. Socialism is a poor way to organize an entire economy, but a mixed economy with some elements of socialism might well be optimal. We should be more interested in whether something will work well, and less interested in plastering emotionally-loaded labels on it. Insurance reform by itself will not solve all of our medical problems. Something still needs to be done about the costs of the specific procedures paid for by that insurance. But no one law will do the whole job, and insurance reform would be a good beginning. Vice President Biden: It is time to push the "nuclear" button!
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20 Comments so far
Show AllHow charming! A writer (a professor, no less) who still believes in the American political process.
Why don't you take a seat at the back of the room, Paul, and we'll call...
Biden: "I believe that's nucular ... oops, plagiarized Bush, AGAIN! DEM!!"
This article is basically saying "Let's play a new game and keep pretending there is a significant difference between these corporate shills."
This excuse-making for the dumbocrats is pathetic.
The filibuster is not the problem. The so-called fear of it is.
The dumbos pretend to cave-in to republican demands in order to avoid the filibuster, but the reality is that the dumbos share the same beliefs and goals as the repulsivecans.
Let the greedy pigs filibuster - it would expose them for what they are!
But NOOOOOO!
The dumbos are feeding at the same trough. They think that their gluttony is a religion (and it is). The only problem for these two gluttons is that people keep whining about how the weight of the trough is getting harder to hold up on our backs. It is not that they care about the suffering, it's just that they hate to be distracted by the complaining.
This isn't Trent Lott's "nuclear option", it's Tom Udall's "constitutional option"
Yes. I get so frustrated with people in Congress and in the reporting about Congress business who can't keep things straight.
The Nuclear Option can happen any time. In the Nuclear Option a member challenges a cloture vote as unconstitutional. The President of the Senate then rules that it is. This requires a majority vote to be affirmed. If a simple majority agree then the filibuster has been jettisoned. I may have the details wrong, but that's the basic idea.
The Democrats could get rid of this anti-democratic filibuster ANY TIME. It's just a question of whether they have a spine or not.
You can lead a jackass to water, but you cannot stop them from turning into elephants.
Hell, I'd love to see them nuke the Senate. Wait, that's NOT what he meant? Pity.
Gary
"Why are corporate laws are so awry? Because the ones who designed them are psychopaths. The scaly ones behind the multinationals, the ones who seek to control the planet made corporations as their instruments of control. That is why they are feudal in design, not democratic."
-- Zuerrnnovahh-Starr Livingstone
"Instead of mandating that everyone buy insurance, why not just provide that insurance and finance it with the tax system? The savings on transaction costs alone would be enormous."
Those statements make a wonderfully concise - and accurate - justification for single payer.
q
Maybe it's just me, but the politics of this writer remind me of one of those old pinball games where the ball shoots all over the place.
We're disabled by the "etremists" who vote in primaries, (actually, as far back as 8 years ago, when I was on the d-party central comitte, way back then the platform included universal, single-payer health care, our democratically elected officials just blew it off and promoted the radical solution of 'wellness') but then he somehow comes around to the conclusion that what those primary activists promoted is the solution.
Oh, well, however he got there, the conclusion is right.
O.My.God. Finally a native born American (I assume) proposes what all Europeans have enjoyed since WW2. Quickstepper, I salute you.
Now, why does the rest of the USA fail to understand that this is both the most comprehensive AND most cost-effective system of health care?
OK, they're all stupid and brainwashed and while they're limping around on unset broken legs--or bankrupted by the setting of their broken legs--fervently believe that their "system of healthcare" is infinitely better than that of the rest of the civilized world. And, of course, so few Americans ever venture outside their own country, they have no idea of how healthcare works elsewhere and so are victims of idiotic right-wing radio.
The odd thing about this is that poll after poll show that the preponderance of the American people are against this implimenting this program, at least in it's current incarnation ~ yet the democrats seem willing to ignore that will and just do what they are told by their handlers to do.
It's going to be a very interesting November!
Obama believes that whats good for AIPAC is good for America. Obama's nose is so high in the air, he doesn't even know there is a bottom. Just give AIPAC what they want and create a fog at waist level and everything will be alright. Remember that nothing good ever comes out of corruption. Now your seeing clearly.
"Since those voting in primaries are mainly party extremists (or "base"), the Senate has fewer moderates willing to make the compromises needed to produce the 60 votes allowing that body to vote on an issue. Before primaries, nominees were selected by party leaders and were more likely to be moderates."
Response: The quote above has a glaring error. Democratic (and Republican) party leadership controls the primary process and influences the eventual outcome. During the last presidential primaries, the leadership w/MSM's assistance worked to diminish "non-mainstream" candidates' like Kucinich, ability to mount a campaign by trying to eliminate their participation in debates (eg, Kucinich wasn't allowed in an Iowa debate). In Texas last month, only 2 of 6 Democratic candidates for governorship were allowed in the one televised debate. Democratic leadership funds campaign dollars to selected candidates which influences who will win. In one of the presidential debate, w/MSM's help, the "leading" candidates all got center podiums at the debate (more visibility) and they get more questions by moderators with no objection from leadership...
I disagree with deLespinasse's statements about primaries and moderates. We don't need more moderates, we need political parties that stand for something and offer a real choice. The Republicans do, although it's a bad choice. And they are the ones responsible for routinely using the filibuster, which used to be considered the nuclear option.
The Democrats aren't really a political party at all, but at least three different parties that can't agree on much. And in fact it was Democratic party leaders in the last election who choose to direct funding towards conservative Democrats in right-leaning districts, helping to produce a party that is simply incoherent. So I don't think the problem is primaries. Besides, the candidates chosen in Democratic primaries feel no need to keep their campaign promises once elected. They are all too willing to compromise.
All that said, I agree with the author that the Senate has to get rid of the filibuster. You cannot make democracy function if every action requires a supermajority vote.
We have the same problem with the Oregon House, where a supermajority is required to raise taxes, so that hardly ever happens. It was put in the state constitution through an initiative, and we need to get rid of it, if we don't want the state to go bankrupt.
For the same reasons, progressive groups need to reconsider their addiction to "consensus" and "coalitions," which make it impossible for us to decide on any action. Like Congress, we are wandering in circles.
I doubt that the democrats could even get 51 democrat senators to vote for this compromised piece of crap.
I contains all kinds of "poison pills" inserted at the request of Republicans who never had any intention of ever voting for it.
And the Bart Stoooopids of the party will surly scuttle it unless it outright bans abortion.
And the lefties will scuttle it unless in contains a public option.
Decomcrats, the "Big Tent" party..is a circus tent full of clowns.
too bad really.
Obama should use reconcilation to extend Medicare to everyone as an emergency measure...or even do ity by executive order.
I generally never comment on comments posted about my articles. However I will make an exception here.
If primaries were "under the strict control of the party bureaucracies" we wouldn't get situations like the nomination of racist David Dukes in a Republican primary in Louisiana, which so horrified party leaders that they urged voters to support the Democrat. Nor would we get the nomination of Geoffrey Fieger in the Michigan Democratic primary, also to the consternation of Democratic party leaders. One of these leaders was quoted to the effect that Fieger only took his foot out of his mouth in order to change feet!
If party leaders actually controlled the nominations we would not have the increasingly polarized situation we face, since party leaders are mainly interested in winning general elections in which the candidate in the middle of the road has the advantage. It was not the party leaders who were responsible for the respective nominations of Goldwater and McGovern, with disastrous results for their parties in the general elections. Both of these candidacies resulted from primaries in which the more extreme members of their parties turned out in larger numbers than did the moderates.
"Visiting Professor" (professor of what?) opines that the Senate was intentionally created to "make the control of Senators by the elite-backed corporations easier and more efficient." Unfortunately for this hypothesis, when the Constitution was written there were no corporations on the scale of today's, and corporations were all created by "special act charters" handed out one by one by the state legislatures. There was so much bribery and other corruption associated with this system that during the 19th century reformers forced through general incorporation laws that allowed anyone to incorporate as long as they complied with the rules.
Even our far-sighted founding fathers could not have anticipated the place corporations were play in today's world, and they certainly did not design the Senate with any such anticipation in mind.
One reason I generally do not comment on comments is that it would take time I can use more productively. It is also almost invariably the case that the person about whose comment I comment will post what they consider a crushing reply and if I do not then reply to that will say, "see, I told you so!" Therefore under no circumstances do I reply to followup comments.
Hi Professor Paul! I also hail from the fantastic little university burg of Corvallis. I like his piece and he makes a good number of important points about our political system. However, the essential problem with our non-health, 15-min. 'care', system is that in a private, capitalistic system, more profit is made on sick people than on well. It is much more lucrative to wait until people are extremely ill, like we do, then implement all sorts of hideously expensive procedures, drugs, hospital stays, elaborate equipment, and high-paid doctors, not-badly paid nurses, and expensive specialists/assistants. Medicine diagnoses many illnesses at late-stage, when the person is already very compromised, rather than using a healthy, innovative, alternative-mix of well-established preventative and curative practices during the developmental stages of dysfunction. The pharmaceuticals, which dominate our disease maintenance and management system, have been the mostly profitable sector on Wall Street for years. They are not research companies now but almost purely marketing and profiteering operations. 70-90% of new drugs are copycat alterations on someone else's blockbuster compound, which in itself is often no better than placebo and/or worse than older drugs it replaced--and normally far, far inferior to many old or new alternative/nutritional therapies that go right to the underlying cause to treat basic nutritional deficiencies, organ imbalances, unbalanced microflora, digestive issues, autoimmune conditions, food allergies (HUGE), MASSIVE TOXICITY PROBLEMS from all kinds of chemnicals, food additives, drugs, etc. getting into peoples' systems, and issues at their root, whenever possible. Nutrition and sometimes herbal or innovative or traditional, even some 'weird' therapies can do amazing things that medicine does not even undersTand and is trying its best to ignore, pooh-pooh, or shut down. Nutrition-based alternatives' are also 100,000's of times safer than medications and would cost a small fraction of our current wait, ignore all sorts of signs and symptoms, then after the person becomes dysfunctional, diagnose and drug 'em system. The pHARMaceuticals regularly engage in all sorts of flagrantly unethical practices, having doctors 'ghost author' drug studies they have no involvement in, lie, hide results, deceive, hire younger and younger doctors and compromise doctors 'patient-oriented practices' with perks, scholarships, gifts, trips, seminars, glass mugs, clocks, pens, nice-looking drug reps, and lots of free pill samples. IN Melody Peterson's "OUR DAILY MEDS" (2008), she EXPLAINS how hiring younger doctors to get on board the 'super-prescriptive high-speed luxury bullet train' (my term) is 4x as profitable as 'traditional drug ads'. How generous they are! Get 'em hooked, maintain or run-up the dosage, create new diseases (side effects), which then can be mined with new undesigned, experimental drugs, and hide the damn deaths as long as possible so we can stay ahead of the lawsuits! The American "health care system" is a highly-evolved p.o.c., not a health care system at all, more of a corporate and medical 'farm system' where the big guys: Big Pharma, Big Farma, Big Harma, and Big INswarma have increasing license to mine the health and wealth of the increasingly ill American population for godzilla-size profits. A sick population surely couldn't mount a good defense against corporate hegemony. It's a self-generating strategy, as long as their are people alive and half able to work to pay for it! oh how quintessentially American! Making money off of everything!! Snake oil, anyone? How about Pharmaceuticals?!
They should make the filibuster a *real* test of passion and dedication, not a wave of the finger indicating "intention to filibuster".
Instead of halting the work of the Senate, allow the Passionate Filibustering Senator to go off in a room, videotaped, where he has to speak non-stop for 48 hours. Allow a few 5-minute bathroom breaks. If he makes it for all 48 hours, filibuster successful.
And he misses all other votes while filibustering.
If there is no price for the GOP saying "filibuster", they will use it every f*ing time.