The 13-year congressman lamented the lack of change in economic policies, tying it to the major problems Democrats are facing.
"The minute the president appointed Tim Geithner and Larry Summers
to key policy positions, and the minute that [Ben] Bernanke was named
to head the Fed again, we're looking at people who participated in the
decline of the economy," he said. "This group has done us a
disservice."Ironically Obama is citing Paul Volker this morning, who
has scrapped with Summers and Geithner and been marginalized within the
administration up until now.
What does Kucinich think of the health care bill?
"Health care became too complex and too
riddled with concessions to insurance companies and pharmaceutical
companies," he said. "It's really time to take a new direction and that
direction has to be back to the American people."
One idea Democrats are floating is to pass the Senate bill through
the House, which would then allow the President to sign it into law.
"I don't think that's going to happen," he said. "The senate bill is
so totally flawed that I don't think it can get the votes in the House
to pass. I certainly wouldn't vote for it."
"It hits very sharply at people who gave wage concessions to get
health care benefits," he said, citing the excise tax on health care
benefits. "We're going to ask Americans to take a wage cut? Why?"
"We lost the initiative the minute that our party jumped into bed
with the insurance companies. And soon they were looking at increasing
taxes as a way of subsidizing insurance companies. It's just madness."
"We're redistributing the wealth of the nation upwards by giving the
insurance companies 30 million new customers, $50 billion a year more
in revenue."
Meanwhile, Matt Yglesias
continues the "attack the character of the President's critics" tactic
that has been the hallmark of the Senate bill's apologist. He says Raul Grijalva is flirting with the title of "history's greatest monster" status.
The reason for this? Well, Grijalva doesn't accept the "60 vote" myth
that has been used to push the false choice of "what Joe Lieberman
wants or nothing." Harry Reid, Chris Van Hollen and Kent Conrad have
all now said that "sidecar reconciliation" is possible. Max Baucus has
gone so far as to say "reconciliation will be part of the solution."
The price of continuing to cling to that myth should be obvious by
now: the Senate health care bill in its current form threatens to
decimate the Democratic party. The general public continues to echo
Kucinich's sentiments about the bill -- and the administration's
pro-corporatist approach -- without respect for party. It's only a tiny
bubble of self-reinforcing pundits living in a hermetically sealed
intellectual environment whose worldview has not been penetrated by
that reality. It would be easier to accept the notion that they are
acting in good faith if they didn't seek to demonize those who have
advanced very compelling reasons for disagreeing with the articles of
faith of their worldview, which at this point only represents a teeny,
tiny minority of the public.
