Jophiel wrote:
This could be accomplished by either having the House pass the Senate bill untouched, by having a compromise bill both chambers can agree on pass swiftly or by having a Senate-centric bill pass with a promise to the House that sections of it will be revised down the line through reconciliation.
Either of those options are risky though. I know you've stated the position that health care is so important that you don't care if a the Dems lose the House and/or Senate in the process, but I doubt very much that most of the folks sitting in those seats will agree.
The gap in votes in the House based on differences in the Senate Bill make that route problematic at best. A bill that both agree on will almost certainly not work if Brown is actually sitting in the seat. The Senate Bill would require 60 votes, and they aren't going to get it without essentially re-writing the bill from scratch. I suppose this route is possible, but would take months to do cleanly. If they push to do it before Brown takes his seat, the damage done to the Dem party will be massive. Trying to use reconciliation requires that only budget specific issues be on the table, which may not be sufficient either and would require that massive amounts of both bills be stripped out.
The effect of this win by Brown is much larger than just the one vote and its relevance to a filibuster. It's a ringing bell warning every single Democrat, who's been toeing the line out of party loyalty that their seats are in danger. The effect on the House in particular will be dramatic. The only way this works is if almost every single Democrat in Congress doesn't care about their seats and is willing to lose it to pass health care. I doubt very much that this is the case. I'm sure the leadership will push for it, but I foresee defections.
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Assuming that the health care bill passes, it probably doesn't mean a ton for everything else.
While this is largely being seen as a referendum on health care, the issues at stake are broader than that, and I think it's a mistake to underestimate it. The Left has been ignoring and ridiculing the growing dissatisfaction with the policies they have been pushing. Calling the TeaParty movement "teabaggers" is just one example. What this election shows is that they made the mistake of believing their own propaganda. That by pretending these growing number of upset people were just radicals, and were small in number, and didn't represent mainstream America, they convinced themselves that they didn't matter and weren't relevant. This election result shows just how much of a mistake that is.
The Obama administration and the Dems in Congress will have to completely rethink their entire political strategy at this point. They've discovered that their agenda isn't really resonating with the people. And "the people" isn't just some crazy fringe righties being exaggerated by Fox News. The people includes large numbers of independent voters in a state which has historically voted Democrat. If the voters there are so clearly more in agreement with the position of the TeaParty people than the Democrats currently in office, what does this say about voters in far less "liberal" states like Ohio, Kansas, and Missouri?
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If health care legislation fails to pass, it'll be a real pity in my opinion. We probably won't see another legitimate attempt to reform it for years if not decades.
I agree to this. It will be a pity. However, the pity is that the Dems choose a form of health care "reform" which pushed their farthest left agenda rather than actually fixing the problems with the current health care system. They could have included Republicans in the discussion. They could have stuck to changes which everyone could agree on and which didn't push a far left or far right agenda. But instead, they went with using the issue of health care as a lever to push for a socialist change which the public has overwhelmingly rejected.
The pity is that the real problems with our current health care system probably will not be addressed. Of course, that horse left the barn months ago. Their bills didn't fix those problems either. They just made them bigger and put government more in charge. That's part of why the public rejected it so soundly. It was obvious to most people that the greatest "change" going on here was making bigger government, not actually helping people get better and more affordable health care.
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If it does pass, the 59/41 split will be a lot less important to me. One thing I hope does come out of it, and I've argued this for years, is reform of the procedural filibuster in the Senate.
Can I make a wild guess and say that "years" means "since 2006"?