Kill The Bill? Operatives Say Yes, Wonks Say No
There’s a debate raging in the blogosphere about whether the Senate bill has been so watered down that it’s time to try to kill it, and one thing that’s interesting is how cleanly it breaks down as a disagreement between operatives and wonks.
The bloggers who are focused on political organizing and pulling Dems to the left mostly seem to want to kill the bill, while the wonkier types want to salvage it because they think it contains real reform and can act as a foundation for further achievements.
In the former camp are bloggers like Markos Moulitsas, former House candidate Darcy Burner, and the Firedoglake crew. They mostly deride the bill as a giveaway to the insurance companies that does nothing for consumers. A quick rundown of their opinions right here.
In the latter camp are wunder-wonk types like Ezra Klein, Jonathan Cohn, and Nate Silver. They all make expansive arguments that the current legislation contains real reform and indeed represents a fairly immense progressive achievement. A quick rundown of their opinions here.
It’s interesting that the battle is breaking down along operative-versus-wonk lines. At risk of overgeneralizing, operatives tend to see such fights as political wars that are either are or aren’t worth fighting and dying in. Wonks tend to see them as chapters in a longer tale of ever-evolving social policy. That might go some ways towards explaining the divide, even if the substantive differences between the two camps are real and serious.
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This bill will not cover 30 million people. It will tax 30 million people. Without cost controls, the premiums will be too expensive and people will have to pay the IRS fines because they can’t afford the insurance. Subsidies won’t keep up. Then those people we are trying to help will just have fines to pay along with medical bills to pay and will be worse off. Nate Silver needs to go back to where he pointed out that having individual mandates without adequate protections would kill democrats for generations. Better not to take it up than to screw people over.
I see operatives as those angling for issues and party building. Wonks are those willing to wait decades. Well, since I have no more decades to cough up to the party, I am an operative by default. I have waited 40 years for this platform of our party to be passed. No more waiting. We either win this or leave the party and become independent, to make my self as invisible as possible, blending in with republican independents and making the party wonks dig deep for a vote.
Barak will be a 1 term president. We will loose power in the congress too. A loss of health care is the demise of the party.
So with no republican party and no democratic party to speak of, why not leave BOTH and form our own independent American party? Make them both BEG and pass bills we WANT to get our votes.
I am disappointed that the best the alleged wonkes can come up with is the same old same old “punch a hippy” policy pronouncements we get from the right wing press dressed up with slightly different rationalizing.
Pass the senate bill and the Democratic party is doomed. The resentment and bitterness of people subjected to mandated health insurance with no rate caps and no public option will be unbounded. The smarmy presumptuousness of those who say “but thirty million people will be insured” in paternalistic voice will be underwhelmed by the gratitude of poor people forced to commit their limited income to inadequate private insurance with rates rising 20 percent a year, poor customer service, random denials, funky billing designed to deceive users to pay for things that should be covered and other shenanigans. I have been through it en route to a graduate degree and I can tell you it will be a license for insurance companies to F people over for money and they will laugh at your regulations just like Bush and Cheney are laughing at the Geneva Convention and the Convention on Torture right now.
Top unemployment money is 900 dollars a month, and the mandatory insurance will eat all of that long before the rent is paid or anyone eats even if it is subsidized at proposed rates. Minimum wage jobs if you can get 40 hours a week pay 1200 a month gross, which might pay for insurance and nothing else. U6 unemployment is nearing 20 percent. Underemployment is rampant and the middle class is again bearing the brunt while lower classes continue to float in a world of uncertainty and under the table work. No one is going to like the Senate’s hideous bill and the Teabaggers have the easy answer and the ear of the media. I recognize the Senate is our House of Lords, but someone there should be able to tell the esteemed senators that telling people without bread to eat cake is not going to go over well. The House bill is already compromised but it would be far better than passing the Senate bill over their heads, as has been proposed, simply to save face for Obama, who is looking more like a hype than a hope on all fronts.
So the problem is that the “wonk” point of view must assume that social legislation comes out of thin air, ignoring that the reason it ever comes to be is through social movements that either demand it directly or elect people who get it.
Remember how the democrats get seats when their base is energized and strong? Who exactly do you think is energizing that activist base, a few liberal bloggers and policy nerds?
Grow up kids, you couldn’t even get to the table without the “operatives” willing to put their lives and sweat into this so you can sit and ruminate. Alienating us means you’re alienating the people who actually fight. And it’s pretty hard to work up the energy to fight (as opposed to sitting at a desk ruminating and sending out profound missives) when everything you fight for gets sold out to corporate gangsters.
Change the Filibuster rule 22 for real reform.
The liberals can and should use their power just as much as could Lieberman. This bill is a mandate to buy insurance with no cost controls.
Would someone who thinks this bill is worth saving please tell me why? So people with pre-existing conditions can get insurance, but there is nothing in the bill that would keep the insurance companies from raising the premiums as much as they want. There’s nothing here that I can see that would make that insurance affordable. And please tell me how making it against the law for me NOT to have insurance, while providing NO mechanism for cost containment please tell me how this makes sense. I think the supporters of this dog have lost sight of the forest AND the trees.
These proposals make the subsidies a handout to those too poor to pay for their own insurance. While supporters say that we can come back and fight again for a public option, we instead will be fighting to maintain funding for that subsidy of “the undeserving poor” not for the expansion of the program. This is welfare deform all over again. You watch. Anyone who thinks differently is deluding themselves. As the economy continues to worsen, and unemployment stays high, the impulse to balance the budget will only get more powerful. And this “subsidy” will be an easy target.