Pascrell on board for health care reform?

An update on my recalcitrant Congressman, Bill Pascrell, Democrat of District 8 in New Jersey, who told Politico and Fox News in the aftermath of the Massachusetts election that Democrats should scale back their health care plans and just pass scraps of reform, and that he was working on rounding up colleagues intent on doing just that. Back then, he pronounced both the House and Senate bills dead. On March 2, in an open letter to the President, he published a weak excuse for a reform package   (however worthy some component parts may be) - tort reform, a patient's bill of rights, antittrust exemption repeal.

A week ago Friday, Pascrell's aide told me that he "doesn't like the Senate bill" -- e.g., the excise tax, the relatively stingy subsidies. Today he told Politico, "I don't think we should simply assume Mr. Reid has 51 votes...I don't know what the hell is going on over there in the Senate." Apparently he's of the school of House Democrats who believe, as Dick Durbin put it yesterday,  "The Republicans are our opponents, but the Senate is the enemy."

But it would appear that he's on board. David Dayen's whip count at Firedoglake, which identifies all known Democratic no's and maybe's by name, does not name him, and so has him in the definite yes category by default. An Organizing for America email last week asked members in this area to call Pascrell and "thank him" for voting for the House HCR bill in November; there was no direct mention that he might be squishy now.

Today, Pascrell's his aide told me that he "needs to see what's in the bill"  and remains uncommitted. When I cited Dayen's count, though, and said that I assumed that he would vote for the bill in the end, she acknowledged that that's probably what will happen. 

I took two whacks at Pascrell in op-eds in local media, here and here.

A whip for Rep. Pascrell on HCR

My own Congressman, Democrat Bill Pascrell of New Jersey's 8th District, publicly opposed comprehensive health care reform in the immediate aftermath of the Mass. election and still has not committed to voting  for the Senate bill and reconciliation package.  In the piece below, running in today's News-Record of Maplewood and South Orange (NJ), I ask my neighbors to push Pascrell into the yes column:

If You Support Health Care Reform, Call Bill Pascrell

In a speech presenting his final health care reform proposal on March 3, President Obama laid it on the line.  It’s time to pass comprehensive reform, he told Congress and the country:

I, therefore, ask leaders in both houses of Congress to finish their work and schedule a vote in the next few weeks.  From now until then, I will do everything in my power to make the case for reform.  And I urge every American who wants this reform to make their voice heard as well --- every family, every business, every patient, every doctor, every nurse, every physician’s assistant.  Make your voice heard. 

If you live in New Jersey’s 8^th Congressional District (covering much of South Orange and Maplewood) and you want to answer the President’s call, then talk to Representative Bill Pascrell -- who has been running the other way.   

When the Democrats lost their filibuster-proof Senate majority in the Jan. 19 Massachusetts election, supporters of  comprehensive health care reform quickly realized that there is just one viable path: have the House pass the Senate bill, which the Senate passed with a 60-vote majority in December, while negotiating to accommodate some House goals  through a process known as reconciliation, which allows budget-related legislation to pass the Senate with a bare majority.  The President’s health care proposal consists of a package of such fixes, such as limiting the excise tax on expensive plans and improving subsidies for middle class buyers of insurance.

In late January, Rep. Pascrell was having none of this. He told Politico that he is “tired” of the health care reform process and wants to end it. “The people in Massachusetts sent a clear message,” he said. “If we didn’t get it in New Jersey or Virginia, we should’ve gotten it, certainly, Tuesday.” He indicated that he wanted to scrap comprehensive reform and pass whatever scraps of reform can garner a few Republican votes.

As in Afghanistan, Obama picks "none of the above" from the HCR menu

There would seem to be large risks inherent in Obama's planned half-day health care summit with leaders of both parties on Feb. 26. It's the final farewell to HCR supporters' fervent wish that the House would swiftly pass the Senate bill with an agreed-on reconciliation blueprint -- a dream that was already dead. It risks letting more House Democrats twist and pull in multiple directions if their political outlook continues to deteriorate. 

It should be recognized, though, that the plan is completely consistent with the strategy that Obama has outlined at least since the State of the Union address -- and in fact, as I have argued in detail, since his Jan. 21 interview with George Stephanopoulos, in which Obama was less than clear and seemed -- accidentally, I think -- to indicate that he was open to a scaled-back bill.  The steps that he's outlined -- and begun to execute -- with increasing clarity since that point are these: re-present the pending bill to the American people; defend its "core elements"; explain why they cannot be pulled apart; solicit Republican "ideas" and expose their vacuity; get the Republicans on record in the interim stonewalling a jobs bill and tough banking regulations. This public campaign is designed to generate political cover for Democrats to pass the Senate bill with reconciliation fixes -- or, best case, to pick off a Republican or two with a high-profile concession such as building tort reform into HCR, and so enabling a normal Senate-House bill merger procedure.

In fact, the apparent risks of the summit are largely illusory.

How Obama will -- and won't -- lead on health care reform

Steve Benen has the very section of Obama's meeting with Senate Democrats (cut up and elided) that I was struggling to transcribe from the tape:

"All that's changed in the last few weeks is our party has gone from having the largest Senate majority in a generation to the second-largest Senate majority in a generation," Obama said. "If anybody is searching for a lesson from Massachusetts, I promise you the answer is not to do nothing."

He added, "I know these are tough times to hold public office. The need is great; the anger and anguish are intense." While "the natural political instinct is to tread lightly, keep your head down and play it safe," he said, Democrats should remember the promises they made in their election campaigns.

"So many of us campaigned on the idea that we're going to change this health-care system" Obama said. ..So many of us looked people in the eye who had been denied because of a pre-existing condition, or just didn't have health insurance at all ... and we said we were going to change it..*. "Well, here we are with a chance to change it....I hope we don't lose sight of why we're here. We've got to finish the job on health care."  We've got to finish the job on regulatory reform. We've got to finish the job, even though it's hard."

1995 Redux: Call the Republicans' shut-down-the-Senate bluff

It's a given by now that Republicans will do all they can to obstruct any deal between House and Senate Democrats entailing the House passing the Senate health care bill and amending it through the reconciliation process. Jeff Davis, Greg Sargent and Karen Tumulty have explained in numbing detail how Senate Republicans can stall reconciliation fixes. Sargent:

The GOP Senate leadership has privately settled on a strategy to derail health reform if Dems try to pass the Senate bill with a fix through reconciliation, aides say: Unleash an endless stream of amendments designed to stall for time and to force Dems to take untenable votes.

The aide described the planned GOP strategy as a “free for all of amendments,” vowing Dems would face “a mountain of amendments so politically toxic they'll make the first health debate look like a post office naming.”

Notwithstanding the difficulties, what remains striking is the difference in political will between the two parties. Republicans, as ever, will act as a body to do whatever it takes to get what they want -- the death of comprehensive health care reform, a Waterloo for Obama, an electoral debacle for the Democrats to dwarf 1994. 

Quell Pascrell, who'd kill the bill

On Monday, I was dismayed to learn that my own Congressman in New Jersey's 8th District, Rep. Bill Pascrell, is leading a posse of House Democrats who want to kill the effort to pass comprehensive healthcare reform.

On South Orange Patch, a local news website, I've asked my neighbors to send Pascrell a message -- fast.