To Progressives: What Now?
OPS_admin | Dec 22, 2009 | Comments 0
We lost this one. Unless the Senate uses reconciliation to strengthen the current Senate version of the HCR bill, the bill will pass with an individual mandate but no public option. All progressives will agree this constitutes a betrayal of the initial contract that won progressives’ support for an insurance industry-based plan. Those who argued for a stronger starting negotiating position have been vindicated and can tell those who didn’t “I told you so.”
Now that we’ve got that behind us, let’s focus on a constructive answer to, “What now?” I see two options: work to kill the Senate healthcare bill and work to move the center of the Senate majority left, or just work to move the Senate majority left.
To get no healthcare bill at all is the gift most wanted by the Republicans, and is more damaging to our interests than even this travesty Obama and Reid have managed. So killing the bill outright is a non-starter for me.
I personally have yet to see a way to kill the Senate healthcare bill and replace it with something that doesn’t violate the mandate-for-a-public-option contract at this late date, but if someone more imaginative than me can figure it out, I’m all ears.
Obama has shown he’s not real interested what’s in the bill as long as something called a healthcare bill passes. He and Rahm seem to have concluded they don’t need to heed the cry of their base, so I’m at a loss as to how we get through to them in time for this legislation.
Reid has shown he’s not going to risk defeat of the legislation over the public option if Obama doesn’t care, so all these dreams of getting it through leadership threats of reconciliation are just fantasies.
Full Story The Seminal » To Progressives: What Now?.
Filed Under: Politics
Comments (0)
-
If we don't change our ways soon...
A new report by the Royal Society, chaired by Nobel prize-winning biologist Sir John Sulston warns that world population must be stabilized and consumption in wealthy nations must be reduced or the entire planet is in big trouble. As the report reads: "The number of people living on the planet has never been higher, their levels of consumption are unprecedented and vast changes are taking place in the environment. We can choose to rebalance the use of resources to a more egalitarian pattern of consumption... or we can choose to do nothing and to drift into a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills leading to a more unequal and inhospitable future."This is the same warning that President Jimmy Carter gave Americans back in the 1970's - but it was ignored when Ronald Reagan came to power with a "more positive" message basically telling Americans we can do whatever we want. And then after 9/11 - Bush told us all we should go shopping and consume ever more.And now with corporations calling the shots in Washington - long-term sustainability of the planet takes a back seat to short-term profits. If we don't change our ways soon - and embrace clean, alternative energy and educate women around the plant - then we all could be headed for a rough century.-Thom(Is there any chance we will learn in time? Tell us here.) -
LEGALIZE Democracy
" We the corporations" On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. __________
MOVE to AMEND
a project of the CAMPAIGN TO LEGALIZE Democracy
Help end Corporate personhood
-
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. 
moveon.org
