There’s a real sense of frustration in center-left circles in the United States. It’s understandable why. The president has proposed a massive bill that will fund a host of badly needed programs. These are priorities the progressive wing of the party has long championed, so in that respect alone, the very fact of this reconciliation bill is a kind of victory.
Now passage of this landmark legislation depends on approval by a 50-50 Senate, which means somehow convincing the likes of Joe Manchin and Kirsten Synema to vote for it. It is aggravating to watch two self-aggrandizing senators block a bill that has the support of a vast majority of Americans. But that aggravation is nothing new. And I think, despite the drawbacks, we have come a long way over the decades.
The majority that wasn’t
It’s best to remember that we’ve been in worse places before. Back in January 2009, when the financial crisis was in full swing, the Democrats had just sworn-in huge majorities in both houses of Congress. They had a filibuster-proof 60 Senators (for a brief time) and 255 members of the House. So, the sky was the limit, right?
Wrong. Somehow they managed to negotiate the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act down to a ridiculously small size, even though they needed not a single Republican vote to pass it. The final bill was nearly 1/3 tax cuts and far smaller than was needed to put the economy back on track. In other words, they negotiated themselves out of an effective stimulus and reconstruction package.
Barry and the half-nelson
Then there was the Affordable Care Act marathon. That was thousands of hours of committee work, whittling down the legislation to meet an arbitrary cost standard set by the GOP. So the best we could do on health care was whatever policy we could squeeze through the little tin horn that was Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson, the Joe Manchin of his day.
Now, you may ask yourself, with 60 or near-60 votes in the Senate, why did they need to observe these restrictions? I think the answer is pretty simple: the Democratic Party was a lot farther to the right in those days, on balance. They and their president were happy to settle for glorified RomneyCare. They were happy to contemplate a “Grand Bargain” that would have gutted Social Security.
The new way to be
Honestly, the overwhelmingly Democratic 111th Congress would never have even contemplated some of the provisions in the current Reconciliation bill. Opposition to the Child Tax Credit, paid family leave, etc., would have been larger than two senators. That’s because progressives have, in essence, won many of these arguments, thanks to the determined efforts of Senator Sanders and others on the inside, and movements like Occupy Wall Street, BLM, and others on the outside.
Think about it: we are really just a whisker away from some of the most progressive policy changes since the start of the neoliberal era. The whole thing could still go up in smoke, but this is closer than we’ve ever been, and it’s not only tremendously popular but backed by 96% of the Democratic caucus AND the president.
So, we’re making progress. Slower than we like, but progress none the less.
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My guess is that they’re clinging to this one because Kavanaugh has proven to be such a reliable operative, and because he has a freakishly expansive view of executive power and privilege. (He apparently developed that during his stints in the W. Bush administration.) It’s hard to be certain of their reasoning, but their overarching motivations are quite clear. They want this seat and they want it now. The GOP has been working on this project for decades, taking an already conservative court steadily to the right since Nixon’s days in power. A solid reactionary majority is the right’s insurance policy; it’s their trump card, no pun intended.
This entire situation – I won’t say “debate” because there hasn’t been any – is ridiculous largely because no one in Washington will admit to what the ACA’s core problems are. The Republicans, and to a certain extent many Democrats, continue to insist that competition and a freer market in health insurance will deliver affordable coverage to everyone; just pull those sick people out of the system and into an underfunded high-risk pool, and the market can do its magic.
On top of that, the “Better Way” will use reconciliation votes to repeal sections of the Affordable Care Act, including Medicaid expansion. Ryan tested his caucus’s ability to use this tactic on non-fiscal legislation this past term when he brought an ACA repeal vote via reconciliation. This will be repeated next year, but with a Republican president, their vile legislation will get a signature. Ryan will be able to move forward with converting Medicare to a voucher. You can already hear right-wing pundits floating the concept of expanded Health Savings Accounts as part of their “repeal and replace” strategy – that and the seemingly evergreen notion of allowing insurance to be sold across state lines. This should be great comfort to the hundreds of thousands thrown off of Medicaid by their so called “better way.”
At least, that’s what’s left to us after a remarkably lackluster election in which about 37% of the American voting populace voted. That’s the lowest turnout since 1942, and it bears remembering that a lot of voting age men were in he military at the time. So if we can’t summon the will to vote, do we have the right to complain about the outcome? Sure, the Democratic party — including many of last Tuesday’s also-rans — is less than inspiring. But there is a small difference between the parties, and small differences can sometimes have an enormous impact on the nation’s most vulnerable. We owe it to them to go and mark the ballot, even if it means voting for some jerk-ass.