Stay Tuned For Blue Dog Hissy Fits This Week (And What Else is in Store on Healthcare)

Posted by mcjoan, Daily Kos at 9:45 AM on August 3, 2009.

With the House over one hurdle -- all three committees reporting legislation out, with Energy and Commerce bringing up the rear -- the week ahead will be a little less frenetic than the one that just passed. You could call it the week of the Blue Dogs.

By doing what they do best, throwing hissy fits to tie the entire Democratic caucus and leadership up in knots. Whether they do this out of real principle, because they like to exercise their clout, or because the longer they delay the process, the more money they rake in from industry -- and they rake in plenty -- that's their current role.

For all their talk of "fiscal responsibility," their efforts to weaken the public option in the E&C version of the bill "could actually increase the cost of the bill anywhere between $60 billion and $100 billion, wiping out all or most of the ostensible savings." The good news is that the Blue Dogs don't have the proportionate influence in the full House as they had on E&C, and that the CPC ia working hard at flexing their own muscle, and their numbers.

But there are still hurdles, not the least of which is the PR and lobbying firm organized harassment strategy they'll face in townmeetings back home this month:

This growing phenomenon is often marked by violence and absurdity. Recently, right-wing demonstrators hung Rep. Frank Kratovil (D-MD) in effigy outside of his office. Missing from the reporting of these stories is the fact that much of these protests are coordinated by public relations firms and lobbyists who have a stake in opposing President Obama’s reforms.

The lobbyist-run groups Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, which orchestrated the anti-Obama tea parties earlier this year, are now pursuing an aggressive strategy to create an image of mass public opposition to health care and clean energy reform. A leaked memo from Bob MacGuffie, a volunteer with the FreedomWorks website Tea Party Patriots, details how members should be infiltrating town halls and harassing Democratic members of Congress....

Hopefully they'll be as prepared for that as leadership has tried to make them with all the district-specific talking points they'll need. Meanwhile, the three committee chairs will work together to iron out differences from the three committee bills. That effort should include reconsidering the timeline for implementation of the good parts of the bill -- like the public option -- and the ending of things like exclusion based on pre-existing conditions ending before 2013. The CPC and other liberal caucuses are going to have their work cut out for them fighting to change that timeline.

Then there's the Senate, which remains in session this week. Gawd only knows what the week will bring, but it's highly unlikely to be a bill out of Finance, given all the missed deadlines thus far. Nonetheless, here's the latest promise from Baucus, well, as of Friday, anyway:

The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, has told colleagues he will press ahead with major health care legislation on Sept. 15 even if he does not have a bipartisan deal, Democrats said.

Given the nasty turn from Enzi and Grassley, and now the guy who dropped out of Baucus's negotiation group, Orrin Hatch, that's probably inevitable. If Baucus is actually capable of learning from experience. It's not as though his Republican buddies have made any bones whatsoever about making real reform a priority. They couldn't be more clear in their intent to kill it. It's official RNC policy, for chrissakes.

He's also got a lot of grumbling coming from what is ostensibly his side of the aisle. Leading the charge has been Jay Rockefeller, who first went public with his anger that SCHIP would be cut under the proposed Baucus Committee legislation. Then he took aim at the co-op option that the committee seems to have decided on as a substitute for a real public option. The only person that seems to really be committed to co-ops is Kent Conrad, who is spending an inordinate amount of time and energy trying to convince everyone that the public option is dead. Baucus's troubles don't end there. There's actual public discussion by Democratic Senators about taking his chairmanship away. In Senate-land, that's big news.

Finally, in case you missed it, here's some required reading on this whole process. In fact, here's an assignment: print it out and take it to a town meeting with your Senator or representative. It's Jonathon Alter's What's Not to Like?

I like the status quo on health care in the United States. I've got health insurance and I don't give a damn about the 47 million suckers who don't. Obama and Congress must be stopped. No bill! I'm better off the way things are....

Why should I be entitled to the same insurance that members of Congress get? Blue Dogs need a lot of medical attention to treat their blueness. I'm just a regular guy and definitely deserve less....

I prefer the status quo, where the for-profit insurance companies suck at the teat of the federal government. Corporate welfare's what we've got, and it's a damn good system. Through a wonderful program called Medicare Advantage, the insurance companies receive hundreds of billions of dollars in fees to administer a program that the government is already running. Don't touch that baby. You'd be messing with the handiwork of some fine lobbyists....

So tell your congressmen and senators when they're home for the summer recess that it's too soon to address this issue. We've only been debating it for 97 years, since Theodore Roosevelt put national health insurance in the Bull Moose Party platform of 1912. We've only had 745 congressional hearings on the subject (I made that number up, but it's got to be close). That's not enough! Let's study this problem more before we do anything about it.

Tagged as: health insurance, max baucus, blue dogs, jay rockefeller, jonathan alter, americans for prosperity, kent conrad, public option, healthcare reform, freedomworks