Conservatives Attack Health Bill Passage As A ‘Gift That Keeps On Taking,’ Threaten To Take Down X-Mas Tree

By Amanda Terkel

Early this morning, the Senate passed comprehensive health care reform legislation by a vote of 60-39 — with Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) not voting — ending more than four weeks of acrimonious floor debate. “This morning is not the end of the process,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) reminded progressives dissatisfied with the Senate bill. “It’s only the beginning.” Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV), the longest serving federal lawmaker in U.S. history, cast his vote saying, “Mr. President, this is for my friend Ted Kennedy. Aye.” Watch highlights compiled by Igor Volsky at the Wonk Room:

As CAP President and CEO John Podesta noted, health care reform “would extend health care coverage to a record 31 million Americans who are currently uninsured, bringing the total insured population to 94 percent.” However, every single Republican opposed the legislation. RNC Chairman Michael Steele immediately put out a statement blasting the legislation as a “gift that keeps on taking”:

This morning, as millions of Americans prepared to gather with their families in celebration of Christmas, President Obama and Harry Reid gathered with their liberal allies in celebration of government. Mr. Reid and company honored President Obama’s Christmas wish for increased federal control and passed their government-run health care experiment out of the Senate. [...]

As we move forward, America can look forward to watching Nancy Pelosi conduct the arm-twisting needed to convince her most liberal colleagues that the Senate version is the best Trojan horse possible to hide a true single payer system, which is what this debate has always been about. This Christmas, the Democrats and President Obama have given America the one gift that keeps on taking.

Conservatives have been aggressively trying to portray health care reform as an assault on Christmas and Christian values. Fox News even said that senators voting against reform are doing so because they understand “the true meaning of Christmas.” Today on the floor, Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) said that Americans would be getting “a lump of coal” this Christmas. Apparently, this meme is catching on. TPM notes that today on C-SPAN, a caller — “Bunny” from Kansas — was so upset over the health care bill’s passage that she said she would be taking down all her Christmas decorations. “I have taken my Christmas wreath off my house. I have taken all the lights down,” she said. “This is supposed to be a nation under God, and it isn’t. They absolutely have ruined Christmas.” Watch it (at approximately 45:00):

After the passage of the historic bill, President Obama said, “As I’ve said before, these are not small reforms; these are big reforms. If passed, this will be the most important piece of social policy since the Social Security Act in the 1930s, and the most important reform of our health care system since Medicare passed in the 1960s. And what makes it so important is not just its cost savings or its deficit reductions. It’s the impact reform will have on Americans who no longer have to go without a checkup or prescriptions that they need because they can’t afford them; on families who no longer have to worry that a single illness will send them into financial ruin; and on businesses that will no longer face exorbitant insurance rates that hamper their competitiveness.”

DeMint And Ensign Look To Right-Wing Think Tanks Rather Than Judges To Interpret The Constitution

By Ian Millhiser Sens. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and John Ensign (R-NV) announced yesterday that they would invoke an unusual Senate procedure — a “constitutional point of order” — to allow the Senate to rule by majority vote on whether the “Democrat health care takeover bill” is unconstitutional.

Significantly, neither DeMint nor Ensign cite a single judge, justice or reputable constitutional scholar who believes that health reform is unconstitutional. Instead, they rely entirely on a study by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, a radical “tenther” organization which has endorsed the view that Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the federal minimum wage, and the federal ban on workplace discrimination and whites-only lunch counters are all unconstitutional. Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), rebuts DeMint and Ensign’s constitutional claim by citing numerous constitutional scholars — including right-wing law professor Jonathan Adler — who all agree that health reform is constitutional. Moreover, as ThinkProgress has previously explained, even ultra-conservative Justice Antonin Scalia disagrees with the tenther attack on health reform.

Sadly, DeMint and Ensign’s attempt to change the meaning of the Constitution by invoking a constitutional point of order is an all too familiar tactic. As CQ reports, Republicans often invoke this procedure to claim that bills they don’t like must therefore be unconstitutional. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) recently invoked the procedure to claim that a $200,000 federal grant to an Omaha, Neb. museum somehow violated the constitution. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) used it to protest a bill to enfranchise D.C. residents.

Raising a constitutional point of order is also the first step to invoking the so-called “nuclear option,” an elaborate set of procedural maneuvers Republicans dreamed up while they were still in the majority, that effectively declare the filibuster unconstitutional. Indeed, despite the fact that Ensign and DeMint now claim the right to filibuster anything the majority does, both senators believed the filibuster must be unconstitutional when it was being used against them. Ensign claimed that the Senate has a “constitutional obligation” to give President Bush’s most radical judicial nominees an “up-or-down” vote, and DeMint had even harsher words for Democratic senators who opposed majority rule:

The obstructionists should go to the Senate floor, make their arguments, allow senators to draw their conclusions on her nomination and then let us vote. If their arguments are so strong, they should be able to convince a majority to agree. Otherwise, they are simply smearing the integrity of a highly respected jurist to score political points against the president, at the expense of vandalizing the Constitution. . . .

There is a reason Americans elected George W. Bush and a large Republican majority in Congress. The majority of Americans trusted our judgment on judicial nominees. There is also a reason Democrats are in the minority. Most Americans did not trust them to make these decisions.

Now that DeMint and Ensign are in the minority, however, it simply must be the case that the Constitution protects minority obstructionism–and that bills opposed by the minority are unconstitutional.

The Progressive Case For Passing The Senate Health Bill

Note: I don't agree with this 100% but I understand.. By John Podesta Since Joe Lieberman demanded stripping the public option and Medicare buy-in provisions from the merged Senate bill, some strong progressives like Howard Dean have argued that without a public option or a Medicare buy-in provision, the bill is a giveaway to private insurers and should be killed. Other progressive leaders like Senators Jay Rockefeller, Tom Harkin and Sherrod Brown believe that the bill represents the best chance for passing health care reform in the foreseeable future. “I’m going to vote for it,” Brown told reporters. “I can’t imagine I wouldn’t. I mean there’s too much at stake.”

Change of the magnitude envisioned by health care reformers does not come easily. There have been many frustrations and there will be more. But, as a senior White House staffer with a ringside seat for the slow death of comprehensive care in 1994, I am keenly aware of the real alternative to the bills now before us: millions more Americans without health care and billions more for health care spending as the same challenges President Clinton tried to resolve continue to metastasize unchecked.

So while I have great respect for Governor Dean, and we have worked together to provide the strongest health care reform bill for the American people, I come down on the side of the Senate passing the bill.

Here’s why:

The Senate health care bill is not without its problems. But if enacted, it would represent the most significant public reform of our health care system that Congress has passed in the 40 plus years I have worked in politics. The bill will give health care coverage to a record 31 million Americans who are currently uninsured, lay a foundation that will begin to lower costs for millions of families, and provide all Americans with the access to adequate and dependable coverage when they need it most.

All of us are anxious to see the final language from the Senate. And a final bill must ensure that the subsidies provided are sufficient to make insurance truly affordable for working families. But based on what we know, here are my top ten reasons for why progressives should support the Senate passing the bill:

1. Largest Expansion Of Coverage Since Medicare’s Creation: Thirty-one million previously uninsured Americans will have insurance.

2. Low/Middle Income Americans Will Not Go Without Coverage: For low-income Americans struggling near the poverty line, the bill represents the largest single expansion of Medicaid since its inception. Combined with subsidies for middle income families, the bill’s provisions will ensure that working class Americans will no longer go without basic health care coverage.

3. Insurance Companies Will Never Be Able to Drop or Deny You Coverage Because You Are Sick: Insurers can no longer deny coverage because of a pre-existing condition. They can’t rescind coverage or impose lifetime or annual limits on care. Significantly, the bill also ends insurer discrimination against women — who currently pay as much as 48% more for coverage than men — and gives them access preventive services with no cost sharing.

4. Lowers Premiums For Families: The Senate bill could lower premiums for the overall population by 8.4%. For the subsidized population, premiums would decrease even more dramatically. According to the CBO, “the amount that subsidized enrollees would pay for non-group coverage would be roughly 56 percent to 59 percent lower, on average than the nongroup premiums charged under current law.”

5. Invests in Keeping People Healthy: The bill creates a Prevention and Public Health Fund to expand and sustain funding for public prevention programs that prevent disease and promote wellness.

6. Insurers Can’t Offer Subprime Health Care: Insurers operating in the individual and small group markets will no longer sell subprime policies that deny coverage when illness strikes and you need it most. Everyone will be offered an essential benefits package of comprehensive benefits.

7. Helps Businesses Afford Coverage: Small employers can take advantage of large risk pools by purchasing coverage through the bill’s state-based exchanges. Employers with no more than 25 employees would receive a tax credit to help them provide coverage to their employees. The bill also establishes a temporary reinsurance program for employers providing coverage to retirees over the age of 55 who are not eligible for Medicare.

8. Improves Medicare: The bill eliminates the waste and fraud in the Medicare system, gets rid of the special subsidy to private insurers participating in Medicare Advantage and extends the life of the Medicare trust fund by 9 years. It also closes the doughnut hole that affected 3.4 seniors enrolled in Medicare Part D in 2008.

9. Reduces The Deficit: Not only would the bill expand coverage to 30 million Americans without adding to the nation debt, it would also reduce the deficit by up to $409 billion over 10 years.

10. Reduces National Health Spending: A CAP-Commonwealth Fund analysis concludes the bill could reduce overall spending by close to $683 billion over 10 years – with the potential to save families $2,500. Even the most conservative government estimates conclude that the bill would reduce national health care expenditures by at least 0.3% by 2019.

MCL comment: I know progressive are ticked off at this bill, while I'm not a fan of this bill I don't fully blame President Obama (I blame Rham) for this bill turning out this way we have 3 Democratic senators plus Joe Lieberman who's standing in the way of meaning health care reform. They're standing in the way for two reasons one they're thinking about their political ass because they don't want to rally the conservative nut voters against them and two they're in bed with the health care industry in Joe Liberman's case he's really sleeping with the health care industry his wife is a lobbyist.

The point is liberals and Democrats can't get mad and take their ball home to momma at this point in the battle, if liberals sit home in the midterms the Republicans will win and any form of progress that's been made might as well never happen. You're going to punish those dems like Alan Grayson and Tom Harkin in the senate who's fighting the good fight, the Republicans don't care about doing what's best for the country all they care about is power and wealth for themselves and their allies.

If you want to focus your anger how about this go after Max Baucus, Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman and Mary Landeau when they're up for re-election and replace them with the next Alan Grayson because you're not helping anyone by helping the tea party pick and tea party approve Republican candidate win a senate or congressional seat by your "protest" non-vote next year.

Now if liberals and Democrats allow a mini 1994 to happen again and the tea party Republicans are allow to replay the Clinton years with non stop circle jerk off hearings into whatever the Obama white house do and shooting down things that are progressive you lose all right to complain.

And if Obama is a one term president because progressive are home with their balls I better not hear FireDog Lake, MoveOn.org, Huffington Post, Air America, Ed Schultz, Thom Hartman, Daily Kos, Democratic Underground and etc complain when President Sarah Palin wants to names her supreme court nominee. Change happens over time not two election cycles.