Conrad: Just Like Specter, I’m Still Opposed To Using Budget Reconciliation To Pass Health Care
Conrad: Just Like Specter, I’m Still Opposed To Using Budget Reconciliation To Pass Health Care
Yesterday on MSNBC’s Ed Show, host Ed Schultz noted that despite his new role as a member of the Democratic caucus, Sen. Arlen Specter (PA) still opposed using the budget reconciliation process to get around a likely Republican filibuster of health care reform. In response, Shultz’s guest, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND), acknowledged that he also opposed the use of the budget reconciliation process to pass health care reform — even as an “insurance policy”:
SCHULTZ: I know that you too [are opposed to] reconciliation. Is this at odds with most democrats? Break that down for us.
CONRAD: I can say this. In the conference committee, I was clearly outvoted. You had the Speaker of the House, the Majority Leader of the Senate, the President of the United States all believing that it should at least be an insurance policy.
Conrad said further that he doesn’t believe that the process “works very well” and that he expected to try to pass health care reform via the “regular Senate process.” Watch it:
If Conrad is committed to health care reform, he would do well to support the use of the reconciliation process, should it be necessary. Indeed, as he himself argued last fall, “[I]f we as a society fail to control health care costs, there will be a detrimental effect on our nation’s economy and standard of living.”
Keeping reconciliation on the table does not preclude using the “regular Senate process” that Conrad prefers. To make use of that regular process requires that congressional Republicans negotiate health care reform in good faith. But as Igor Volsky explains, Republicans have shown in recent months that they have no intention of doing so:
Key Republicans voted against the popular SCHIP legislation, eight Republican senators (including health care heavy weights Grassely and Hatch) voted [in committee] against Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ nomination to head the Department of Health and Human Service, Republicans misrepresented the intent of health information technology and comparative effectiveness research in the stimulus…and have already taken the public [health plan] option off the table.
Matthew Yglesias comes to a similar conclusion, writing that Republicans appear to be making empty promises of cooperation in an attempt to convince Democrats like Conrad to “unilaterally abjure procedural methods and revenue sources that would make reform possible.”
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negotiate health care reform in good faith = negotiate economic stimulus package in good faith with Rethugicans(we all know how well that went)
In other words, IT AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN
April 29th, 2009 at 1:36 pmJust like most progressives , I’m opposed to you , a Senator from one of the least populated states in the entire country , trying to determine the course of the country or trying to put the brakes on Obama’s agenda ………….
April 29th, 2009 at 1:36 pmIf I’m totally opposed to use a bill on one topic to leverage another topic, then I’m totally against amendments and riders….Right ?
What is this guy smoking ?
April 29th, 2009 at 1:40 pmhow sad to be an american the only idustrialized nation in the world that does not have universal health care.
instead we wasted our treasure on our industrial military complex to be the bully in the world.
we will pay a heavy price for our selfishness and putting profits over people.
many of these repubs that oppose health care for all claim to be christians.
it appears to me that christianity died on the cross.
wars over the needs of our people will bankrupt this country.
hey it already has.
afghan will be obama’s vietnam as he is making the same mistakes as LBJ and listening to his generals whose paradigms are to fight these wars for profits.
sad day in america. sad to watch your country fold like a deck of cards.
April 29th, 2009 at 1:48 pmKent Conrad accepted $127,000 from for-profit healthcare PAC’s the last two election cycles.
Senators Max Baucus (D-MT) and Kent Conrad (D-ND) will have a huge say on health care reform. Both senators accept donations from for-profit health care companies with no, as in zero, facilities in their state. Max accepted over $230,000 in donations from 31 of the 32 corporate PACs, while Kent took $127,000 from 26.
http://stateofthedivision.blogspot.com/2009/04/key-senators-to-imprint-health-care.html
April 29th, 2009 at 1:57 pmWhen people representing .3% of the American electorate speak: people fall asleep. Conrad is paintdryingly boring and deserves a Makeover Day/Week. Remind this guy who he’s dealing with as he seems to have forgotten. He’ll never get the Repubs to come around unless he has a blackjack in his briefcase.
April 29th, 2009 at 1:57 pmIf the Wyden-Bennett plan is any indication of health care reform, private for-profit healthcare wins. Wonk Room posted on it yesterday. Read the bill. It’s an implementation and enforcement nightmare.
Europeans must be shaking their heads at how complex we make things to satisfy the profit motive.
April 29th, 2009 at 2:00 pmWe need universal health care. Health care should not be a money making project. The insurance and drug companies oppose this because they want to make lots of money. Meanwhile, people suffer. Congress stand up to these people.
April 29th, 2009 at 2:02 pmThere are almost 50 million people without health insurance and this is just not right.
If single-payer is off the table then that isn’t really health care reform. If pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, and only health care professionals are the only ones seated at the table….that isn’t negotiating in good faith. Where are the folks who lost their health care because they lost their job, where is our seat at the table? These mealy-mouthed ninnies in Congress in the Democratic Party….apart from the 78 or so that have signed onto H.R. 676 are so disingenuous…it really stinks to high heaven!!!
April 29th, 2009 at 2:10 pmKent, let me remind you, that this president was elected by the people of the United States, to do a job rebuilding this nation.
April 29th, 2009 at 2:16 pmGet on board, or your constituents will get you out of the way.
Hmm … donations from health companies that don’t even service his state. No wonder he’s for continuing the state of non-existent health care for 45 million + the recession’s uninsured.
April 29th, 2009 at 2:30 pmAs the majority, we are entitled to the same legislative tactics the republicans used. In fact, using their tactics may be the only way to repair the damage done to our country. We can’t settle for watered down legislation amended down for a 60th vote, in effect preserving the status quo.
April 29th, 2009 at 2:39 pmRepublican theme song for all occasions:
I don’t know what they have to say,
It makes no difference anyway,
Whatever it is, I’m against it.
No matter what it is or who commenced it,
I’m against it.
Your proposition may be good,
But let’s have one thing understood,
Whatever it is, I’m against it.
And even when you’ve changed it or condensed it,
I’m against it.
I’m opposed to it,
On general principle, I’m opposed to it.
[chorus] He’s opposed to it.
In fact, indeed, that he’s opposed to it!
For months before my son was born,
April 29th, 2009 at 2:47 pmI used to yell from night to morn,
Whatever it is, I’m against it.
And I’ve kept yelling since I first commenced it,
I’m against it!
Hey guys, let’s all beat up on the one and only Democrat who can hold a North Dakota Senate seat.
Good plan you have there.
Sometimes you people here are as bad as the idiots on the right who were glad to see Specter leave the GOP.
April 29th, 2009 at 2:52 pmHealth care reform should be one of the administration’s top priorities. But at the same time, we should realize that health care here is much better than in most of the world. It is in the best interest of the U.S. to not only look after its own citizens but also to help the health and therefore the productivity of those in developing nations. The U.S. should be doing way more to address the Millennium Development Goals. The plan to end world hunger has been getting seriously ignored.
$30 billion: Annual shortfall to end world hunger.
$550 billion: U.S. Defense budget.
(source: borgenproject.org.)
April 29th, 2009 at 3:20 pmSkeeter1, wake up and smell what’s cooking. This Conrad character can be replaced. No ONE should have the much power over so many who need health care.
April 29th, 2009 at 3:33 pmRuling out any option up front that might give you leverage over the opposition is just bad politics. It’s one thing to take a principled stand that reconciliation would be an ugly way to accomplish health care reform and should be a last resort. That actually puts pressure on your opponents to cooperate, because they realize that you’re going to do it regardless and they can either cooperate in the legislative process or get steamrolled during reconciliation. Or at least it would put pressure if your opponents were sane and actually had the interests of their constituents at heart.
April 29th, 2009 at 3:44 pmAm I mistaken that some years ago when Bush decided to revise Medicare, he said, “THERE WILL BE NO NEGOTIATION WITH THE PHARMAs ON THE COSTS OF MEDICINES”? In other words, the American people will get skrewed since they are not allowed to get their meds from Canada due to non-approval from the FDA! So tell me, what’s changed?
It’s the same thing here. Without keeping reconciliation as a backup [just in case the GOP pulled the same crap they pulled with the stimulus], there is no way that health care reform would be forthcoming.
Fool me once, shame on you – fool me twice, shame on me!
April 29th, 2009 at 4:23 pmUpcoming important bill will get zero Republican votes, just like all other important bills. Downside to reconciliation? None. Upside? Zero Republican votes don’t matter. Are they willing to negotiate in good faith? Nope. OK. Reconciliation it is.
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