Okay, I replaced the words “Health Care” with “Climate Change” in the headline borrowed from the second lead story of the Washington Post today. But the sausage-making-ain’t-pretty message of that story is d©j vu all over again:
The Obama administration, hoping to boost its health-care reform effort with financial concessions from the hospital and pharmaceutical industries, is instead confronting deep dissension on several fronts within Democratic ranks and possible defections among key constituencies….
No single development appeared likely to kill Obama’s signature domestic agenda item, but the relentless barrage of challenges that seemed to hit hourly served to demonstrate why no president since Lyndon B. Johnson has been able to enact large-scale health legislation.
From the outset, Obama has declined to dictate the details of a health-care bill to Congress, but he and his most trusted advisers have worked aggressively to shape its parameters and build political support. At the core of their strategy has been a series of side agreements aimed at extracting revenue, neutralizing potential adversaries and signaling to lawmakers that when the difficult votes come, they will have the political cover of industry support.
Sound familiar?
Passing transformational legislation of any kind is very hard nowadays. No president has ever been able to pass large-scale climate legislation. Indeed, no president has been able to pass large-scale environmental legislation of any kind for two decades, since the GOP became the party of anti-conservation. As I wrote last month (see “The political surprise of the year: Health care reform is tougher than climate action“):
Yes, I know that many progressives are rightfully unhappy with the compromises that have been made in the Waxman-Markey climate and clean energy bill. But all I can say is, wait until you see the compromises that will be made to pass a deficit-neutral health care bill. Such is life inside the Washington DC beltway when one entire political party is not just dead set against all efforts to solve the nation’s major problems, but demagogues against the most important strategies. That sharply narrows the political space in which action can take place.
I expect there will be a lot more unhappiness among progressives and enviros as the Waxman-Markey climate and clean energy House bill morphs into something that can beat a Senate filibuster. Still, it is quite remarkable to see Waxman himself reject parts of Obama’s healthcare dealmaking:
Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), lead House architect of the landmark health legislation, warned yesterday that he is not obligated to abide by deals struck recently by the White House, Senate Finance Committee, industry executives and interest groups such as AARP.
“The White House is not bound. They tell us they’re not bound by that agreement,” Waxman, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said at a National Journal breakfast. “We’re certainly not bound by that agreement. The White House was involved, and we were not.”
Waxman’s comments came amid several other warning signs for the administration, including a slipping timetable in the Senate, internal division in the hospital industry and mounting tensions between AARP and the pharmaceutical industry that threaten a temporary detente between the two negotiated last month by the White House.
I would give Obama a B- so far for his efforts on behalf of moving climate legislation forward — see Tom Friedman: Obama “is going to have to mobilize the whole country to pressure the Senate “” by educating Americans, with speech after speech, about the opportunities and necessities of a serious climate/energy bill”¦.” But what health care reform makes clear is that even when he is aggressively engaged and barnstorming on an issue, that is no guarantee of a vastly superior outcome.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
While the polls show that a majority of Americans agree that global warming is a problem, the severeity of the problem hasn’t been highlighted due to climate change deniers pushing back on Al Gore and the IPCC through a campaign of misinformation and obsfucation. What Obama needs to do is take the bully pulpit and deliberately lay out how tackling climate change is a way to make America not just energy independent but energy secure. The reason why America is so heavily vested in the Middle East is because we’re dependent on fossil fuels. A clean energy economy not only makes us free from the politics of the Middle East but also gives us a leg up over rising powers like China who seek to dominate renewable energy technology to overtake the US economy in the future.
Viewed from this angle, tackling climate change is the prudent policy not to just prevent sea level rise but to maintain American security.
for more, check out climatesecurity.blogspot.com
Obama, and both democratically controlled houses of congress are going to be in for a rude awakening for the mid terms if they don’t go out to bat for a strong, Medicare-like public option to be included in the final draft of this legislation. I appreciate President Obamas support and advocacy for the public option. That has been consistent. However, this program, if poorly designed, can function as a poison pill for health-care reform, souring the public’s appetite for government-managed health care coverage for a generation or more. Same can be said about Waxman Markey.
Hypothetical scenario: Obama gets his way and there’s a strict funding limitation on the public option, with the program confined to funding via premiums and copays after small initial start-up funding. Couple that with individual mandates, and there’s the risk of the public being forced to purchase a product from a chronically underfunded, poorly-managed public option or a marginally better private insurer. As they always say Joe, the devil is in the details. I have disagreed from the beginning with Obamas contention that the public option should be designed from the vantage point of what private insurers consider “fair” competition. We shouldn’t care about that. We should care about creating an insurance product attractive and accessible to as many people as possible, with no congressionally-mandated restrictions on taxpayers being allowed to supplement our own program as we supplement Medicare.
I’m not thrilled with Obamas statements here.
The public option can be designed to kill the public’s trust that the government can successfully administer certain programs, or it can be designed to kill the most worthless portions of the money-draining private insurance industry. Looks as if Obama is inadvertently leaning towards the former design, and it’s unacceptable.