That Troublesome 20 Percent

Andrew Samwick has some questions about the idea that everyone agrees on eighty percent of what needs to be done:

I broke in a new plasma television on the President’s speech this evening, so I couldn’t help but think that he looked and sounded great. The line that jumped out at me was, “there is agreement in this chamber on about eighty percent of what needs to be done.” If that is really the case, then why not pass the legislation that specified exactly that eighty percent? Everyone could declare victory and go home. What is in the other twenty percent that is essential to the President but on which there is not broad agreement in Congress?

Either the statement is not true, or some of what the President is pushing for — the individual mandate, the employer pay-or-play, the measures to cut costs in Medicare, or the Medicare-for-a-premium public option — is not subject to that broad agreement. I think the public option and employer pay-or-play are the most contentious, and I did not hear anything in this speech that set the stage for easier negotiations on those topics. That is still to come, and it will likely happen in a conference committee, complete with all of the backroom deals that we’ve come to expect from Capitol Hill.

Several points:

One: Members of the minority may think something is a good idea, but not want to vote for it anyway out of political opportunism.

Two: Members of the majority may want to pass some stuff that not everyone agrees with; after all they won the election!

Three: A lot of what’s in the 20 percent amounts to disagreement about how to pay for stuff in the 80 percent, so you can’t do the 80 percent without resolving the 20 percent.

Four: A lot of folks who might agree with the vast majority of the bill are nonetheless saying they won’t vote for it unless the public option is dropped from the bill, thus holding the 80 percent hostage to maybe 5 percent of the total package.

And that’s the problem.