is it time to vote "present"?

As I understand it, the ideological problem with the healthcare bill currently before the Senate is that it's "too liberal" for about five Democrats, including Olympia Snowe.  It's costly, it subsidizes abortions, and it includes a public option.

Now, the liberals' goal is to sweeten the overall bill, by amending it, just enough to get those Dems onboard.  That's not many votes to add to the bill, but it will take 51 votes to pass each amendment.  So the question is where those votes are going to come from. 

Who will provide the 51 votes necessary to satisfy Joe Lieberman, who says he will not vote for a public option in any form?  Who will provide the 51 votes to limit abortion funding to the satisfaction of Ben Nelson?  I don't think the Republicans should be helping the Dems get this bill over those hurdles.

It can be argued that, in the House, principled conservative votes in favor of the Stupak Amendment resulted in a bill that satisfied enough Democrats to pass a bill Republicans overwhelmingly opposed.  And that's debatable, since at least one Dem -- Stupak -- reportedly would have voted for the bill in exchange for just getting the amendment to the floor.  And, had House Republicans voted "present" on Stupak, it's possible that Nancy Pelosi could have rallied enough Dems willing to pass Stupak as simply part of the price of passing the entire bill.

Let's see how this could work in the Senate.  There are 100 Senators, ranging from liberal to conservative.  Obviously the most conservative are Republicans, while the most liberal are Democrats.

Suppose Ben Nelson introduces an amendment to limit abortion funding.  If, say, 36 of the 40 Republicans supported it on principle, plus the 5 Democrat holdouts, then of the 55 remaining Democrats only 10 would have to sign on for the amendment to pass. 45 liberals get to protect their "pro-choice" visages, while principled Republicans move the bill one Democrat closer to getting passed.  Sound familiar?

But now let's assume, instead, that 38 GOP Senators voted "present" on the same amendment.  Even with 2 Republicans supporting the amendment on principle, plus the 5 swing-vote Dems, it would still take 44 of the 55 most liberal Democrats to pass the amendment.  Only 11 Democrats could vote "pro-choice," and all the rest would have to cast (and later defend) an abortion-limiting vote.

It would almost be worth losing, just to see it happen.  Delicious.

And the Republicans could force the same pressure to amend the public option, and to address Medicare cuts and tax hikes, etc., before the Dems could reach the critical mass necessary for cloture.

But the best part is that, whatever bill came out of this circus, it would be hung entirely on Democrat necks.  It's hard imagine a more principled strategy, as a conservative, than letting the Democrats be solely responsible for the nightmare that's sure to follow.

All of this has to be tempered by the fact that the bill which emerges from the conference committee will bear little resemblance to the one that passes cloture in the Senate.  And that works two ways -- both favoring a GOP "present" strategy. 

First, numerous House and Senate committees massaged various versions of different bills, and in the end Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid worked with the White House to determine what actually made it to the floors of their respective chambers.  Even now, what's before the Senate does not resemble what Max Baucus handed up from the Finance Committee.  Similarly, what passes the Senate is only remotely related to what will come out of conference.  Why should Republicans do the heavy lifting to shape a bill that's just going to have Democrat fingerprints on it when it comes back from committee?  Republicans have no say in the final bill, and there's nothing to gain by participating in the sausage-making.

And this is important because, no matter what happens to abortion and the public option now, those features are going back in during the Democrats-only conference. Liberals can't say no to abortion, and as I've said repeatedly this whole exercise is about the public option.  There is no bill without it -- that's what they're here for.  It's the only thing that matters.  Token votes now to take it out will serve only to advance the bill past the Senate, where it will be put back in.  The Dems will own the final product; they might as well own it all the way through the process.

Let the Democrats do the work of passing it now -- because they're only going to be putting all the worst parts back in during the conference committee anyway.  And they'll have a lot more to explain if they do it all themselves.

Comments

[Dagny Taggart]

Every time a Democrat compromises their beliefs an angel gets its wings.

[Tim Mitchell]

It would be great if we can vote our way out of this fascist dilemma or elect enough conservatives to vote for us. Just in case...

We’d best learn to provide for ourselves and rely less on the state. The best way to defeat the military-industrial complex is to make it unnecessary and unwanted. Asking leviathan to make us safe, healthy, and of equal outcome means asking for and deserving our own destruction. Obama is the Boogeyman we have been waiting for.

This debate du jour over health care is merely about the specs of the Trojan health care horses to be built from OPM and delivered within the walls of our states and homes.

No good bill is possible, nothing good comes from the federal OPM den. All bring about a government who pays for your health care. Once that occurs, nearly every individual action you take affects your health, and therefore falls under their purview, since they are paying for your health.

Like John Galt, we must travel the paths that leads to de-legitimization of our attempted slave owners. Slavery begins with the self and no external circumstance can free us.

"Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice." - H. L. Mencken

“I would refuse to vote against Hitler. Because the essential problem is not Hitler, but the institutional framework that allows a Hitler to grasp a monopoly on power. Without the state to back him up and an election to give him legitimized power, Hitler would have been--at most--the leader of some ragged thugs who mugged people in back alleys. Voting for or against Hitler only strengthens the institutional framework that produced him--a framework that would produce another of his ilk in two seconds." W. McElroy.