“Democrats kill the public option.”
Well, the public option lives beyond the Senate Finance Committee. But that headline should still give chills to anyone who thought that a Democratic supermajority guaranteed us the passage of progressive legislation.
The problem, after all, is not in our foes but in our own party. It is in Max Baucus, chair of the finance committee, the Montana “Democrat” who seems far more concerned with the wishes of one Republican, Olympia Snowe, than with the wishes of the large majority of the party that put him in office. It is in Blanche Lincoln, the Senator from the great state of Wal-Mart—I mean Arkansas—and Kent Conrad, from North Dakota.
While voting to kill two public options proposed by Jay Rockefeller and Chuck Schumer, respectively, Conrad voted for an amendment by Orrin Hatch that would require women to buy separate insurance to provide abortions—ironic in that most women don’t actually plan to have abortions before becoming pregnant—and Lincoln joined him and the committee’s Republicans to reinstate federal funding for abstinence-only education. The message? The government’s job isn’t to provide care for its citizens, but to tell them how to behave in the bedroom.
”As I’ve said before, I see a lot to like in a public option. There’s a lot here. I included, for example, a public option in the white paper that I released last year. And the public option would help to hold insurance companies’ feet to the fire. I don’t think there’s much doubt about that. But my first job is to get this bill across the finish line. There’s a lot in this bill that will reform the insurance market. There’s a lot in this bill that will control costs. And there’s a lot in this bill that would expand coverage to millions of Americans. Those things have to be my priority, and thus I’ll have to vote no today on this amendment.”
Yet Baucus, one of 60 Democrats (well, 58 Democrats, one Socialist and Joe Lieberman), voted against giving the public option even the chance on the Senate floor. He killed it himself before someone else could, after making a case that it would be the only way to bring down costs.
The only logical explanation for that twisted logic is that Baucus doesn’t want a public option because it would force insurance companies to lower costs. That might cut into the $363,850 they’ve given him this campaign cycle alone, despite the fact that Baucus was reelected this past year and won’t have to campaign again until 2014. $45,250 came from Aetna and another $41,100 from Blue Cross, Blue Shield. So, Max, whose interests do you really have at heart?
How about Blanche Lincoln? Well, despite a clear majority of Lincoln’s constituents supporting a public option, including 22% of Republicans, Lincoln’s votes show her also more interested in the so-called health care industry’s right to profit. Why would that be—could it be the $153,304 from the pharmaceutical industry?
Kent Conrad clocks in at a healthy $112,015 from health insurance companies, $138,430 from hospitals, and $157,700 from the pharmaceutical industry. His top donor is DaVita, Inc., which provides dialysis services to people with chronic kidney disease.
Yet Jay Rockefeller has a healthy chunk of cash ($104,050) coming in from insurance companies as well, and Chuck Schumer isn’t exactly hurting, though he gets most of his money from the financial industry (not surprising for the senior senator from New York). They both are fighting hard for a public option. So who else is twisting Baucus’s arm to make sure we don’t get the public option he says he supports, along with 77% of the American people?
Amy Goodman at Democracy Now! notes of Baucus, “His chief health adviser, Elizabeth Fowler, is a former executive for the insurance giant WellPoint. His previous chief health adviser, Michelle Easton, now lobbies for WellPoint.”
Other senators not quite so tied to insurance companies have vowed to fight on for a public option—Russ Feingold released a statement vowing to work to include a public option when the bill hits the Senate floor—and whatever comes out of the Senate will have to be merged with a House bill expected to be much more progressive. Yet with the supposed magic filibuster-proof number in the Senate, why are we still watching Democrats tying themselves in logical knots to justify voting against a central tenet of a popular president’s campaign?
George W. Bush pushed through his tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 using budget reconciliation, which is filibuster-proof and would only need 50 votes. (Even so, he got support from “Democrats” like Ben Nelson of Nebraska, one of the senators threatening to torpedo a health care bill with a public option.) The fact that Democrats are unwilling to attempt to push through a bill that has large majority support from the American public is a colossal failure of nerve and shows just how cowed the party has become.
But the real failures of the Democratic party started when it decided to open itself up to the money that would start flowing if it just voted a little bit more “pro-business.” Democrats are caught between the lure of money on one hand and the fear that their Republican opponents will be even better funded if they turn their backs on the cash on the other.
Naomi Klein is right when she calls campaign finance reform as the top issue of our time. Until there is an equitable way to pay for campaigns, candidates will always be beholden to big corporations that can afford to drop a couple of million the way everyday people can drop $5. And we’ll always hear our congresspeople and president defending the right of a massive industry to profit rather than the right of all Americans to receive health care.
All donation amounts come from OpenSecrets.org. I urge everyone to check it out for themselves.