01:21 pm
“It’s Not Easy to Become a Law, Is It?”
I don’t have much to add on the House passing both the Senate and reconciliation versions of the health care bill — I will leave that to those, like Ezra Klein, who have been so ably and brilliantly following this from the start.
That said, I would note that for all the talk of the compromises and deals that came and went throughout the process, what Schoolhouse Rock said 35 (ack) years ago is still true: “It’s not easy to become a law, is It?” That is true when the task is fairly straightforward and simple, but even more true when talking about as massive an undertaking as health care reform has turned out to be.
Many commentators are adopting their usual binary perspective — Democrats win, Republicans lose, Democrats benefit, Republicans hurt, Obama wins, Republicans lose, blah blah blah. The reality is that it’s not as simple as that: some Dems will lose their seats over this, but others will retain theirs. And I think Republicans, as David Frum has so brilliantly argued, don’t yet realize the damage they’ve done to their long-term prospects as a political party.
One last observation: I hope that the success of this legislation does not diminish the Democrats’ ardor for systemic reform, particularly in the Senate. The structural roadblocks that almost killed this legislation still exist, and it’s time to find a way to end the ability of a near super-minority (no one ever thinks about it that way, do they) to obstruct legislation for the sake of obstruction.
I would suggest that the place to begin is with confirmations of judges and executive appointees. “Advise and Consent” has degenerated into Hold and Pontificate ad infinitum. As someone who helped organize the anti-Bolton campaign, I used to loooooove the filibuster — it kept Bolton from ever getting confirmed. But I think the reality is that a President should have the right to name his/her people to office — even if those people have manifestly different world views.