Question: If Obama is powerless to affect HCR, why did the unions negotiale with the WH?

[GOTV]

As is being reported, the WH is still making deals over HCR. Why do some insist Obama's a helpless victim in this HCR mess?

It's unfortunate that no one with deep pockets wants the public option.




White House, unions reach deal on taxing insurance coverage

Updated 3:00 p.m.
By Lori Montgomery and Michael D. Shear
The White House has reached a tentative agreement with labor leaders to tax high-cost health insurance policies, sources said Thursday. The agreement clears one of the last major obstacles on the path to final passage of comprehensive health care legislation.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/01/white-house-unions-reach-deal.html?wprss=44

[jgraz]

1. For the same reasons the drug lobbyists negotiated with the White House.

Because the whole "The President is a weak little bunny" canard is a bogus excuse.

Note how many apologists DON'T reply to this thread.

[Cleita]

3. Yep, I'm noticing. n/t

[mgcgulfcoast]

5. i am completely disgusted with this whole mess

i feel like the rich are being rewarded, particularly huge drug and health companies and the rest of us have to pay.

[CTyankee]

50. Well, the unions are protecting their own. ARe you surprised?

I don't like any of this but really, would you prefer a WEAKER labor union movement or not?

You may hate it, but that's the choice...

[bikingaz]

61. If HCR is so good, why fed employees, WH & Congress not on it

Hey if this is really a good deal, it should be mandatory for all federal employees, including all Congress & White House personnel & residents.

[SpartanDem]

2. Obama is not powerless

he also isn't all powerfull either I think that is the point some people are trying to make.

[jgraz]

8. We totally understand this.

When he's protecting his sweetheart deal with Billy Tauzin and Big Pharma, he's powerful. When it comes to protecting the middle class, his hands are suddenly tied by the Constitution.

[amborin]

32. +10000

[GOTV]

11. So who's more powerful? And why didn't the unions and drug companies go talk to that guy? nt

[SkyDaddy7]

47. It is pointless...

If out of the negotiations there were a public option then the public option would be the wrong kind. And on and on...It has become the "fad" to trash Obama. He will not satisfy or even come close unless he produces everything we want when they want it. Who can blame them I mean Obama has been in office for nearly a year and that is plenty of time to change everything & everyone's mind set in this country to all progressive thinking! Obama has had plenty of time to convince the entire country we progressives are correct but he has failed. Obama must be voted out and Sarah Palin must be voted in to teach Obama & the Dems a lesson.

Not that there would be a public option unless they turn a few Dem Senators which Obama does not have the power to do...Especially Lieberman! However, there are many here who think Obama is not using his jedi powers to force LIEberman & others to vote the way he wants so...

[sandnsea]

4. OFFS

Negotiating sticking points is a different matter than the fucking thick-headed idiots who think he can ram through anything he wants.

God I swear I don't know how this country got to be so wealthy with so many complete FOOLS in it.

[jgraz]

7. So explain how Obama was able to "ra(h)m through" the re-importation filibuster.

From here, it looks like Obama not only *can* get whatever he wants, he *is* getting whatever he wants: a bailout for his campaign funders from the health insurance industry.

[sandnsea]

29. The reimportation legislation was poorly written

for one, but more importantly, the people who can't afford US drugs ARE NOT going to be able to afford Canadian. They just are not cheap enough to resolve the medication problems for the people who have no coverage now. Further, Canada isn't going to be able to provide medication to their citizens if we reimport it all. It's not even a good band-aid. Finally, they negotiated huge benefits to close the donut hole for seniors, and Medicaid negotiates drug prices and is being expanded to 133%, VA negotiates drug prices, we got a lot from pharma.

Honestly, people have just got to THINK for themselves and stop listening to all this reactionary bullshit.

[jgraz]

34. I didn't ask you WHY, I asked HOW

If, as you say, Obama can't just ram through whatever he wants, how was he able to kill the Dorgan amendment? It was going to pass, Obama/Rahm intervened, then it suddenly was filibustered. How did that happen?

[sandnsea]

38. The vote was 51-48

A very mixed vote. McCaskill voted for it, and against the President according to your psycho scenario. Tester voted against it and he represents a border state that loves reimportation.

There is no conspiracy and nobody is ramming anything anywhere, well except FDL ramming bullshit all over the internet.

This Is How Government IS SUPPOSED TO WORK. Congress writes the laws, the President helps negotiate between the parties with an eye towards how the WHOLE country thinks.

To do what the left wants, Obama to create single payer with the stroke of a pen, now THAT would be Obama being like Bush. And I just do not understand what kind of mind is unable to see that.

[jgraz]

40. Yes, Obama flipped at least 9 votes to uphold the filibuster

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/15/doughnuts-for-dorgan-drug_n_393527.html
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/12/did_obama_pressure_fda_to_kill_drug_import_amendment.php

In the end, 30 Democrats voted to uphold the filibuster of their own amendment. Dorgan maintains that there were sufficient votes to pass it before the White House intervened.

[sandnsea]

42. They chose the Medicare Donut Hole

It's right there in your own links.

[jgraz]

46. How is that inconsistent with what I was saying?

The Donut Hole was used to whip votes against Dorgan. Once again, proof that when Obama wants the Senate to vote a certain way, he can make that happen.

[GOTV]

10. Fantasy land. The public option is not some crazy idea of Obama's he needs to ram through ...

... he's able to work out deals for the things that are important to him. The public option was very popular and supported by majorities in the public, the House and the Senate. Yet where are the article detailing the work Obama is doing to make a deal on it?

The point is, the fools are those that defend Obama because he doesn't write the legislation and is therefore powerless to affect it's outcome. The unions know here to go when they want something in HCR. So do the insurance companies and the drug companies.

They are well aware that Obama can't ram through anything he wants, yet they know he can ram through enough when properly incentivized.

[sandnsea]

31. A year of negotiating isn't "ramming" anything through

And we're getting a national exchange with the policy requirements set by HHS, so that's also a significant improvement that is pretty close to a public option and puts the bureaucracy in place to implement it if/when subsidies don't work.

[doc03]

6. Because the whole HCR reform bill is

being held hostage by a one or two Senators. The President and the labor unions caved in to Lieberman.

[WCGreen]

9. I believe Obama's plan was to get a broad consensus from the House and Senate...

On which he could then build.

I don't believe he wanted to go through the animosity that pres Clinton generated by actually writing a bill for congress to mull over...

I like that he is approaching this from a different angle, showing more leadership, letting most of the concerns to be aired out. It is just dragging on so long and that is raising the level of frustration that everyone, me included, has experienced over the last ten months...

[jgraz]

13. You "believe", but you don't "know"

... since our oh-so-transparent Fierce Advocate never explained how he planned to get a healthcare proposal through Congress. :banghead:

[WCGreen]

23. Most everything we discuss here on DU is based more on speculation

than on true facts because there is, as you say, far too little transparency.

However, if Obama had come out with all his cards on the table all at once, how do you think that would have played out?

Just a question. But keep in mind these are negotiations and if you present everything at the get go that you are willing to negotiating from, wouldn't that be disadvantageous to Obama's position?

[jgraz]

35. What exactly *was* Obama's position. Does anyone know?

The only thing we have to go on is leaks from Congress and the White House. And all the information points to Obama and Rahm killing the Public Option.

[Hippo_Tron]

12. Nobody said he is powerless over HCR

What people are saying is that he does not have the power to coerce 60 senators into voting for a public option.

[GOTV]

14. You perhaps have not seen the "Who writes the legislation?" responses ...

Some people say what you've said but some just absolve Obama with the small minded explanation that Obama doesn't write the legislation and so should not be held accountable for it.

... not to mention the fact that no one knows if he has the power to coerce 60 senators into voting for the public option until we see him try. How did I know he didn't try? I don't know. All I know is that any effort he made to push the public option is so small that, 1 - I haven't seen it and 2 - he feels safe claiming he never "Campaigned" on it.

[uponit7771]

16. Again, what can Obama LEGALLY do to MAKE...MAKE (not influence) a senator vote his way?

TIA

[GOTV]

18. Thank you for bringing a live example of the "Obama is powerless" respose to the thread!

[jgraz]

37. Heh... it's almost as if you wrote that response yourself.

Come to think of it, I've never seen you and uponit in the same room together... :tinfoilhat:

[treestar]

44. +1000

I am so sick of that either/or fallacy.

[uponit7771]

15. Strawman noted. no one said Obama is "powerless" just not able to compell loser senators who get pai

...paid by the lobbyist and for that I don't blame him like most anti Obama folk do.

Thx

[GOTV]

17. "Just not able" is different from "powerless" in what way?

I am powerless to prevent my own death. I am just not able to prevent my own death.

Wow, I see your point. Completely different.

[jgraz]

41. Are we "powerless" to make ProSense see reason, or are we "just not able to"?

:shrug:

[bornskeptic]

51. For you to try to teach Pro Sense to see reason would be like

me trying to teach Tiger Woods to play golf. I'm afraid we'd both be doomed to failure for the exact same reason.

[jgraz]

52. Actually, I think it would be more like

teaching Stephen Hawking to play golf.

[area51]

62. +1 (n/t)

[treestar]

45. The President is not supposed to have power over the Senate

That's just reality. That's the way the founders made it.

You'd be complaining, presumably if it were the reverse, and be glad McCain did not have power over Lieberman either, especially given what McCain would have wanted.

[jgraz]

48. And yet he does whenever he needs it.

How does that work?

[uponit7771]

58. Link and quote? TIA

[ProSense]

19. More flawed logic

Obama let the process work and only intervened when members of Congress were at an impasse.

No one in the Senate is opposed to compromising on the excise tax. Obama's role here was to find a compromise that labor, the House and Senate can agree on.

Also, Obama made it known that he was going to press to work out disagreements during conference.


Hey, but keep trying to find things to be unhappy about. Everyone will move on, and you will be unhappy.

[GOTV]

20. House wants a PO, Senate doesn't. There's your impass. Where's Obama?

And Obama did not just "let the process work". Early on he was protecting the profits of the drug industry to bring them on board.

He's plenty powerful enough to get the agreements that are important to him.

[ProSense]

21. House can't vote in the Senate.

Deal with reality. Obama is negotiating, and evidently doing a fine job.

[GOTV]

26. Reality: Obama intervened early to protect drug company profits ...

... when Obama pushes hard enough for something, we can see it. We saw Obama's negotiating skill when he signaled early and often that the PO was expendable. That's a fine job when the goal is not to have a public option.

The failure of getting the PO is not due to Obama's powerlessness as many claim.

[ProSense]

39. Reality, Obama intervened to negotiate $80 billion in savings, which

people claimed was peanuts, but was the exact same amount that might be saved under drug re-importation.

Like I said, keep being unhappy about bogus crap.

[Hippo_Tron]

22. Obama wants a PO but his second choice is a bill with no PO

The same probably goes for a majority of the House. The Senate (or at least enough members of it) would rather see no bill at all than a bill with a public option. In a bargaining situation, those who are prepared to leave the table if they don't get their way will generally win. Obama was not willing to leave the table but the conservadems were.

[GOTV]

24. I see no evidence for your assetion that Obama wants a PO ...

... beyond his public speeches.

[Hippo_Tron]

28. 70% of the country supported a public option

If you assume that a first term President's number one priority is re-election (and if you don't then you're not going to be convinced by any argument I make because they are predicated on that assumption) then it would make sense that he would want to see something pass that is so overwhelmingly popular.

Yes you could argue, as some have, that he's more concerned about the contributions he will get from the health insurance industry than he is about the will of the voters. But the contributions he got account for a small fraction of the $700 billion he raised. Additionally, incumbent Presidents never have a shortage of money to come re-election time and their success is more based on what they do as President than how big their war chest is. Challengers are the ones who have to worry about raising money.

[GOTV]

30. I agree that he SHOULD have wanted a PO. I can't say why he didn't want it ...

... but I believe his only priority regarding the PO was that he appear to be on our side.

Maybe it's contribution based, maybe he feels the PO would be a net harm to the nation, maybe it was more important to him to bring a new tone to Washington and that was a higher priority than doing the necessary arm twisting to bring reluctant dems to the table.

You talk like he needs not be concerned with corporate donations. Do you really think that's not a concern for an incumbent president? Why do they always seem so deferential to large corporations?

[Hippo_Tron]

43. Give me your theory then

Ultimately what we are doing here is theorizing because neither of us have or will do the research and write the book that will answer this question.

My theory is that

1) First term Presidents act rationally to get re-elected

2) Passing a bill with a public option is the best road to re-election

3) Obama therefore wanted a public option

4) Obama did not get a public option because there was no set of tools available to him that could have coerced Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman into voting for one. Obama was at a bargaining disadvantage because of his preference to see a bill pass, they were at an advantage for being perfectly willing to kill health care reform

Sure, there are definitely other theories and unless I can find serious fault with a theory I am willing to acknowledge that such a theory is a plausible explanation (even if I find my own explanation more convincing). If you think my theory is unconvincing then tell me why it is. If you think it is merely not proven then you are correct. I would like to see what exactly your theory is since all you have told me so far is that you don't think Obama originally supported a public option. What would his rationale be for being against a public option, what incentives does he have to be against a public option?

As for your last question about Presidents being deferential to large corporations, that's a much broader question that I haven't done as much thinking about. What I do know is that in that he received 20 million from the health care industry in 2008 out of a total of about 700 million which is a little less than 3%. Health care is the centerpiece of his domestic agenda and will define his presidency. In political utility it is worth far more than 3% of his war chest even on the assumption that supporting a public option would lose him all 20 million in the next election (which it won't because donors hedge their bets by donating to candidates they don't like if it looks like that candidate might win).

Simply put, I can't imagine that the ideal political scenario for the White House was to have to go out and try to spin away the fact that Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson forced them to make serious concessions and get the criticism from the media and from the left that this entails. It would've been much better for them politically to go out and honestly say that they got pretty much everything they asked for rather than trying to spin away the fact that they didn't.

[GOTV]

55. As I said, I don't have a theory that fits well, and although I think your theory ....

... has some plausibility the sticking point to me is my impression (for I can't know for sure) that Obama never seemed to fight for the public option. There were too many trial balloons too early that the WH considered the PO expendable.

I'll admit that it's possible that there were all kinds of intense negotiations between Obama and lots of individual Senators to bring them on board the extremely popular PO train that somehow were kept out of the papers but that's the part that seems necessary for your theory to be true and at the same time unlikely.

I have no idea why Obama would not have been whole hog for the PO. It would have been extremely popular but from my read on the media Obama, from the beginning, acted like someone who only wanted to appear to be for the public option.

[Hippo_Tron]

60. I will admit that there's a strong possibility that he didn't really fight for it

But that's because I believe he calculated there was simply no way he could win that fight and by pushing too hard for it he might jeopardize the possibility of getting 60 votes for any bill. I should add that its entirely possible that he miscalculated as well. Perhaps if he had fought for the public option he would have gotten it (although I don't think that's very likely but certainly possible). But I just can't see how he would actually in an ideal world prefer no public option to a public option. The public option is simply much better for him politically.

[OHdem10]

25. Obama has gotten just what he wanted. In the long run, he may

not like what he wished for.

[GOTV]

27. I suspect you are correct and the people who claim Obama is a helpless victim are wrong n/t

[freddie mertz]

36. Obama apparently pushed quite specifically for the excise tax in the Senate.

He always preferred the Senate bill over the House one, because he, IMHO, never really supported the public option.

[freddie mertz]

33. Answer: because he is not powerless. That was just a lame excuse.

We all know he had the power to twist arms all along, he just chose not to use it, as part of some deluded attempt to get a vote from Snowe or Grassley (of all people!).

Now we see how the power of one constituency can trump the machinations of the DLC stooges in the Senate and the White House (RAHM!!!!).

LOOK and LEARN my friends.

[slipslidingaway]

49. Same as escalating the war in Afghanistan is OK because he spoke about ...

this during the campaign, but many dismiss the other aspects of his campaign that he never fought for once he was elected.

:shrug:

[Igel]

53. You didn't read carefully.

"Senior lawmakers returned Thursday afternoon to the White House, where staff continued working throughout the day."

Think of it as give-and-take. Congress can do what it wants, but needs a signature on the legislation. Obama can do what he wants, but needs a bill to sign.

Congress is generally pro-Obama, but even among dems some are more strongly pro various points than others. In other words, he has some influence, both at the individual level and by threatening a veto. He also has other influences: He has a bully pulpit, and if he doesn't like the bill his dissatisfaction could produce public pressure against individual legislators.

Given that he's a player, Reid's a player, Pelosi's a player (and not many other legislators are, since this is a managers' amendment that's being manufactured), it makes sense for them to talk. If the unions are involved, they're involved. And they talk.

When they're all done, the question is how to apportion publicity. Well, the talks are at the WH, held by Obama's request and supported by his staff. His talks, he gets the credit. Even if others are there. Perhaps it helps that part of the reason is that the high-benefits tax was billed as something he really insisted on, that he really wanted. In other words, a condition for his support. Perhaps not. Perhaps it's because the media prefer to credit Obama. Dunno. Don't much care.

However, legislators were in on the meetings.

I'm also not one that says Obama's necessarily helpless. If Congress so wills, he could be made fairly helpless. If there enough votes the Congress could pass any law they wanted (barring constitutional review) and Obama would be helpless in the sense of not controlling, writing, or modifying legislation; even then, he could argue in public and, if the populace and media concurred, apply pressure. On some things Obama's rendered himself helpless by deciding that they're just not worth dealing with--you pick and choose your fights, and those you choose not to involve yourself in, well, it means you're fairly helpless.

Reducing a complex, nuanced true-color picture to shades of gray doesn't help, overall. Cranking up the contrast to make it just black and white doesn't help. Now, for specific purposes it can be instructive, pointing out a general theme before reintroducing complexity; it can help focus one's attention. Confusing such a reduction with reality is a serious problem.

But reducing a complex, nuanced picture to black *or* white?

[GOTV]

54. Thanks, this was a very well written response ...

... to which I can find no disagreement.

[uponit7771]

59. ***THOUGHTFUL RESPONSE HERE***

[Better Believe It]

56. They didn't negotiate with Obama. They surrendered to his demand for a 40% insurance tax

He tossed them a few crumbs off the insurance industry table which they gleefully gobbled up.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

57. The negotiations were AT the White House....

The union leaders were there with the Democratic Leadership from the House and the Senate. The unions were not negotiating with the Obama Administration alone.

You have the facts wrong.