If The White House lets health care reform die, any other progress will just be square dancing

[CreekDog]

Lots of movement but not goin' anywheres.

This must not happen, but it sure looks like it will.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/us/politics/29cong.ht...

With Mr. Obama’s health care overhaul stalled on Capitol Hill, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said in an interview that Democrats would try to act first on job creation, reducing the deficit and imposing tighter regulation on banks before returning to the health measure, the president’s top priority from last year.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/01/rah...

It is very, very, very important to be clear on what the death of health-care reform looks like. It is not a vote that goes against the Democrats. It is not an admission that the White House has moved on from the subject. It is continued statements of commitment from the key players paired with a continued stretching of the timetable. Like everything else in life, policy initiatives grow old and die, even if people still love them.

The timetable Emanuel is laying out makes little sense. The jobs bill will take some time. Financial regulation will take much longer. Let's be conservative and give all this four months. Is Emanuel really suggesting that he expects Congress to return to health-care reform in the summer before the election? Forgetting whether there's political will at that point, there's no personnel: Everyone is home campaigning.

Moreover, there's a time limit on health-care reform. The open reconciliation instructions the Senate could use to modify the bill expire when the next budget is (there's disagreement over the precise rule on this) considered or passed. That is to say, the open reconciliation instructions expire soon. Democrats could build new reconciliation instructions into the next budget, but that's going to be a heavy lift. The longer this takes, the less likely it is to happen. And Emanuel just said that the administration's preference is to let it take longer. If I were a doctor, I'd downgrade health care's prognosis considerably atop this evidence.

[Dr. Strange]

1. !

:rofl: ^:rofl: :rofl:^:rofl: :rofl: ^:rofl::rofl:^:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: ^:rofl::rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:^:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: ^:rofl::rofl: :rofl:^:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:^:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: ^:rofl::rofl:^:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: ^:rofl::rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: ^{:rofl::rofl::rofl:}

[mtnester]

2. A slow circling of the drain...eom