O'Donnell's R argument: 'We have as open a heart as you, Mr. President, we just can't afford it.'

[flpoljunkie]

MSNBC's political analyst (and former Senate Finance Committee Chief of Staff during Bill Clinton's failed attempt to pass healthcare reform legislation) Lawrence O'Donnell thinks this is the Republican's best argument--which he himself evidently gave at a discussion of health care at the Reagan Library. O'Donnell is going off on healthcare on 'Morning Joe.' He does seem to want it to fail--even though he would never admit it--so that he can be proven right in his argument that nothing like this path to pass legislation has happened before, so it's hard to see how it will happen now. The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson did point out that a lot of things had happened this past year in the healthcare legislation fight that had not happened before. We are in unchartered territory.

As for his point about the Republicans best argument about healthcare reform--the cost--I suggest he read this early morning post today from Ezra Klein...

The health-care bill's spending in context

I've been a bit annoyed by the convention of referring to the health-care bill's 10-year cost rather than its annual cost. We don't talk about very much in terms of 10-year costs, and so people don't have much context for it. So I asked crack intern Dylan Matthews to build a crude comparison of what various government programs are projected to cost in 2015 (chosen because health-care reform doesn't kick off until 2014, and I wanted to give it a year to get up and running). Projections are always iffy, but this is just to get an idea of the relative size of different programs. Ready for it?



What you're seeing is health-care reform clocks in around $100 billion. Which is pretty small compared to the $600 billion going to defense, or the $700 billion going to Medicare, or the $900 billion going to Social Security. It's even small in comparison to the to the $250 billion going to subsidize employer-based health care and the $150 billion for the mortgage interest deduction -- both of which are massive tax breaks for people who are a lot better off than the beneficiaries of the health-care bill. That's the health-care proposal in context: Real money, but not the biggest bill on the planet.

By Ezra Klein
March 12, 2010; 7:00 AM ET

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/03/the_health-care_bills_spending.html

[booksenkatz]

1. Their 'hearts' are only open for war. NT

[Zywiec]

2. What did you think of his argument that this type of reconciliation

has never been done before in the Congress?

:shrug:

[babylonsister]

3. If positions were reversed and the rethugs were attempting this,

would it even be an issue?

I think the argument should be that rethugs have never even attempted to try to pass health care reform, so that argument lacks merit.

[flpoljunkie]

4. I don't think it matters how they pass it--only if they pass it. If they don't, base may stay home.

And, who can blame them? I would like to see Dems 'go for broke' and pass--not only healthcare, but real financial reform with a strong and independent consumer protection agency, a 'cap and dividend' energy bill, and, finally, immigration reform.

If you think you may lose your seat in November, why not go down with a record you can be immensely proud of--knowing that you had made a real difference in the lives of the American people against the extremely powerful special interests. It is just as likely, if you do the right thing, your base will be energized, and things will work out just fine in November--that is, we retain both houses of Congress, with a minimal loss of seats in both houses.

[BeyondGeography]

11. Arcane and borderline irrelevant is what I thought

The question is whether it can be done this way and the answer is clearly yes.

[Me.]

5. Doesn't He Just Love The Sound Of His Own Voice

And aren't we so lucky that he's so much smarter than everyone else? Thank goodness we have him to tell us how everything the dems do will fail, cause after all he worked for Congress once and was a consultant on a hit teevee show.

[mod mom]

6. We can afford it: END THE WARS and re-TAX THE RICH TO PREVIOUS LEVELS!

[OnionPatch]

8. Exactly!

Why is this so hard? We have two completely useless wars going on yet the rich have seen their piece of the pie grow larger over the last ten years. WTF! There's something really wrong with that picture.

[butterfly77]

7. You can't trust anyone on tv ...

their mind changes like the wind. Now O'Donnell seems to be jumping from side to side. I notice that even the Democrats seem to try to give RepubliCONS talking points. I don't see how the President can trust anyone in his circle of confidants because they all have some agenda that somehow relates to their pocketbooks.

They don't give a damn about what we want they want us to believe that because some of the teabaggers were former Hillary supporters that we now have a mixture of people. Most of these people don't know a lot about the issues and it is all about hate or money.

[laughingliberal]

9. That trust thing cuts both ways

The members of the House Progressive Caucus worked very hard to get a good HCR bill passed. And, although, their bill was not that great it was acceptable as a starting point.

They passed their bill as did the Senate HELP committee only to see Baucus handed the torch of protecting the President's back room deal with PhRMA, the for profit hospital lobbies, and AHIP.

Teabaggers are former Hillary supporters? Good luck with that.

[liberalpragmatist]

10. I'd say that goes for politicians too

... especially the ones that like the camera. Yes, Dean and Weiner, for example, have done a lot of good. But the truth is that politicians and pundits ALL have a high degree of self-importance and they ALL like the sound of their voice.

[Jennicut]

12. O'Donnell has a strange obession with seeing this bill not pass. Not for any good reasons.

Just because it has never been tried or done before. I mean, who cares HOW it gets done with regards to Reconciliation?
I think he has a case of "refusing to think outside the boxitis"

[Supersedeas]

14. the Corporate Sponsors have a way of feeding script to Media Shills

[JamesA1102]

15. It's ego.

He was part of the team that failed in '94 and he doesn't want anyone else to succeed.

[Pirate Smile]

13. This is why I don't like him subbing for Keith right now. He wants to kill hcr. He has for the

past year.