Bob Reich (Oooh!! DLC/Blue Dog Corporate sellout!!): " Why All House Democrats Must Vote for HCR"

[bluestateguy]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/why-all-house-democrats-m_b_499753.html

Health care reform is necessary, and House Democrats should vote for it because it's best for the nation.

They should also remember the political lessons of history. To paraphrase Mark Twain, history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. As the White House and the House Democratic leadership try to line up 216 votes to pass health care reform -- and as Republicans, aided by the National Association of Manufacturers and abetted by fierce partisans like Newt Gingrich, try to kill it -- I can't help thinking back to 1994 when the lineup was much the same.

I was serving in the Clinton administration at the time. In the first months of 1993 it looked as if Clinton's health care proposal would sail through Congress. But the process dragged on and by 1994 it bogged down. We knew health care was imperiled but none of us knew that failure to pass health care would doom much of the rest of Clinton's agenda and wrest control of Congress out of the hands of the Democrats. In retrospect, it's clear Republicans did know.

On February 5, 1994, the National Association of Manufacturers passed a resolution declaring its opposition to the Clinton plan. Not long after that, Michigan Democrat John Dingell, who was managing the health care bill for the House, approached the senior House Republican on the bill to seek a compromise. According to Dingell, the response was: "There's no way you're going to get a single vote on this side of the aisle. You will not only not get a vote here, but we've been instructed that if we participate in that undertaking at all, those of us who do will lose our seniority and will not be ranking minority members within the Republican Party."

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[Frances]

1. If both Clinton and Obama fail to pass health care,

our grandchildren will be under the same system we're under today, except the insurance companies will charge more and cover less. And ERs will turn away poor people. We'll be like a third world country, where people die every day for lack of health care.

But some purists will insist that that system is better than either Bill or Obama's plan.

[depakid]

2. "insurance companies will charge more and cover less" That's what you're getting with this bill

-and what the people you derisively call "purists" are trying to keep from happening for the next decade.

[brooklynite]

and how will not passing the bill stop Insurance Companies from "charging more and covering less"?

If we can establish the principle that nobody can be denied or dropped from coverage, and increase financial support for those who can't afford it, I'll take that as a starting point.

[depakid]

5. This bill enriches, empowers and further entreches private insurers- and creates incentives

by taxing so called "Cadillac" benefits and through subsidization that will cause a movement toward high copay, high deductible junk insurance for everyone.

Not only is this unpopular- it wasn't necessary. The legislation could have been paid for via progressive taxation of the wealthiest Americans who have more than enough ability to pay.

Not to mention, of course- having a much less expensive and more efficient public option instead.

[Frances]

10. Get real

It used to be that when I had an issue with the insurance company I had some clout because the insurance company knew I could contact my Congress people, but now the insurance companies know that all they have to do is fund the tea baggers. They know the left won't attack the insurance companies; they'll attack Obama. How stupid do the insurance companies think we are? Just as stupid as we really are.

[laughingliberal]

3. +1000 nt

[Forkboy]

4. The word "purist" is always a tip off.

These people are like moldable balls of clay. They never once think about their own "purity". I've asked this of at least a dozen Obama supporters here who make the purity charge, and not one has answered yet, but what did the centrists compromise by voting for a centrist? You know the answer, and so do I. I'd ask this poster as well, but fuck, why bother? If they were honest they couldn't even answer it to themselves, let alone me.

[Frances]

11. I'm answering loud and clear

I don't know how old you are, but I remember vividly arguing with young people in California who said they refused to vote for Pat Brown when Ronald Reagan ran against Brown. They thought it was better not to vote at all than vote for the lesser of two evils. I wasn't living in California at the time, but my present husband was. He voted for Reagan because he got greedy and believed Reagan when Reagan said that he could lower taxes by downsizing government.

If Reagan had not been elected governor, he wouldn't have become President and he wouldn't have started dismantling Roosevelt's programs.

I also remember arguments with people who refused to vote for Gore in 2000 because Gore was too corporate friendly. If those purists had supported Gore, we wouldnt' have had the Iraq War and we wouldn't be in the deep recession we are in now.

My husband takes responsibility for his vote for Reagan; he realizes he was suckered. But I have never heard one purist take responsibility for not voting for Pat Brown or Al Gore.

[kenny blankenship]

6. And we all know Bob Reich KNOWS good medicine -that's what he said NAFTA would be

Yet come to think of it he MIGHT just be forgetting the huge role the passage of NAFTA played in the 1994 loss for Democrats, ALONG with his advocacy of NAFTA, as a Clinton Labor Secretary.

[Individualist]

7. Hear, hear!

[Gman]

8. Robert Reich, blue dog DLC, etc., ad nauseum??

You don't have one fucking clue what you are talking about.

[Marr]

9. The signs suggest that the next thing on Obama's agenda is "Entitlement Reform".

So why exactly should I be troubled by the notion of his losing the ability to move the rest of his agenda?