NYTimes.com today highlights a clip from my regular “The Week In Blog” feature at Bloggingheads.tv where Politics Daily’s Matt Lewis and I discussed the desire of the conservative protesters to kill any attempt to reform health care.
If you haven’t watched our segments in the past, know that while Matt Lewis is as conservative as they come, he is also regularly candid about the inner-workings of the Republican Party and conservative movement.
So when I noted that the protest leaders said on a recent organizing conference call that all they wanted to do was kill any attempt at legislation (The Plum Line reported one organizer saying, “The purpose of Tea Parties is not to find a solution to the health care crisis.”), Matt did not spare the Republican Party on its poor track record, and acknowledged that some conservatives simply don’t want to fix the health care problem.
LEWIS: But what happened in 1994 was Republicans killed the bill, then Republicans got control of power in 1994, then we got the White House in 2000, and they never fixed it, never fixed health care. I know there were some efforts, but they didn’t get it done, they didn’t make a big push.
ME: You could argue that they don’t really want to fix it.
MATT LEWIS: I think some of them don’t. I mean, clearly some of them don’t, but I think some of us do … Even if you don’t think anything needs to happen, you should strategically understand that if you’re able to kill it this time, and you don’t fix it, and things keep getting worse, the next time it’s going to pass. You can only go to the well so many times.
I certainly take Matt at his word that there is a conservative faction that actually wants to solve the problem, even if it’s my opinion that his favored reforms wouldn’t work.
But that faction isn’t very loud. They are not the ones disrupting the town halls. They are not running ads that promote a different idea. They are not persuading the conservatives in Congress to strongly advocate for an alternative proposal.
Are we having a debate between two competing visions of health care reform? Well, yes, but it’s between the public plan option and co-ops, between Progressive Dems and Blue Dog Dems.
If conservatives in Congress were really concerned about avoiding a “government takeover,” they would be all over the member-run co-op idea. They are not.
If they had a better idea they really believed the public wants, they’d be pushing for it now.
I’m sure there will be some legislation from conservatives so they can nominally say that they are for something. But it’s quite evident they are not seriously trying to engage the public and get it passed.
And you can’t use the excuse that they don’t have the votes in Congress. If anything, it’s all too painfully clear that there are enough right-leaning Dems that would screw the President and vote with conservative Republicans if they thought it was in their political self-interest to do so.
Yet, conservatives in Congress aren’t trying. They didn’t try when they were the majority. They are not trying now.
These are not folks with whom you can compromise.
Yesterday, lead Republican negotiator Sen. Chuck Grassley made clear he wouldn’t support a compromise unless it attracts many Republicans: “if I can’t negotiate something that gets more than four Republicans, I’m not a very good representative of my party.”
When the Senate minority’s #2 Jon Kyl said you’d have a gut the whole thing before getting GOP support. Politico reports today:
“I think it’s safe to say that there are a huge number of big issues that people have,” Kyl said, referring to Republican senators. “There is no way that Republicans are going to support a trillion-dollar-plus bill.” … Sen. Chuck Grassley, a key Republican negotiator, has suggested that a bill that fails to win over most of his colleagues probably won’t win his support either.
President Barack Obama has vowed to veto any bill that would increase the deficit over the long term, but Kyl said that a revenue-neutral bill probably won’t get much GOP support either. “I have no doubt that they can make it revenue netural to find enough ways to tax the American people, but that doesn’t mean the Republicans will support it,” Kyl said.
On the non-profit insurance cooperatives that Sen. Kent Conrad and other centrist Democrats are proposing as an alternative to a public plan, Kyl said it was a “Trojan horse.” “It’s a step towards government-run health care in this country,” Kyl said.
I doubt I could compromise with Matt Lewis on comprehensive effective legislation. Our philosophies are diametrically opposed. But if we at least both believed there’s a problem, there’s probably something we could agree on, some incremental provision we could pass together.
But you absolutely can’t compromise on a bill with someone who doesn’t want a bill. You can’t solve a problem with someone who doesn’t believe there’s a problem.
