« The Wicked Paradox Redux (Repost) | Main | Climbing the Ladder of Success (or Be Careful of What You Wish For) »
January 25, 2010
On Grabbing the HCR "Winnings" from the Table
The necessity for the house to pass the senate healthcare bill (no doubt with a companion "fix it" bill that can pass through the reconciliation process) has been argued so by the likes of Paul Krugman, Ezra Klein, Josh Marshall, and nearly every other member of the sensible left, that it's hard to imagine what else one can say to make the obvious more clear. From the perspective of both policy and politics, it's the only sane thing to do--even if house democrats are too insular to get it. But for those who are still holding on the the fantasy of a better, more comprehensive bill sometime in the future, Matt Yglesias and Neil Sinhababu offer a compelling argument as to why that just isn't going to happen:
To try to boil what Neil Sinhababu says here into something snappy, when a left-of-center legislative idea dies in congress that idea comes to define the impossible—”we tried that already and it didn’t work, next time we need to try something less left-wing.” But when a left-of-center legislative idea is enacted into law, that idea comes to define the center—it’s the commonsense status quo that even the government-skeptical American people can embrace.That’s why an idea that started as a moderate Republican alternative to Clintoncare in 1994 became Obamacare in 2009. But it’s also why neither Scott Brown nor any other Massachusetts Republicans are looking to repeal Commonwealth Care. It’s how we got from the very limited initial version of Social Security to the program we know today. It’s how we got from the toothless Civil Rights Act of 1957 to the real Civil Rights Act of 1964 and on to the Voting Rights Act. \
And, of course, all this assumes that another, future, democratic president with another democratic majority in congress, would judge the effort worth the political risk. Not likely. Should HCR go down this year--the second time in sixteen years--it would be political folly to try again anytime in the next four or five decades.
Posted by stevemack at January 25, 2010 09:39 AM
