Filibuster Cartoons
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President Obama’s healthcare bill thing cleared a major hurdle this week with the United States Senate voting 60 to 40 in favor. 60 votes was of course the magical solid-unity number the Democrats needed to overcome the filibuster efforts of the Republican minority — a technical factoid which I, as a psuedo-journalist type, am obligated to mention, despite the fact that I barely understand what it means.
Anyway, the 60 votes was secured mostly by compromising the crap out of the substance of the bill, largely at the expense of liberals, who lost the biggest of their big-government proposals, namely expanded Medicare coverage and the creation of a so-called “public option” state-run insurance firm. But there were some conservative concessions too — the Senate bill is a bit more flexible on state funding for abortions, for instance.
More flexible than the House bill, is what I mean. Because the House of Represenatives passed a healthcare reform bill too, and it’s way different than the Senate one. So now, if my memory of “School House Rock” serves me, there will be some sort of joint process to hammer out a unified bill for both chambers of the Congress to pass. Which will inevitably entail more compromises. And more unsatisfied politicians and voters.
President Obama really wanted this to be his big first-year-in-office victory. But it’s proving very hard! Not that Obama would know, though. He’s been remarkably uninvolved in the whole process, and seems to be of the general philosophy that his role as president is merely to sign whatever eventual bill Congress spews forth and take the credit.
Conservatives don’t like to admit this, but polls show most Americans do want healthcare reform, and most want it to come in some form of big-governmenty flavor. Obama campaigned on bringing this to them, but he can’t seem to pull it off in a competent manner, even with unprecedented crazy big majorities in both chambers of Congress. That’s the big defining question to take away from all this — can Obama actually get things done?
October 5th, 2011 at 9:03 am
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