The Right Prescription
The “Public Option” Trap
Obama is damned if he does, and damned if he doesn’t.
Last Thursday, President Obama tried to contain a backlash among liberals concerned that the administration was wavering in its support for creating a new government-run health care plan, telling volunteers at his Organizing for America group that the uproar was a “manufactured” controversy.
“I think a public option is important,” he said. But he was also sure to emphasize that “There are a whole bunch of other aspects to health insurance reform.”
With opposition growing to Democratic health care legislation, it’s understandable that the administration wants to keep its options open so that it can declare victory by signing any bill that is able to get through Congress, even something far less ambitious than what Obama wants. But it is surprising that the White House wasn’t prepared for the passionate response to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s statement that a government-run plan was not an “essential element” of health care legislation.
The Washington Post quoted an anonymous senior White House adviser as saying, in reference to the creation of a new government-run plan, “I don’t understand why the left of the left has decided that this is their Waterloo.” The adviser added, “We’ve gotten to this point where health care on the left is determined by the breadth of the public option. I don’t understand how that has become the measure of whether what we achieve is health-care reform.”
It’s perplexing that the White House was caught off guard given that liberal activists were essential to helping Obama organize a successful presidential campaign. Anybody who has kept half an ear to the progressive community for the past several years knows how essential the creation of a new government-run plan is to liberals.
“It’s not like a decal on a car,” Jacob Hacker, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley and the intellectual architect of the idea, said at the March 2008 conference of the Campaign for America’s Future. “It’s the engine of the car.”
Throughout the health care debate a majority of the members of the 80-member House Progressive Caucus have maintained that they would not vote for any bill that did not include a “robust” government plan.
And during a conference call last Thursday, Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, a co-chair of the group, said that he had commitments from more than 60 members of the House that they would not vote for a bill that did not include a strong government plan, enough to block its passage. “That’s the understanding: no public option, no support,” he said on the call, sponsored by the Campaign for America’s Future.
Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, who was also on the call, explained the opposition to a bill without a government plan: “We meant that not just in getting it through committees, but we mean it for the House floor, and we mean it when it comes back from conference (with the Senate).”
But North Dakota Sen. Kent Conrad, a Democrat who has been deeply involved in health care negotiations, has said that “It’s very clear that there are not the votes in the United States Senate for a public option.”
Taken together, this means that health care legislation cannot get through the Senate with a government plan, but it can’t pass in the House without one.
Recent polling on the issue reinforces how difficult it will be for Obama to resolve this issue in the coming months. An NBC news poll found that a plurality of 47 percent of Americans opposed the creation of a new government-run plan to be offered on a government-run insurance exchange, compared with 43 percent who support it. Yet at the same time, a Rasmussen poll found that if a government plan is not included, support for health care legislation actually drops — to 34 percent. The explanation is that a majority of independents and Republicans don’t support legislation either way, but ditching the government plan means an erosion of support among the Democratic base.
Another problem Obama will face is that right now, many of the liberal activists fighting for health care legislation are doing so because they want a government plan. If that is tossed aside, it will deprive Obama — at a crucial time — of an army of people who are writing and calling their members of Congress, while opponents remain unified. Rasmussen found that without the government plan, just 9 percent of people said they “strongly support” legislation while 37 percent were “strongly opposed.” So in other words, among the most passionate people on the issue, the ones most likely to lobby Congress, opponents could outnumber supporters by more than 4 to 1.
Obama is trying to keep his options open by arguing in favor of a government plan while refusing to draw a line in the sand, but eventually he will be forced to decide whether he will stand with or against his core supporters. It’s a trap that Obama created for himself by campaigning as a post-partisan president while promising to be a transformational liberal leader, and it’s one that he won’t be able to escape with lofty rhetoric.
About the Author
Philip Klein is The American Spectator’s Washington correspondent. You can follow him on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/Philipaklein
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Robert Rosencrans| 8.24.09 @ 8:42AM
Obama's predicament was bought on by not having a plan. The reason Obama did not have a plan is because he and his followers believed he was a visionary whose imagination could be translated into reality without any changes. In short, they are cryptic ideologues. They can not be questioned nor can their plans.
The word elitists describes them accurately. While Obama takes the elitist tack that the public is all wee-weed up, it's actually Obama who is all wee-weed up, looking more like a crybaby everyday.
In deference to his past, I ask for community volunteers to go to the White House and change the staff diapers.
cybercorrespondent | 8.24.09 @ 9:33AM
Obama does have a plan and it is to push for global currency and the destruction of the dollar
BANGKOK- Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz is telling us that the U.S. dollar-based system is flawed and risky and that the "dollar now is yielding almost zero return. The question is do we go to a new system in an orderly or disorderly way." Stiglitz urged rich nations to provide funds to help poorer countries avoid a steep crash during the financial crisis.
The group has called for global coordination to avoid competition to cut taxes, and for a worldwide increase in tax on high earners. Dubbing itself the "Shadow GN", the group has urged governments to opt for bank nationalizations rather than bailouts in order to drive the pace of fresh lending.
Don’t fall for it. Watch these two videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....r_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....r_embedded
cybercorrespondent
Lullabys, Legends and Lies| 8.24.09 @ 9:38AM
Jacob Hacker says: “It’s not like a decal on a car, it’s the engine of the car (Public Option).” Well this car is a Cash For Clunkers car, and I’m not paying for it, no matter how much I’d like to have a new car. If the opponents to this legislation remain united (that’s us), we outnumber their passionate supporters by more than 4 to 1. And if I were a betting man (but I’m not), I wouldn’t place my bet just yet. This race is only half over, and we’ve got a long way to go. I won’t believe we’ve won this, until the Administration’s defeat, is the front page headline of the New York Times, or the fat lady starts to sing, whichever comes first.
JP| 8.24.09 @ 9:50AM
House Speaker Pelosi last Friday, in a moment of candor, said that while she respects the Will of the People she and her allies are more than willing to ignore it in the case of the Public Option. From a political standpoint, this is all that counts. The Speaker is more than willing to suffer at the polls next year in order to get a transformation, that she and the President believe, will be irrevocably set in stone once it passes. They can always regain thier majorities at a later time.
With this kind of ruthless (dare we say Stalinesque) political calculation anything goes. The Speaker and the Senate Majority Leader Reid will have to forge an alliance that can get ObamaCare through before the Christmas Recess. There is much to the bill that can be trimmed in the short-run to get enough Blue Dogs and RINOS to sign on; however, the Public Option will be untouchable. Future Dems can reattach thier pet mandates on at a later date.
This strategy would be a huge gamble in any era. But in the economic circumstances the US now finds itself, ObamaCare and Cap and Trade could not come at a worse time. Already Fortune 1000 Corporations are looking overseas where the business climate is definitely friendlier. The loss in tax revune if these 2 bills pass is substantial. If ObamaCare doesn't pass, his administration for all practical purposes is over. This much is riding on ObamaCare. If the bill passes, the economic repercussions will be felt immediately. The various surtaxes that will be levied against any firm with more than 25 workers will only increase. The High Tech firms such as Microsoft and IBM warned last spring that they are looking at India as a place to relocate if taxes continue to go up.
It's a lose-lose anyway you look at it.
JerseyJ| 8.24.09 @ 10:02AM
BHO ... "I think a public option is important," and "There are a whole bunch of other aspects to health insurance reform."
Typical liberal-speak. Notice he only states the public option is "important" and there are "other aspects" to reform. He never says he'll consider reform without the public "option".
Translation ... I want you to believe the public plan may be pulled, but I have no intention of actually removing it.
Tim| 8.24.09 @ 1:02PM
Interesting that hero Obama just "cut" social security for the next two years, saving money on the backs of seniors.
These are the same seniors he is simultaneously trying to persuade to trust him on Obamacare.
That's some big ones.
Sue| 8.24.09 @ 6:30PM
The democrats will "incrementalize" us to death over health care reform.
The issue is to educate the public about government interference in our daily lives and how they then lie about it to keep themselves in power.
Nothing else matters. Educate, educate, and deprogram the college grads.
edhardy| 8.24.09 @ 11:01PM
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Pingback| 8.25.09 @ 9:25AM
Twitter Trackbacks for The American Spectator : The "Public Option" Trap [spectator. links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Richard Baker| 8.25.09 @ 5:52PM
But still "damned". Sic Semper Tyrannis.