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AmSpecBlog
The Health Care Express Hits Major Roadblock
Roll Call is reporting that the Senate Finance Committee is delaying the markup of its health care bill -- scheduled for next Tuesday -- until after the July 4 recess. The reason why this is major news is that Congress was already looking at an ambitious timeline to get health care legislation passed by July 31, before lawmakers go on summer recess. Now the earliest the Finance Committee will begin to rewrite its bill would be July 6, meaning they'll have less than a month to: finalize their proposed legislation, merge it with the bill currently under consideration by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, introduce it to the broader Senate, debate it, and pass it.
I'll have to make some calls to get a better sense of how the change came about, but my guess is that the major factor was the news that the Congressional Budget Office was set to put a $1.6 trillion price tag on a draft of the Finance Committee bill. Coming on the heels of the major embarassment this week when the CBO estimated that just a part of the HELP bill would increase the deficit by $1 trillion over 10 years, Democrats likely decided to delay the unveiling of another massive bill until they could find a way to improve the CBO score.
UPDATE: The Hill reports that Finance Committee chair Max Baucus says their bill will be rewriten to chop $600 billion off of its price tag, but he was vague about whether this would delay markup until after July 4.
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MikeN| 6.17.09 @ 1:04PM
I would say that Waxman-Markey is the big bill right now. If they can get a carbon tax passed, then they can make up some numbers about how much money they'll raise, and use that.
Take a look at the ClimateProgress blog, and they assume the House will pass the bill forthwith, and have some of their commenters engaged in lobbying right now.
JP| 6.17.09 @ 1:34PM
MikeN,
I suppose both the House and Senate Democrats will be a little sensitive about the 2010 Midterms. People like Waxman and Markey are in safe seats, and only 16 Senate Dems are up for reelection. But about half of the House Seats the Dems won since 2006 are in red districts, or districts that traditionally vote GOP. The Dems could very easily lose over a third of thier 2006-2008 gains in the House, not to mention thier near filibuster proof lock on the Senate if they discount the voter's mood.
If this nation get hits with a double whammy (Universal Health Care and Carbon Taxes), the results will be felt immediatly. The Dems and Obama know that thier window of oppurtunity is short, so they can sacrifice short term politcal gains for a socialistic change in government that would take generations to fix (thier thinking).
My fear is that thier lack of understanding in all things economic will bring on a financial meltdown we haven't seen since 1932. We could very well get hit with both hyperinflation and very high unemployment. The 1932-1934 recession was a deflationary one. The Liberals are looking at reenacting the Weimar Depression of 1923-24, where infaltion went off the charts and the economy went into chaos.
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