Recession Survival Tips

The healthcare debate (debacle) is in its fiftieth homestretch.  However, this week does have an air of finality to it.  As we enter into the last week of this never-ending saga, I am still not happy.  In my mind, the Democrats are scum-sucking, spineless cretins, who would sell their mamas in order to get reelected.  They are feckless morons that have been outmaneuvered by a minority party that had zero credibility with the American public.  The same idiots that voted for Bush twice turned to the Democrats in 2008 because they wanted a grown up to carry them away from the cliff.  Alas…

The Democrats can regain some measure of respectability.  After pooh-poohing the notion of passing the public option through reconciliation, it now seems as if reconciliation is the only path to rectifying the differences between the House and Senate bills.  Well, if they are going to pass substantive changes to the healthcare bills through this process, I am sure that a bare majority of votes exist in the House and Senate to pass the public option through reconciliation.  Although almost everyone in the Democratic Party has expressed support for the public option, now that it is actually possible to pass it, they have begun backing off.

Nancy Pelosi stated that she is not willing to include a version of the public option in the bill that she sends that Senate because there are not enough votes for it to pass.  However, forty-one Senators have already signed a pledge to support the public option.  Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin stated that if the House includes the public option, he would whip for it.  Yet many observers believe that without White House support, the public option is dead.  This all seems like an elaborate blame game designed to confuse progressives.  Personally, I know who I am going to blame.

President Obama.

Ultimately, people in the Congress took their cues from him.  He paid lip service to the public option while his administration worked behind the scenes to undermine it because of deals that he cut with certain aspects of the healthcare industry.  In his eleven pages of fixes to the healthcare bill that passed the Senate, Mr. Obama did not include any reference to a public option.  When the letter of support began making its way throughout the House and Senate, Robert Gibbs, White House Press Secretary, downplayed its implications.  There have only been a few Democrats who have been willing to stand on principal throughout this debate.  Progressives were compromised from the beginning.  Yet, they did not want to be held responsible for killing healthcare reform.  Many were brow beaten into submission by Mr. Obama and his henchman, Rahm Emmanuel.

The Dems still have a chance to grow a spine and do what is necessary to pass a healthcare bill that will truly make a positive difference. If not, Mr. Obama will lose progressives and the Republicans will block everything else that he tries to accomplish.  Do you think the Democrats should pass a bill without a public option?