As I noted in the post below, the media seems to be turning “reconciliation” into an ugly word.
But “filibuster” is the word with a more unsavory history. (Thanks to HeathBeat reader Barry Carroll who sent me a link to the history of the word.)
“Filibuster” finds its root in the Spanish word “filibustero,” which means “pirate.” The filibuster was originally seen as an opportunity to “pirate” or “hijack” a debate.
In modern American history the filibuster became infamous as a tool used to block civil rights legislation. This tradition goes all the way back to 1946 when Southern Senators blocked a vote on a bill proposed by Democrat Dennis Chavez of New Mexico that would have created a permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee to prevent discrimination in the work place. The filibuster lasted weeks, and Senator Chavez was forced to remove the bill from consideration.
In 1957 Senator Strom Thurmond (then D-SC, later R-SC)) set a record by filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for more than 24 hours. Ultimately, the bill passed. In the 1960s southern Democratic Senators attempted, unsuccessfully, to block the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964.
Since then the use of filibusters has accelerated. In December of 2009, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, made this statement on the floor of the Senate : “We have crossed the mark of over 100 filibusters and acts of procedural obstruction in less than one year. Never since the founding of the Republic, not even in the bitter sentiments preceding Civil War, was such a thing ever seen in this body."
I wonder—has there has been any time since the Civil War when this country was as polarized as it is now? The division has taken place gradually, over nearly three decades, so that it has come to seem almost natural. But last week’s Summit on Health Care dramatized just how wide the gap between liberals and conservatives has become. It is not just a matter of what some call “ideology” or "politics." It is a difference in very basic values.
I disagree, Maggie.
I think the country is being manipulated into an appearance of polarization.
If you think about it, the Tea people and other conservatives are protesting things that do not exist and were never proposed: a Communist takeover of health care, complete with death panels and general redistribution of wealth.
I watched the Summit as well and my immediate impression was that there were no insurmountable differences in substance or ideology. It was frustrating to hear one Republican after another asking to throw the bill out, not because the contents were unacceptable, but…. just because.
Dr. Coburn went on a long rant just to find out that almost everything he wants is already in the bill. Senator Ryan has issues with some numbers and Kantor is debating the character of regulation, not the need to have regulation. Wyden and Benett have a nice bi-partisan proposal and the President agrees with Mr. McCain that the Florida goodies are a disgrace.
It’s not basic values or ideology that divide us. It’s a brand new invisible hand that is very much interested in maintaining the status quo and is investing fortunes in lobbying and creating political and social havoc for pure financial benefit of the very few.
There are good patriotic and righteous people in both the liberal and conservative camps. We may disagree on religion and abortion and fiscal policies, but that has not changed since the country was founded and for the most part it made us, and our Democracy stronger.
Today, Democracy itself is being threatened and we as a country and as a people have to wake up and see it for what it really is, before it’s too late.
Today, Democracy itself is being threatened and we as a country and as a people have to wake up and see it for what it really is, before it’s too late.
Posted by: Margalit Gur-Arie
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As I have said frequently, we cannot have 38 million people in CA alone only getting 2 votes in the Senate while 38 million people combined amount the 19 smallest populated states together get 38 votes in the Senate. If the Senate had only advisory powers, then fine. However the senate has absolute power to stop any legislation with no veto type override available to the House and presidency together like the Congress has over the Presidency now. Throw in the 60% rule, and very small minorities can wield huge power only vast majorities in this system.
Three ideas to make it better in increasing order of complexity and effect:
–Get rid of the filibuster rule so simple majorities can pass legislation in the Senate
–Make Senate makeup democratically proportion to population in each state
–Allow the presidency and the House together to pass legislation without the Senate
It’s fearful this situation we cannot give importance to something as inappropriate, we have many important things to be treated as health care, cancer, AIDS, chronic diseases, in findrxonline indicate that there are thousands of people who suffer from them and are much more important than a bishop who prostituted themselves online, do not think so?
Margalit, I agree with you. Ideology is one thing, but the issues we’re seeing today transcend ideological differences.
I don’t think the “hand” is invisible however. The influence of special interests is blatant and shameless.
I suspect, from a broader view, that what we’re seeing is a war – which I believe was inevitable – between Democracy and unbridled, unrestrained Capitalism.
I’m always amazed that so many Americans seem to think that the two concepts are synonymous. They are not, and never have been. Even many of the Founders understood that.
Margait–
Margait–
You’re absolutely right that most people don’t know what is in the President’s plan or the Senate plan and so if you ask them whether they support either plan, their answers are not terribly meaningful.
But you look at polls that only ask whether they are for or against covering everyone, or that ask whether or not they favor a “major overhaul” of the health care system, you
find that people with higher incomes tend to be opposed, while people with lower incomes favor reform.
Those with higher incomes like the status quo. Under the status quo, they’re doing pretty well.
Republicans also favor the status quo and are far more likely to be against any “reform” while Democrats are likely to favor an overhaul
But income is the most important factor pollsters like Amy Walker (you may have seen her on Rachel Madoff) point out.
Wealthier people– earning over $60,000 or so, tend to have health insurance that they think is pretty good. In that income bracket, their employer pays for 85% to 100% of the premium. They fear change because they fear that they will lose something that they have now, and they fear that they will wind up having to help pay for people who are now uninsured.
Wealthier people are also more likely to vote (and to make campaign contributions) so politicians are more likely to be concerned about their views.
AT the Summit, both Democrats and Republicans made one thing clear: Democrats want to cover 30 million people. Republicans want to cover 3 million–and they definitely Do Not want to try to cover 30 million.
That is a huge, philosophical difference. And the Republicans have made it clear that they will Never vote for a plan that tries to cover 30 million uninsured.
I agree that there is a “new invisible hand that is very much interested in maintaining the status quo and is investing fortunes in lobbying and creating political and social havoc for pure financial benefit of the very few.”
(Though I would add that it’s not that new. This has been going on since at least 1980–and you saw the nation’s attitude toward the poor and the working class begin to change during the “Me Decade”–the 1970s. Then came the “Greed Decade”– the 1980s.)
And I would add that, as the polls show, income and “values” are closely linked. Even people in the upper-middle-class– who are not truly wealthy (say earning $60,000 to $75,000) are opposed to tax increases on the very wealthy to help fund health care for the poor and lower-middle-class. Those upper-middle-class people identify with the wealthy–they hope that someday, they will be wealthy, and they think that the poor should take greater responsiblity for themslves and “make do” with less adequate healthcare if that is all that they can afford.
Those who have more are less likely to want to share. (This of course is not true of all wealthy people. Many are generous. Look at Warren Buffet. But he is unusual.)
And if we have reform,some upper-middle-class people will, in fact, have to give something up. I don’t think health reform will involve taxing the middle-class or the upper-middle-clas, but if we are going to cover everyone, we will have to reduce waste.
This means that middle-class and upper-middle-class people won’t be able to get every test or treatment that they (or even their doctor) might think they need.
More and more doctors and hosptials will be working in groups where evidence-based medicine will become more dominant. Individual doctors will be following guidelines (not rules) as they do at Mayo, the VA and Kaiser– they won’t be making decisions about “best practice” on their own.
Patients who are accustomed to being over-treated may well feel that they are losing something. It will take a long, long time for the American public to being to realize that more care is not necessarily better care . . .
As for the Wyden-Bennet proposal, see my reply to Dr. David under “What Reformers Are Up Against.”
Some conservatives favor the Wyden plan because it shifts the cost of dealing with health care inflation to individuals– and low-income and middle-income families who would find themsleves in real trouble in a few years.
The subsidies for the poor and the tax deduction for the rest of us will not rise as quickly as health care inflation.
Republicans like this because it means that wealthy tax payers won’t have to worry about tax hikes to keep up with health care inflation . Under the Wyden plan subsidies for the poor would rise only 1/5 as fast as inflation.
The poor themslevs would have to pick up the other 4/5.
This is the basic structural problem with Wyden/Bennet– it shifts all risk to the individual family. Neither the employer nor the government intervene to try to bring down costs, negotiate for discounts, or elminate waste. The consumer is left on his own –in a market (thehealthcare market) where the “consumer” is someone who is sick, often in pain, sometimes afaid often old.
How will low income peopole afford paying for 4/5 of health care inflatin? Only by picking plans with high deductibles–plans that they then cannot afford to use.
This is not “universal coverage”–it provides only the appearance of universal coverage.
As the Center for POlicy and Budget Priorities points out:
“Under the plan, there is a substantial risk that instead of the private health insurance plans in the state-based purchasing pools competing solely on the basis of cost and quality, they would compete in significant part on the basis of which plans could best attract healthy individuals and discourage enrollment by people in poor health. Some adverse selection likely would result, with healthy individuals choosing low-cost health insurance plans, like high-deductible plans . . “http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=674.
Moreover, the Center observes: “Finally, the Wyden-Bennett plan is designed in such a way that the health benefits the insurance plans would cover, as well as some of the subsidies to help people purchase health insurance, would erode each year, with the erosion likely to become substantial over time. These features of the plan lower its overall cost and constrain growth in health care spending. They help permit the plan to be roughly budget-neutral by 2014, according to CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation. But they also would likely have some adverse side-effects. For low- and moderate-income people in particular, the steady erosion in the benefits packages and the subsidies could result over time in such individuals being enrolled in health insurance plans with significant and growing gaps in coverage that these individuals could not afford to fill.”
In addition, Mediciad and SCHIP would be rolled into the private insurance plan, and the Center says that many children and low-income people woudl find that Medicaid and Schip no longer provided needed care.
The Wyden Bennet bill could be fixed, teh Center suggets, if it “increased subsidies for low-income families and establisihed caps on out-of-pocket paymemnts.”
But if it did that “These steps to ensure affordability would add to the legislation’s costs and would likely require additional revenues beyond the existing financing sources the Wyden-Bennett plan now taps.”
At that point, the Wyden-Bennett bill loses support form teh Republicans. They like it because it costs the rich nothing. They also like it because it does’t attempt to rein in doctors’ fees or hospital fees or the cost of drugs.
Many of the wealthy are shareholders who own drug stocks. They also don’t want to see hospital reimbursements or doctors fees cut becuase they fear that this would interfere with the very high level of service that they believe they are getting at places like Cedars Sinai in Beverly Hills.
They also don’t like any regulation or government intervention which might suggest that any American shouldn’t be free to make $800,000–or two million–even if they do it by gouging the sick.
As to whether there are good, patriotic and righteous people of all political stripes, I agree.
But sadly, there are also many Americans who have bought into the notion that “greed is good” and that in the U.S. it’s “every man for himself “(and his or her family.) Moreover, there is still much racism in America as well as disdain for the poor.
Consider Fox’s ratings–and some of the things said on Fox ranging from outright lies to racial slurs.
Who do you think is keeping Fox’s ratings so high? Candadians?
I am afraid those are fellow citizens.
NG, Dr. Val, Tom
Ng–I agree that we need some structural change.
Filibusters have become far too frequent and make it difficult to get anything done.
I suspect that filibuster rules may be changed in the years ahead.
Changing the number of Senators per state to reflect population would be very, very difficut. All of hte small states would, of course, vote against it.
Though I agree, such a change would better reflect the diversity of the country.
As for letting the President and the House pass legislation without the Senate– no, there are reasons that we have two chambers.
Also, traditionally Senate members have been more liberal and better educated than the House.
This, of course, does not mean that they are wiser or more honest.
But I would hate to see a populist House and a populist President making the laws. . .
Dr. Val–
Good to hear from you, but there seem to be words missing in your post. . .I can’t quite understand what you’re saying.
Tom–
Yes,I agree this is a war between Democracy and unfettered capitalism.
Or, another way to put it: it is a war between those who believe in solidarity equality (which would mean that everyone has a right to high quality health care ) and those who believe that individual freedom is the essential American value (which includes the freedom to earn and preserve as much wealth as possible with being free from resonsiblities to society (i.e. taxes.)
Of course, equality and individual liberty are both American values, but liberals put more emphasis on equality, conservatives put more emphasis on individual liberty.