Republicans pretend that they are powerless to do more about the
great ship Obamacare than to change the fuel on which it runs and rearrange its
deck chairs — never mind to sink it. Because they lack 60 votes to stop
“unlimited debate,” they claim to be unable to vote even on whether to allow
health insurance to be sold across state lines. They pretend to believe that fidelity to unlimited debate
in the Senate trumps the importance of our health care system. But the reason
why they prop up Obamacare rather than tearing it down is that they are even
more beholden to the insurance companies and hospital chains than the Democrats
who passed it in the first place.
Neither the
filibuster nor the requirement of 60 votes to “cloture” it prevents voting and
passing anything that a majority wishes to pass. Moreover, Senate rules can be
made or changed by simple majorities. In practical terms, even without
“cloture,” a minority’s protracted talk cannot stop a determined majority from
voting. Potential filibusters learned long ago that talking nonsense to hold
the floor day and night for weeks on end breaks them physically and discredits
them politically. But the
main reason why no one has tried a real filibuster for more than a half century
is that, in 1970, the Senate adopted a “two track” procedure, by which, once a
bill fails to gain enough votes to impose cloture (since 1975 that number has
been 60), the Senate simply goes on to other business. This has resulted in
countless bills having been effectively filibustered to death without a word
having being spoken, without anyone having incurred any effort or risk. This,
the avoidance of votes on risky, controversial matters — not any commitment to
extended debate — is what senators of both parties find so attractive about the
modern “virtual filibuster.”
If Republicans
were serious about voting on any provision regarding health care, or anything
else, they would not have to bother eliminating the filibuster. It would be
enough to dare opponents actually to wage real ones — complete with minority
senators babbling and majority senators sleeping on cots ready to answer quorum
calls.
Real filibusters
advertise the minority’s fatal political liability: refusal to confront the
questions at hand. Because holding the floor to the exclusion of the majority
makes it impossible to confute the majority, “extended debate” refutes no one
and persuades no one. As the minority filibusters with scattershot or nonsense,
the majority can repeat demands for roll-call votes to decide on matters at
hand.
Today however,
Republicans are even more unwilling than Democrats to take responsibility for
basic choices. The Democrats’ Obamacare made health insurance companies into
public utilities. This is what the companies wanted. Republicans had joined
them in working out similar schemes (vide the
Heritage Foundation plan and RomneyCare in Massachusetts) and resented being
left out of the action. But whereas Republicans regarded the companies as
permanent stewards of Health-Care-As-Public-Utility, Democrats viewed them as
temporary administrators of rules designed to evolve into a “single payer”
system of socialist medicine.
As Obamacare
brought grief, Republicans fed on public hate for it for four election cycles.
Today, they seem stuck with their original commitment to the health of the
health insurance industry — as if maintaining the companies as public utilities
and passing taxpayer money through them to lower patient out-of-pocket costs
were a step toward freedom rather than another step toward socialism. The polls show that fewer that one
in five voters approve of the Republican plans. That is why open debate on what
to do about health care is the last thing on earth Republicans want.
Blaming “Senate rules” diverts attention from the
basic choice that most Republicans made long ago to service the very groups
that supported Obamacare: insurance companies and hospital administrators
anxious for predictable streams of income. That is why, rhetoric about
competition and freedom notwithstanding, Republican majorities in 2017-18 are
no more disposed than were Republican majorities in 2005-07 to allow Americans
to purchase any plan offered by any company certified in any state. Doing that
today would cut virtually all of Obamacare’s Gordian knots. But each and every
one of those complex rules means money for corporate constituents. Competition
is what they don’t want.
The Republican
Party bets that pretense of commitment to Senate rules will cover the reality
of broken promises.
