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As tragedies go, the Senate's Saturday night vote to proceed with a debate on a vast new health-care entitlement wasn't exactly Shakespearean. The outcome was expected but the writing wasn't as good and the acting was more Jon Lovitz than Laurence Olivier. The only real drama was how much publicity and pork the supposedly fence-sitting Democrats could exact in exchange for a vote that everyone knew was a foregone conclusion.
At this stage of the legislative process, Democrats are at ramming speed, determined to pass this destructive legislation at whatever cost before more voters figure out what is being done to them. The designated role for the "moderates" is to protest and posture enough to claim to have "improved" the bill before they inevitably acquiesce in it becoming law. The play's the thing.
Take Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu, who claims to have grave concerns about the bill's cost. Those worries became less pressing when Majority Leader Harry Reid added language on page 432 of the 2,074-page opus that would raise the bill's cost by increasing federal Medicaid subsidies for "certain states recovering from a major disaster." Guess which state is the only one that would qualify under that wording?
This political gratuity was quickly reported as costing $100 million, but Senator Landrieu made clear after her floor speech that her vote couldn't be bought that cheaply. "I will correct something. It's not $100 million, it's $300 million, and I'm proud of it and will keep fighting for it," she told reporters.
Note that Senator Landrieu's price included no substantive change in the $25 billion in Medicaid burdens that this legislation will impose on other states, or any reduction in its huge new tax burden on Louisiana small businesses, or any change in the rationing commission it will establish for Medicare. Mrs. Landrieu was voting to enable all of those provisions to take one more giant step toward enactment.
Senator Landrieu did also say she will not vote for the bill on final passage unless its provision for a public insurance plan would only be imposed with a "trigger" if certain measures of coverage aren't met. But as long as the architecture of a "public option" is included in the bill, it will be triggered sooner rather than later. The bill's new rules and costs for private insurance are so onerous that the public option is bound to be cheaper. This is why Barney Frank says the public option is a stepping stone to a government-run system, and Henry Waxman says the left will build on any form of public option once it is in place. Mrs. Landrieu is merely reciting her political lines.
Then there is Arkansas's Blanche Lincoln, who is up for re-election next year and is doing her best to sound as if she is both for and against the legislation. "We simply cannot ignore the growth in the federal government since the year 2000. I can assure you that the American people have not ignored it," Mrs. Lincoln declared in her Senate floor speech—moments before she said she would vote to proceed with the biggest expansion of government in living memory.
Voters can expect more such faux drama as the debate proceeds on the Senate floor. Nebraska's Ben Nelson will insist on some compromise on abortion coverage, and the National Right to Life Committee will declare a great victory—never mind the rationing the bill will guarantee for the sick and aged. Evan Bayh of Indiana will fight to reduce taxes on medical devices, even as the overall bill guarantees a far higher tax burden on the entire U.S. economy.
Americans shouldn't be fooled by this play-acting. The only way to improve
this bill is to defeat it and start over.