Legislative Limbo

It seems likely that health care reform is dead. We hear that Democrats are working quietly behind the scenes to jumpstart the stalled process; but the fact that they have to work quietly is not promising.

Many have concluded that the only hope for resuscitating the healthcare legislation is to push the issue off the front page and give lawmakers time to work out a new compromise and shift public perception of the bill.

The Democrat's only hope for progress on the issue is to make sure the public doesn't know what they are doing. Good luck with that.

I predicted early on that health care reform would fail, and it turns out I was right. I can't take much credit, because only a few weeks ago I lost all confidence in my prediction and I thought that passage was pretty likely. But the reasons for my original prediction were sound.

It is not the Democrats' strategy or tactics that put the bill into legislative limbo. It is that economic and political circumstances right now are very unfavorable for fundamental reform. The Democrats never acknowledged this, nor would it have made much difference if they had. There just isn't any way to get there from here.

Here is The Politico on the Obama's budget:

President Barack Obama's new $3.83 trillion budget paints a bleak landscape of record deficits aggravated by the economy and wars overseas and now threatening to pull down his top legislative domestic priority—health care reform.

Released to Congress Monday morning, Obama's spending plan anticipates $5.08 trillion in deficits over the next five years and seems almost a cry for help in the face of what he sees as intransigent Republican opposition.

This is the background against which the Democrats tried to create a massive new government program.

The budget's grim numbers present a chickens-come-home-to-roost moment for both the White House and Democratic Congress, which skipped past any real deficit debate last year in their eagerness to get onto healthcare reform.

The goal was to act quickly — before the deficits hit home — and institute major changes which proponents argue will serve the long-term fiscal health of the country. Instead, a year of wrangling and refusal to consider more incremental steps have brought Obama and Democrats to this juncture, where waves of red ink threaten to overwhelm their boat already threatened by high unemployment.

The only hope they had was to enact the bill "before the deficits hit home," i.e., before the public became aware of what they were doing. Well, we know how that worked out.

Comments

[duggersd]

We also hear that Republicans caused the death of the health care bill. This is really unfair considering both houses of Congress up to this point had the votes to push anything they wanted though and send it to the White House.
The actual credit has to go to the people who went to the town hall meetings and the alternative media that actually shined the light of truth on what was going on. I do not have faith the Republicans will be the party of conservatism. I can hope, but I am not sure I see it.