Drawing the Progressive Line on Health Care Reform

Once the Senate votes on whatever health care non-reform piece of shit Harry Reid thinks will annoy repugs the least, the real fight is going to take place in the Conference Committee, where Democratic representatives chosen by Nancy Pelosi and repug-fellators chosen by Reid will hash out a compromise between the Senate's zillion-dollar giveaway to Big Insurance and Big Pharma and the House's public option.

Down with Tyranny explains that fight may come down to a brilliant freshman representative who won her seat by primary-ing a Blue Dog.

Donna Edwards (D-MD) has been one of the most outstanding organizers within congressional progressive circles in favor of holding leadership's feet to the fire when it comes to making sure health care reform is genuine and not just a sop to a confused electorate and a giveaway to the wealthy corporations who have financed the confusion. Recently I spoke to another member, a very senior member, of Congress who was getting a little weak-kneed about holding out for substance over form. He told me that when he was a freshman he was as idealistic and driven as Donna. "She's as pure as the first snow of winter," he told me... wistfully.

It probably isn't going to be easy for progressives after the House passes a strong bill with meaningful reform, including a public option, and then the House of Lords obliterates it at the behest of the special interests that run the show over there. Seven powerful senators have been tasked with killing meaningful health care and each has been paid a tremendous amount of money by the Medical-Industrial Complex and the Insurance Industry. These 7 senators will fight like vicious pit bulls to prevent meaningful health care reform from passing; together these 7 took in over $20,000,000 in thinly veiled bribes from the powers behind the status quo that will stop at nothing to squelch the kind of real reform Obama has been working to pass:

Max Baucus (D-MT) $4,087,094
Mitch McConnell (R-KY) $3,713,625
Joe Lieberman (I-CT) $3,428,771
Chuck Grassley (R-IA) $3,025,103
Richard Burr (R-NC) $2,886,140
Ben Nelson (D-NE) $2,306,065
Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) $2,154,492

So what's all this got to do with Donna Edwards, a forceful, intellectually powerful but very junior member of the House of Representatives? Good question; glad you asked. Most experts think that the Baucus Caucus (see above) will be able to kill any semblance of real reform in the Senate and report out something akin to the shameful Insurance lobbyist bill that Baucus' Finance Committee vomited out last week. It's likely that Pelosi will appoint compromisers to the House-Senate conference committee charged with bridging the gap between real health care and Baucus' corporate welfare for the Insurance Industry bill. Harry Reid will not appoint compromisers; he will appoint the worst of the insurance industry shills to the conference committee-- forgot to mention that Reid's role in all this has earned him a handsome $2,232,911 from his pals at the Medical-Industrial Complex and the Insurance Industry-- and most observers expect an especially bad bill that has no relation to what was passed in the three House committees or the Senate Health Committee (all 4 of which include a public option). At that point Democrats will have to make a decision-- to join the obstructionist Republicans, who just want to kill any kind of reform at all and vote against their own president's #1 domestic priority and a bill that achieves a few goals towards reform and will actually save the lives of thousands of poor working people by offering them some kind of subsidized, stingy coverage, or to say a half loaf (a quarter loaf?) is better than nothing and bite the bullet and vote for the crappy bill.

Donna has been one of the most vocal opponents of accepting Baucus' anti-family, pro-corporate approach, and she is working inside the Progressive Caucus, along with Raul Grijalva and several other stalwarts, to keep progressives who have vowed to oppose any bill without a public option together. Friday the Washington Post sat down with Donna in her office to talk about the battle over health care reform. The Post found that "the public option remains a line in the sand for Edwards, and she thinks the thud with which the much-anticipated bill by Sen. Max Baucus's committee fell this week helps the chances of including the option in a final bill." When asked what she thought about Baucus' horrible bill she was very direct:

Middle class and poor people are bearing the burden and the brunt of this failed health-care system, and in my view, the bill that Senator Baucus is introducing really cuts at the core of the very people we're trying to help. ... This idea of cooperatives as an alternative, I think most experts have completely debunked those as any kind of alternative to a robust public plan, and I agree with that. ... [The bill] has no Republican support, and it's bad policy. ... We have three bills in the House that are far stronger than the Baucus proposal. I think we're on solid ground here. ... Our job in the House of Representatives is to get our work done. We can't worry about what the Senate is doing. Our job for the people is to get the strongest bill possible out of the House. That's how we create legislation. ... One of the things about the president's speech last week [to Congress] ... and the town hall meeting speeches that he's held since then is the president has been very clear: "If you all have better options out there to alternatives to meet the goals of lowering costs and increasing competition and providing accountability for the insurance companies, I'm happy to hear them." The thing is, nobody has put any of those ideas on the table, and the idea that we have on the table that will meet those goals is the public option.

...I've joined with 60-some of my colleagues who signed a letter to the president and to our leadership saying very clearly that if there's not a public option in the final bill then I won't support that bill. I haven't changed my position.

Read the whole thing.

Then clone this woman. Clone her now.