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Written on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 2:54pm by Christopher Smith | 7 Comments

Massa and The Netroots

eric-massa

A slapfight is developing on regional blogs about Rep. Eric Massa’s refusal to vote for the Healthcare Reform bill.  You have Phil Anderson, editor of The Albany Project saying that Massa is duplicitous and “full of shit”.

Today is D-Day for health care reform and we’ve still got some waverers here in NY. We already know that Eric Massa is “no” no matter what. (And I’ll have more on that later.  Short version: Massa is full of sh*t and trying to have it both ways.)

This is it, folks. It’s now or never. Too many of these guys got their seats with netroots support. (Rep Massa, I’m looking at you.) It’s time for them to put up or shut up.

To which the guys at Rochester Turning, several of whom live in Massa’s district, retort:

Eric Massa has read the bill. He said he would not vote for a bad bill. It’s a bad bill.  Employers will continue to have to pay for their employees Health Insurance.  If not, they will be committing a crime and fined.

This is an argument that Democrats across America should be having this week, in earnest.

We have establishment Democrats who value party loyalty and getting “anything” passed on healthcare in order to implement further compromised bills on important issues down the road.  They are arguing with real progressives who demand actual progress and good legislation.  It’s the crux of the problem in the national party.

Anderson has been around a long time and was most recently employed as the Director of New Media at the New York State Senate.  He’s a party first kinda guy.  The guys at Rochester Turning are like me, they’re employed in non-party jobs and want their representatives to demand good legislation.  We tend to find ourselves lumped in with the “fringe” of the party, where you find guys like Moore and Kucinich.

So, the argument from Anderson comes down to why won’t a “Progressive” Democrat like Massa act like a compromising corporate centrist Democrat?  Why won’t he get in line like the other advocates of single payer and a robust public option and vote for this watered down bill which doesn’t accomplish a whole lot of reform?

The party guys will tell you it’s because Massa is appeasing the right wing teabaggers in NY-29 and that Massa is a party sellout.  The non party guys will tell you it’s because Massa meant what he said and said what he meant.

In a letter dated July 30, 2009 from the Progressive Caucus to Reps. Pelosi, Waxman, Rangel, and Miller, signed by Rep. Eric Massa and 56 other Representatives:

Any bill that does not provide, at a minimum, for a public option with reimbursement rates based on Medicare rates – not negotiated rates – is unacceptable. It would ensure higher costs for the public plan, and would do nothing to achieve the goal of”keeping insurance companies honest,” and their rates down.

To offset the increased costs incurred by adopting the provisions advocated by the Blue Dog members of the Committee, the agreement would reduce subsidies to low-and middle-income families, requiring them to pay a larger portion of their income for insurance premiums, and would impose an unfunded mandate on the states to pay for what were to have been Federal costs.

In short, this agreement will result in the public, both as insurance purchasers and as taxpayers, paying ever higher rates to insurance companies. We simply cannot vote for such a proposal.

Of the 57 signers of that letter, only Reps. Eric Massa and Dennis Kucinich followed through on their pledge to not vote for a bill without a robust public option.  Most of the signers traded away their pledge in exchange for a floor vote on a single payer amendment to the bill, which Speaker Pelosi subsequently reneged on.  Pelosi did however allow the pro-life Stupak Amendment to come to the floor for a vote, which is an affront to every pro-choice interest group in America.

So, is Massa simply voting “no” on the bill like the Blue Dog Democrats did, to appease the right wingers in their districts?  I’d say the evidence says “no”.  Along with the letter above, Massa has on numerous occasions stated his opposition to a watered down healthcare bill.

In the end, I’m glad someone in the WNY delegation voted against the bill.  While I’m glad some incremental reforms on pre-existing conditions and lifetime maximums were achieved, the sum total of the bill is a general handout to the insurance industry it’s intended to reform.  Pretty par for the course when it comes to DC legislation nowadays.

I was going to write a lengthy treatise on why this bill is generally bad for America and how in the long term it hurts the cause of real reform, but a Huffington Post blogger summed up my sentiments and I’d prefer to link to him in the interest of keeping this post under 2,000 words.

Personally, I supported President Obama in the primaries and the election but do not support him on this corporate giveaway built on broken campaign promises. I voted for the Barack Obama who opposed the individual mandate, who said the negotiations would be televised on C-SPAN and who campaigned against backroom deals with PhARMA.

Conservatives have expressed outrage for months about the way the health care bill was handled. Their anti-government anger is misplaced because the lets the insurances and drug companies who really helped drive this bill off the hook. But I understand their sense that this bill was passed despite the people.

Progressives should be every bit as upset that President Obama lied to us to get his historic health bill. The citizens of this country did not have a seat at the table. Proponents of single payer didn’t have a seat at the table. Under the guise of health care reform, we watched as the insurance industry got a bill passed that entrenches and enriches them.

Don’t let anyone fool you that this bill is a good start. It’s got a poison pill “Public Option” that is designed to fail.

I’m glad Massa said “no” and I’m glad he holds the 29th district seat.  To get a feel for who this guy is, take a look at his statement on the floor of the House last week in opposition to an increase of troops and money to the failed state of Afghanistan.

Yeah, that’s the kind of guy I can get behind.

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7 Comments

  1. Brian Castner says:
    November 9, 2009 at 4:27 pm

    Well, another member of the WNY did vote against the bill: Chris Lee. The funny thing about Congress is you only get a yes or a no. So Massa and Lee may disagree about nearly everything, but their votes have the same effect. If the left and right agree its a terrible bill, does that mean its actually effectively in the center? Or truly bad for all?

    One more thing: the liberal lion Ted Kennedy would have voted for this bill (or when the equivalent Senate version arrives, of course) because its incremental improvement. Does current liberal anger mean that 40 years of Kennedy incremental change is done?

  2. Christopher Smith says:
    November 9, 2009 at 4:50 pm

    The Lee/Massa argument figured prominently in the discussion over the weekend, with Anderson and his party guys saying Massa’s vote was the ultimate equivalent of having a teabagger in NY-29. There is some validity to that point, for sure. The vote tally doesn’t reflect reasoning or sentiment, just the final vote.

    However, the larger point being that “what could pass” was determined by a small minority of centrist democrats in the house and seante and open debate and negotiations were never really held. It wasn’t a good process and it wasn’t a good bill. Ultimately, I’d rather have had all 57 of those progressive Dems stand up for good legislation and use their numbers to force a better bill. In the end, they all caved into pressure or they’ve been in Washington so long that they no longer believe transformational policy is possible.

    I hope we can one day so away with the idea that incrementalism is good as it implies we aren’t capable of big things in this country. That safe, homogenized policy which is supported by a plurality of monied interests is no longer an efficient way to govern a nation this large.

    After the Senate is done with this half-assed bill, we’ll have a trigger for a co-op in 2013 or 2016 because Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson are afraid to do big things or because they have been bought by the industry. Either way, this bill is useless and will only get more useless in the next month.

  3. Mike in WNY says:
    November 9, 2009 at 5:28 pm

    Democrats arguing over whether bad is bad enough . . .they can all go **** themselves.  They are nothing but a bunch of amoral pond sucking scums.

    • Alan Bedenko says:
      November 9, 2009 at 6:00 pm

      Yes, Eric Massa, a cancer survivor who attributes the care he received through the government-run single-payer Tricare system to his survival, is definitely an “amoral pond sucking scum”. Massa wants to ensure that everyone and anyone in this country – regardless of ability to pay – has access to the same quality of treatment that he received courtesy of the federal insurance scheme and the doctors and hospitals he had access to. Much as every other industrialized nation in the world does.

      You see, in Massa’s world, it’s important that people receive medical care that doesn’t bankrupt them or make them lose their homes or belongings. It’s important that people not be hit with a six-figure bill because they had a c-section in the richest country in the world.

      Obviously, your view of morality and pond-suckage is subjective and your own. Far be it from me to dissuade you of identifying amorality and pond-suck when you see it.

      But in my world, it’s people who would ensure that only the wealthy have access to care while the middle and lower classes have none, or be rendered bankrupt for receiving such care, who are truly amoral and scummy. In the meantime, the poor will continue to use the emergency room as a primary care clinic, and we’ll all be eating the ridiculously high cost of that. But you’re not for the status quo, are you? No, you’re for the free market, where the poor can be free to pick and choose their doctors from a choice of licensed professionals and unlicensed hacks. Where the middle class can get AAA-quality care for a premium, or D-quality care in a backalley clinic. Where insurers can charge whatever they want with impunity.

  4. Mike In WNY says:
    November 9, 2009 at 10:57 pm

    IMO, your first scenario, the one you and Massa advocate, is nothing but a Utopian dream that will never live up to its billing, it will be worse than what we have now. I agree with you on the second scenario, I also don’t want that to happen, although it already has thanks to government regulations.

    • Alan Bedenko says:
      November 10, 2009 at 6:43 am

      It’s not a utopian dream. Right now, my employer and I pay a ridiculous sum of money every pay period so that I can get some relatively decent health insurance which does, however, feature things like a lifetime maximum and no prohibition against rescission.

      In most European countries, taxpayers and employers don’t have to pay insurers. The cost is spread out evenly among everyone in the country, and everyone has a standard level of irrevocable insurance with no policy limit. Imagine that – even in Canada, the cost to do business is significant lower for industry than in the US, because industry doesn’t have to pay insurance companies as part of remuneration packages. Imagine that – instead of paying $200/pay period to an insurance company, a person could pay $150/pay period to a government-run or government-regulated insurance scheme. Now, one’s a fee to a private business, and the other’s a tax. Either way, it’s my money going away from me so that I don’t have to go bankrupt if someone gets really sick.

      Not a utopian dream. The rest of the industrialized world’s status quo.

  5. mike hudson says:
    November 10, 2009 at 4:34 am

    kucinich cited the fact that only 6 million americans would be eligible for the “public option” under the plan, and that by forcing some 21 million to buy health insurance from the same greedy companies that have driven prices so high to begin with, guaranteed them at least $70 billion in new revenue. this bailout of the insurance companies is a kick in the teeth to the middle class and small business owners particularly.