Yesterday, A-list national blogger Booman laid out the optimist's case on what Obama's health care strategy is:
To get the bill he ran on, he was going to have to make sure that the public option passed on the House side and, since it could not pass on the Senate side, that it be included in the Conference Report. At that point, one of three things would happen.
1. If the Dems didn't have 60 votes, the Republicans would filibuster and take the blame for obstruction, setting up the argument for using reconciliation.
2. Seeing the momentum for health care reform, one or two Republicans would vote for cloture and the bill would pass.
3. If the Dems did have 60 votes, they could muscle the few doubters to vote for cloture, even if they opposed the underlying bill.
The only thing that could go wrong is if there were any Democrats who were willing to filibuster the president's highest priority item. This was the strategy, and it hasn't changed much at all.
The Democrats are in good position.
The pessimist's case, widely available at other blogs, is that the Democrats will abandon the public option and leave us with a poor bill. This theory emphasizes the Obama administration's repeated statements that the public option is not essential.
All this setup is for Michael O'Brien of The Hill's talk with Rob Andrews. I interpret it as saying Booman's optimist case is right:
Andrews predicted that the preliminary Senate bill would not include the public (or "government-run") option coming into conference, but predicted "some accommodation" between the two chambers' versions of health legislation coming out of conference.
The New Jersey lawmaker seemed confident, though, that reconciliation would come into play in the later stages of the health debate to pass the public option. The budgetary rule allows the Senate to short-circuit filibuster rules, and pass legislation with a simple majority of votes.
It seems to me that every Democratic Senator should vote against a filibuster, but reconciliation would work too for the public option. Although there is an October 15 deadline, according to Chris Bowers there are easy ways around the deadline. In any case, Rob Andrews is warning us that he does not expect a public option in the initial Senate bill. Public pressure seems necessary to encourage the negotiators, because it sure takes a lot of faith to think Democrats will suddenly improve the bill at the end.
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