Mike Stark, who seems to be auditioning for role of marginally skinnier Michael Moore, interviewed Barack Obama deputy consiglere Valerie Jarrett on Friday and offered this curious suggestion: if the health care bill is being held up by the square states, why not hit them where it hurts and tell them no public option = no farm bill?
It’s a good idea. Poor choice of audience, though.
The implication in holding up the farm bill to get health care would be that Obama does not want the farm bill, but is merely acquiescing to it. Jarrett’s reaction shows the error in this premise: Obama wants a pork-laden farm bill. He doesn’t have to be coerced into it, and the various stakeholders in Washington know it; he would prefer (no health care bill and farm bill) to (no health care bill and no farm bill). Who would believe his threats?
That doesn’t mean Mike has a lousy idea. It just means Barack Obama, or indeed anyone who is staring at an electoral vote map, is the wrong guy to carry it out. If the idea is to get any traction, take it here:
Farm bills are welfare payments. No more, no less. The payments come from the rich areas on the coasts and go to inland areas.
Nancy Pelosi owes her congressional seat to the voters from San Francisco and her speaker post to the Democratic caucus.
The 52 Blue Dog congressmen have the numbers to work with the Republicans and block any specific health care bill. However, they cannot change the speaker (Republicans don’t get to vote in that election) and would be hard-pressed to muster any bill that the Republicans would support.
The Blue Dogs need the farm bill. No farm bill, no reelection in 2010 for many of them. It is their top priority.
Pelosi and the House leadership are in the rare position of being able to go to the Blue Dogs and say:
You need the farm bill and you want to stop the public option. You can pick one or the other. If you blow up health care, I’ll go back to my district and tell them that I (a) stopped billions of dollars in farm subsidies and (b) I was stabbed in the back by you. They’ll send me back here. If you go back to your district with no farm bill, you can blame it on me all you want; they’ll throw you out for being ineffective.
Bring the Blue Dogs to heel in the House, where the weakness of the population numbers underpinning them is evident, and you gain the ability to negotiate with the Senate. Right now it’s easy for Kent Conrad to say there aren’t the votes to pass a public option; he doesn’t want the public option, and he takes it for granted that the House won’t seriously vote against any reform, however incremental.
Problem for Kent is that he needs a farm bill, and that has to be passed on both sides. If Pelosi says sure, we’ll vote for whatever health care you come up with, but we’ll vote against any farm bill unless you first deliver me a public option, that changes the calculus for the Republican negotiators. Not much upside for Chuck Grassley if he has to go home to Iowa and say that he managed to stop a government health insurance program at the cost of corn subsidies.
Obama can’t play these games, because he doesn’t want politicians in Indiana and Iowa grumbling about his threats. Even if the farm bill were passed, along with a health care bill, the very idea that Obama was willing to make threats about it would hurt his chances in 2012.
Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Jim Clyburn, on the other hand, have a strong hand to play. The Blue Dogs can, at best, fight them to a draw, and since the Blue Dogs are (a) junior; (b) represent less-wealthy districts that rely on Federal largesse, the Blue Dogs have some glaring vulnerabilities. What would Sam Rayburn do if a faction crossed him? Lyndon Johnson?
I love this idea, and I believe it’s time to get tough. I wonder how these blue dogs would react to a full court press to paint the Farm bill as a socialist handout. All these small towns in the plains states would completely dry up and blow away (the dust bowl started the exodus) without government subsidies and other programs. Yet they scream about socialisim whenever programs, like the public option in HR, are designed to help the most people. I’m sick of states with low populations dictating to the rest of the country. The so-called ‘heartland’ has no heart.
Until we get rid of the Senate, force small states to combine, or break up large states, this approach will be necessary.
Taunter,
The democrats sold out the poor and working class by signing up free trade deals with mercantilist countries into autarky. That was insane. If you democrats want to help the poor and working class, you need to pull out of the WTO and all trade treaties. They were signed up by an unholy alliance between the democrats who wanted to help the third world poor and the democrats and republicans that support big corporations.
The democrats plans for health care and cap and trade will only discourage jobs in the US. I thought Bush was an abomination for his Iraq war, bank bail outs, and tax cuts for the rich. But the Democrats’ continued bank handouts, continued Iraq war, and health care and cap and trade plans are even more despicable.
I think these plans will screw up the unemployment and wages in the US so badly that there’ll be a backlash against the Democrats as big as there was in California in the 1970′s, after the Rose Bird court overturned the death penalty. The California public threw all but ONE democrat judge out of office.
If you are looking for opposition to cap and trade, I am afraid you came to the wrong place; my criticism of the plan is that it is too weak. I would much prefer a direct carbon tax.
I am happy to help the poor and the working class, and I don’t think either is helped by pouring money into subsidizing what has made them poor and working class. We need an obsessive focus on education, and that’s a tough sell in a country whose population believes the world is six thousand years old. We allow our schools to serve the needs of the teachers (who are unionized and vote) and the parents (who are dumb and vote) and not the students, and then are somewhat surprised when the rest of the world gains on us in productivity.
They said that it could not be done,
He said “Just let me try.”
They said, “Other men have tried and failed,”
He answered, “But not I.”
They said, “It is impossible,”
He said, “There’s no such word.”
He closed his mind, he closed his heart…
To everything he heard.
He said, “Within the heart of man,
There is a tiny seed.
It grows until it blossoms,
It’s called the will to succeed.
Its roots are strength, its stem is hope,
Its petals inspiration,
Its thorns protect its strong green leaves,
With grim determination.
Its stamens are its skills
Which help to shape each plan,
For there’s nothing in the universe
Beyond the scope of man.”
They thought that it could not be done,
Some even said they knew it,
But he faced up to what could not be done…
And he couldn’t bloody do it!
Benny Hill
Ciao,
Econolicious