Russ Feingold: Obama got the health care bill he wanted
According to Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), among the most vocal supporters of the public option, the ultimate responsibility for a Senate health care bill without a public option or Medicare expansion lies with the Obama administration.
Many progressives have painted the Obama administration as powerless to stand up to the will of Congress, blaming Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) for single-handedly forcing Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) to drop the public option and Medicare expansion from the bill. It may not be realistic, however, to believe that one Senator has that much power and influence. On the other hand, it may be more practical to believe that the White House, with Presidential directives, veto and other means does have the power to force or mold legislation.
Russ Feingold probably knew exactly that when he said, according to The Hill:
It would be unfair to blame Lieberman for its apparent demise...[because] President Barack Obama...could have insisted on a higher standard for the legislation.This bill appears to be legislation that the president wanted in the first place, so I don’t think focusing it on Lieberman really hits the truth. I think they could have been higher. I certainly think a stronger bill would have been better in every respect.
If one looks closely at the twists and turns in the health care debate over the past few months, there is much evidence to support Feingold's assertion. Keep in mind that Joe Lieberman was Obama's mentor in the Senate. There was also the deal cut by Obama with big Pharma, behind closed doors, to ban bulk price negotiations and drug reimportation that clearly contradicted both Obama's campaign positions on those issues and his promise to conduct all White House business out in the open. Then there was the warning by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to liberal groups to stop running attack ads against centrist Democrats who opposed the public option. According to Jonathon Martin writing for Politico, "there is no winking and nodding when Obama and Emanuel deliver their message."
In an unrelated issue regarding lack of support for supplemental war funding, Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) and other freshmen in the House also got a message from the White House: "We're not going to help you. You'll never hear from us again." The White House, clearly, can give a forceful message to members of Congress when it chooses to do so.
There are also very practical reasons, in terms of Washington politics, that the Obama administration would want to cater to the pharmaceutical and insurance industries and not those in favor of a public option or Medicare expansion. According to Glenn Greenwald writing for Salon:
The evidence was overwhelming from the start that the White House was not only indifferent, but opposed, to the provisions most important to progressives. The administration wants not only to prevent industry money from funding an anti-health-care-reform campaign, but also wants to ensure that the Democratic Party -- rather than the GOP -- will continue to be the prime recipient of industry largesse. If you're interested in preserving and expanding political power, then, all other things being equal, it's better to have the pharmaceutical and health insurance industry on your side than opposed to you.
So which is it? Is the Obama administration a champion of progressive causes, but impotent to stop the minority party, centrist Democrats and Joe Lieberman from perverting health care reform from a public option or the popular Medicare expansion into a politically disastrous and highly coercive "mandate" gift to the health insurance industry? Or is it politics as usual, and all about money, power and the influence that corporations have on all branches of our government? The evidence seems to support Sen. Feingold's assertion.
http://www.examiner.com/article/russ-feingold-obama-got-the-health-care-bill-he-wanted
Got it.