Matt Yglesias

Nelson: Bad Economy Means We Should Wreck Economy, Destroy Planet, Let Health Care Languish

I suspect we’re going to be hearing a lot more of this sort of thing in the weeks to come:

Democrat Ben Nelson, a Senator from Nebraska, said the slumping economy and rising joblessness will be factors as Congress considers climate change and health care legislation. They are also driving concerns about the budget deficit, which widened to a record $1.42 trillion in the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, he said.

“When the economy’s not strong there’s a lot of interest in controlling spending,” Nelson said.

This really makes no sense. If Nelson thinks the health care and climate legislation before congress would have a ruinous economic impact or something, then of course he shouldn’t vote for either bill. But that’s independent of the current state of the labor market. In reality, neither bill will have much of any impact on a 12-18 month time horizon since their provisions take time to phase-in. Both are aimed at long-term problems—the economic devastation wreaked by an out-of-control health care system and the environmental devastation wreaked by out-of-control greenhouse gas pollution. There’s never a perfect day to tackle a long-run problem, but delaying action doesn’t help the economy in the short-run and only makes it harder to tackle the problem.

On controlling spending, this is nuts. With the economy weak Nelson wants to do . . . what? Lay off teachers? Halt infrastructure projects? Make sure that kids whose parents are unemployed end up malnourished? The economy is suffering from a catastrophic collapse in overall spending with households, businesses, states, and municipalities all pulling back. If the federal government pulls back too we’re going to go down the drain.

Ben Nelson Threatens to Blow Up Health Reform

I know a lot of the readers of this blog think that Barack Obama could cause any bill to pass the Senate that he wants if only he were sufficiently spiney, and that any effort to point out the existence of objective impediments to passing legislation is just “shilling” for the White House, but it’s still the case that objective impediments exist. To pass a bill through a non-reconciliation process, you not only need the support of guys like Max Baucus and Kent Conrad, you also need the support of even-less-progressive Democrats like Mary Landrieu and Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln. And then there’s Ben Nelson, the most conservative Democrat of all:

“I see two endings,” Nelson said when asked by the paper what’s next for reform. “One is we find areas we can agree upon and we begin to do things incrementally, taking more of an insurance approach, not a government approach. Or it implodes.”

The context leaves no doubt that by “government approach” he means the public option, and this statement would seem to be pretty definitive. How can Nelson support the public plan if it will destroy reform?

As Greg Sargent notes later in that item, it’s extremely annoying to see Nelson’s use of the passive voice here to avoid responsibility. What Nelson is saying is that he, personally, will cause health reform to implode unless reform is incremental and lacks a public option. But instead of fessing up, he’s using a lot of weasel words. Maybe you can get a public option put in place via reconciliation, in which case you don’t need Nelson, but absent reconciliation you do need Nelson and he’s intransigent.

Now of course Nelson represents Nebraska which is a pretty conservative state. It’s worth noting, however, that it’s pretty hard to think of pieces of major beneficial legislation becoming law in the United States purely out of people behaving in a craven and self-interested manner. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, for example, secured the support of Senator Mike Monroney of Oklahoma, not exactly the most black-friendly state in the Union. But Monroney seems to have been a man of conscience and thus he “voted for the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, and 1964. He also refused to sign the ‘Southern Manifesto,’ a call by a group of Southern senators in 1956 urging resistance to school desegregation.” These were real acts of political courage. Oklahoma was once upon a time a safe Democratic state, but it went for Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956 and Nixon in 1960. The state elected its first Republican governor in 1962, and he was re-elected in 1966. And Monroney’s political courage met with exactly the fate that cowardly politicians fear—he got beaten in 1968. But he still did the right thing.

Ben Nelson Eyes Health Reform Delay

Ryan Grim reports that Ben Nelson (D-NE) is working with “a few centrist Democrats and several Republicans” on a plan to make comprehensive health reform less likely by pushing the Senate leadership to delay action on health care until after the August recess. That’s very nice for vacation-hungry Senators, since the fact of the matter is that it will be quite difficult to get a bill done by the time recess is scheduled to start, so a push for an August vote could lead to members of the Senate (shudder) needing to stay in town and work on a problem of national importance even when the weather is really nasty.

When thinking about this sort of thing, it’s also useful to recall the Families USA health reform ticker:

A delay of, say, seventy days is the amount of time it takes for as many people as live in Omaha to lose their health insurance. And one doubts that if the whole city were facing that fate Nelson would be so cavalier about the consequences of delay. More generally, this is an issue America has been debating for decades, it’s not as if Barack Obama just inserted health reform into his budget as a big surprise. Even just limiting consideration to the current reform drive in the United States Senate, Max Baucus and Ted Kennedy (and then Chris Dodd when Kennedy fell ill) have been doing steady work on this issue since well before the 2008 presidential election. And the topic of health reform was extensively debating in both the presidential primaries and the general election. For anyone who’s interested, there’s been plenty of time to look at the questions.

Ben Nelson Attributes His Zeal for Defending the Interests of Rich People to the Public at Large

The absolute most annoying tick of the “centrist” block of Democratic Senators is their tendency to deny their own agency in the legislative process. A set of political institutions that is and always has been entirely wrongheaded has given Ben Nelson, Max Baucus, and others vast authority over the fate of the nation. And while wielding it, the wielders have a horrifying tendency to simply deny that wielding power and making choices is what they’re doing. Here, for example, is Nelson slamming the idea of paying for health reform with higher taxes on the wealthy:

“Tax is a four-letter word” with voters, said Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.). Even families not ranking in the top 1 percent of earners “hope they’re going to be there someday,” he said. “So they don’t necessarily think it’s fair.”

Jon Chait reminds us that we can actually just look this up:

Taxing the rich is popular. Really popular. Maybe Ben Nelson thinks it’s unfair. But if so, he should say so. He’s a US Senator! Tons of people are eager to hear what he thinks about things and understand his point of view. Instead, he just tells us that other people don’t like the idea.

Discipline and Filibuster

Bill Press writes that “Senate rules require only 51 votes to pass legislation, not 60″ and that a little old-fashioned party discipline could turn things around:

As for those wayward senators like Nelson or Landrieu, there’s only one thing Democrats are lacking: discipline. This may be a whole new concept for Democrats, who are not used to marching in lockstep. But if Barack Obama and Harry Reid are willing to play hardball by withholding committee assignments, White House invitations, campaign contributions, and endorsements, they’ll be surprised how soon Democrats will get in line.

J.P. Green replies that “Regardless of party discipline, most of these senators have substantial moderate/conservative constituencies to answer to.” This is true, but I think it’s also why the filibuster point is critical. If the issue were really that Ben Nelson has a deep-seated desire to advance a progressive legislative agenda but worries about how it’ll play back home in Nebraska, it would be easy enough for him to decide that the key priorities on which Barack Obama won a national mandate last November all deserve an up or down vote. If he ultimately chose to vote “no” on legislation that he thinks Nebraska voters won’t support, that would be that. You don’t need Nelson’s vote to get to 50.

At the end of the day, though, you don’t erect procedural roadblocks to legislation because you’re playing to public sentiment back home. You use procedural roadblocks when you really don’t want something to pass.

Ben Nelson is Tougher on Obama’s Nominees Then He Was on Bush’s

Sam Stein has a nice piece laying out the extent to which Ben Nelson’s rough treatment of Dawn Johnson is inconsistent with his extreme deference to George W. Bush’s nominees:

Nelson’s history of support for Bush appointees is enough to produce heavy cynicism from his own party members when he discusses his opposition to Johnsen now. And in conversations with several Democratic strategists, a few theories were put forward. The first: that Nelson is likely waiting on some sort of quid-pro-quo from the Obama White House in exchange for his vote. After all, during the stimulus debate he was one of the last remaining hold outs, securing in the process some changes to the overall package. The second: that this is payback. As reported by Ryan Grim, the White House has bucked Nelson on one of his top legislative priorities, maintaining government support for the large student lending firms based in his state.

Part of the dynamic, I take it, is simply that there’s not much in the way of progressive strength on the ground in Nebraska. How many Nebraskans do you think have called Nelson’s office to support Dawn Johnson? Written letters? Not sure how many Nebraska-based readers I have, but in terms of getting congress to act, making your views known to your senator is an indispensable tool. If you do get in touch, you might mention that Nelson’s totally wrong about the student loans, too.

Ben Nelson’s Lonely Stand Against a Public Plan

Ryan Grim has a great story that makes the point that the inclusion of a “reconciliation” option for health care reform is having its desired effect. With moderate senators now aware that they can’t stand alone and block change, more and more centrists are saying they’re at least “open” to a public option in health reform, since they don’t want to be cut out of the process. But not Ben Nelson, he’s a real fanatic about defending the interests of for-profit health insurance companies:

A Nelson spokesman said that Nelson is still talking to like-minded colleagues in hopes of building a coalition opposed to the public plan.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the possibility of using health reform to control health care costs. Those possibilities are real. But they’ll only emerge if a good system is put into place with good incentives. And a public option is an important element in trying to create a dynamic where insurance companies are under competitive pressure to deliver the kind of efficiencies for which the free market is so highly touted. Without it, there’s a very strong risk that competition will just take the form of trying to skim the healthiest patients, with no real efficiencies wrung from the system.

Ben Nelson Stands With Insurance Companies

Given his general proclivities, I’m not shocked to learn that Ben Nelson opposes Barack Obama’s health care plan. But the precise terms in which he frames his opposition are a bit surprising to me:

Nelson’s problem, he told CQ, is that the public plan would be too attractive and would hurt the private insurance plans. “At the end of the day, the public plan wins the game,” Nelson said. Including a public option in a health plan, he said, was a “deal breaker.”

Note two things here. One, the reason to oppose a public plan is that it would work too well and take business away from insurance companies. But second, defending the interests of insurance companies is so overwhelmingly important to Nelson that it’s a “deal breaker” for him.

This second part is important. Health care reform is an enormous, complicated undertaking. Nobody’s going to be thrilled with every provision of a bill. So it’s important to know where one’s deal-breakers lie. Nelson says his deal-breaker is that health reform needs to protect the interests of insurance companies. It’s good to know.