July 22, 2009--Tax & Spend Liberals

It’s getting rough out there. The rhetoric about the healthcare bill is heating up. It is becoming violent.

Conservative columnist Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard told Republicans on his blog Monday that they need to resist the temptation to work with Democrats to find a solution to our health care crisis. "This is no time to pull punches," he wrote. "Go for the kill."

 And to make sure you hadn’t missed his gory point, he concluded: “Throw the kitchen sink at the legislation now on the table, drive a stake through its heart . . . and kill it.”

On Friday, Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, on the floor of the Senate, the World’s Most Exclusive Club, intoned: "If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him."

I can only imagine how these only slightly coded messages about killing are being received by the lunatic-Right. Note that they are taking about breaking him, not just defeating healthcare legislation. And do you really think that the heart through which they are wanting to drive a stake is that of the bill or Obama’s?

The Kristols and DeMints of the-under-the-rock world know exactly what they are up to. And it’s very ugly and dangerous.

But then on the other side—the Democrat side—it’s getting rough in its own more-muted ways. In fact, from a political perspective, Obama may be getting more seriously wounded by members of his own party than by the fanatical wing of the GOP. By the so-called Blue Dog Democrats in the House and especially in the Senate. There are nine Blue Dogs in the Senate; and since a supermajority of 60 votes is necessary to bring healthcare legislation to the floor for an ultimate up or down vote, Obama needs all of them to come on board for something about which they (and he) can agree.

Such is the state of our democracy. The Republicans want to break and kill him metaphorically while key members of his own party, six of whom he helped sweep into office in November, are holding him up for ransom.

This is not about the ins and outs of the healthcare bill that is becoming stalled in the Senate—about that there is abundant opportunity to disagree (it may be the most complicated domestic issue ever to face this country)—but about how things work and don’t work in Washington. The very business-as-usual Obama campaigned against and the people, by elected him, said they want to see ended.

So I am wondering about these Blue Dogs. As noted, six of them (Hagen ([NC], Shaheen [NH], Udall [CO], Begich [AK], Warner [VA], and Bennet [CO] come from traditionally Red States which Obama either won or in which he did very well, and they personally benefited mightily by his showing. With the exception of Bennet (who was appointed to replace Senator Ken Salazar after Obama named him to be Secretary of the Interior) none will face reelection for five and a half years so for them any votes they cast now will be long forgotten by 2014. So isn’t it time for them to step up and help win one for the new Gipper?

I am being too cynical to think that these freshmen senators after only six months in office are already thinking about a second term. They do presumably have legitimate concerns about the emerging healthcare bill and want to see them addressed. Let me cite just one of these as described in yesterday’s New York Times (full article linked below).

Taxes—they are concerned about the proposal to tax the currently-untaxed healthcare benefits received by some people. The current mark-up of the bill calls for individuals earning more than $280,000 and couples with taxable income of $350,000 to pay tax on some of what employers pay to insure them. (The actual estimated out-of-pocket cost to couples would be about $2,000 a year.) To most Democrats, including Obama, asking the top 2 percent of earners to pay a little more in taxes seems fair, considering that it would help offset coverage for the 45 million who are currently not insured.

But the Blue Dogs are resisting this. Instead they seemingly want to raise the income thresholds of those who would have benefits taxed to $500,000 for individuals and a full $1.0 million for couples. This, they feel, would allow them to go back home and tell their constituents that they are not “tax-and-spend liberals" but are watching out for the little people--at least the top 2 percent of them.

To be clear they are not showing all this concern about those who have assets of a million, but couples who have an annual taxable income of a million bucks.

These Blue Dogs are Democrats, mind you, who are worried about our absolutely wealthiest fellow citizens. Why even a lot of compassionate-conservative Republicans might get behind something like this. Maybe, then, this is then what bipartisanship means.

I hope Obama is busy twisting a few arms and banging a few heads. But, listen to me, here I go making physical threats and beginning to sound like Jim DeMint and Bill Kristol. Shame on me.