Keeping Track: Rep. James Clyburn joins the list: "postpone the August break until they pass a sweeping health care reform bill.
By John Amato Saturday Jul 25, 2009 4:30am
(The above audio is the shortened version of the BLogger Conference call. You can find the full version here.)
I'm glad Congress is starting to heed our words and beginning to speak out against taking a vacation while health care takes a back seat to their barbecues and softball games.. Recess is for children at school playing on their swings and has no place in this debate. Rep. Clyburn is the newest member to say that Congress should not stop until a bill drops.
(Majority) Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) told colleagues during a "contentious" closed-door session Thursday that they should postpone the August break until they pass a sweeping health care reform bill.
The Democratic whip says he told his colleagues they will be criticized in the press for leaving town without passing a bill. "I think it will affect our standing with the American people if we don't do this as a party," Clyburn said afterward.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) were both in attendance during the 90-minute session, but Clyburn would not say what their reactions were. The South Carolina Democrat thinks his colleagues will have more opportunities to work through disputes than they will if they leave town.
We salute Clyburn for taking the correct steps in trying to work this thing out and not be afraid what all Americans are thing. Recess, recess?
Americans are hearing our plea to make Congress work through August.
As Mr. Obama took questions from his audience in Shaker Heights, he was asked whether he intended to call on Democratic leaders in Congress to cancel their August recess to try to reach a compromise on health care. For now, he said, he had no plans to do so.
Keep up the heat. The more Americans put pressure on their precious month long play time the more willing they will be to get the legislation done.
We've just started making this a priority so the list has just begun.
Senator Wyden
Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Rep. James Clyburn
That's three more than we had before I asked the question. Great start.
You can use HCAN's tools to find info so you can contact your own representative. Please contact them and tell them no August recess without a health care bill.
UPDATE: Meanwhile the Blue Dogs are trying their best to kill health care in the HOUSE.
The negotiations between House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and seven conservative Democrats on his panel fell apart Friday afternoon after the chairman told reporters he could move the bill to the floor without a committee vote.
Arkansas Rep. Mike Ross, the top negotiator for conservative Democrats in the Blue Dog Coalition, told reporters Friday that the negotiations "pretty much fell apart this afternoon."
In a meeting with Blue Dogs Friday, Waxman rescinded two previous concessions to help cut health care costs over time and ensure the government-sponsored health care won't impede on the private market. Asked how this leaves the negotiations, Ross said it "leaves the chairman with not enough votes to get it out of committee."
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And I'm proud to tell it.
You're fortunate. Make sure you tell him thanks.
Now - if we can only beat back the Blue Cross Dems on this issue. How many of them are on the take from the Insurance companies?
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Correct please
OK, not that anyone will believe this, but "Congress" isn't just the 535 members of the House and Senate. It is staffed with thousands of people, working men and women with families, who work their bums off during the year. My husband works for a member, and whilst they're legislating, he doesn't get to see his kids with the regularity of the other dads in the neighborhood -- (and no, for his education level and experience, he's definitely not doing it for the money).
So it isn't just the "greedy members" who want a "month long play time" to get back to their districts for a parade or two. There are thousands of regular working people who want to have a week to spend with their family without having to wake up at 5:30 to call the clerk's office or sit on the floor waiting for their bills to be called up at midnight or one o'clock in the morning.
I strongly believe that health care should happen. But they've been in session since Jan 18 with barely a break for staff. Why wasn't this a priority for members and the president in March, or April, or May, or June? Why do all the priorities for rushing complex legislation only come to bear in August?
BOOHOO!!!! I bet you have healthcare....
Tell ya what, have your husband quit his job and spend his days moving things from Box A to Box B (or lifting things from box A to Box B) for the next 40 or 50 years. Like 99% of the people reading this are destined to be do. No matter how intelligent, talented or hardworking they are. And (newsflash) they don't get paid what they're worth either.
I realize you husband has probably shut off his phone, but spare us the nagging/whining/glaring lack of perspective/overblown sense of entitlement.
You mean a civil servant that gets barely a day off? Oh, boo friggin' who. The real world doesn't get month long breaks from work.
Then why the hell didn't your husband make it a priority - just what were he and his colleagues doing to influence their bosses that this has been a priority for a while, and that Congress needs to get this done?
And he signed on to do this, so he either has to suffer when his bosses can't get shit done, or he can quit his job. (At least he HAS a job.)
No one is forcing him to stay; if he misses his family that much he can find another job........unless, of course, he wants to keep his health insurance!
My husband has been working like a dog at the same job for over 15 years -- he doesn't get a month of vacation. He's on call 24 hours a day - if they need him - he goes in - there's no one else to call on - they fired all the other Electrical Engineers.. He's mandated to take some of his vacation time between christmas and new year when the plant shuts down. He's been saving most of his vacation for when our son comes to visit this month - he's in school in WA state. We haven't seen him in a year and a half. He lost vacation days when I was hospitalized twice this spring -- he had to use vacation days for the few days he took to be with me.
The medical bills from my hospitalization are going to take us years to pay. Yes - we have health care. It's BCBS and it sucks - but we have it.
When it's your job - you do what's called for knowing you're doing the right thing.
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but it was his choice to take the job. Why do you think they call it service? Sacrifice is inherent in any position of service. If that's too much, have him find work somewhere else doing something else. Here's the reality: any legal (read than non-criminal)job that pays a living or decent wage extracts more than it's pound of flesh from the worker. that's life in working Amerika. What you consider a hardship of working life, is the lifelong inescapable reality for 10's upon 10's of millions of Americans, myself included in that number. All I can say is welcome to the club.
It has been a priority to get it done. But, the opposition has only recently consolidated their plan to kill the process using delays. They need to know it can't work.
government is work, hard work.
"In a meeting with Blue Dogs Friday, Waxman rescinded two previous concessions to help cut health care costs over time and ensure the government-sponsored health care won't impede on the private market."
I thought the whole idea of government sponsored health care was to impede private markets by regulating and forcing them to be more competitive.
have been in bold, that was the most telling part of the whole snippet
I am further to the left (in other words, I take words like economic and social justice seriously and don't say them because they sound nice). Having said that, the actions by the right wing (Democrat and Republican) will do nothing but radicalize people further. It is pure fantasy to assume that people will be forced to buy from the same inefficient, for profit, inhumane system and that there will not be anger at the "compromises" that have been made with the right wing. People will not see that government does not work, they will see that government run by anti-government, ideological stooges who refuse to question their own basic precepts, does not work because the ideas that they thought worked (capitalism, especially "free market" capitalism) does not work for anyone but those already in a powerful economic condition.
This is not capitalism gone too far, or anything else I've seen many liberals and conservatives alike say. This capitalism is the same capitalism that looted SE Asia in the late 1990's, Latin America and Africa for decades (centuries really), the same capitalism that is being roundly rejected in the places that have tried it most (like Latin America) and has destroyed democracy, state sovereignty, the environment and social relations. This capitalism has de-industrialized America, caused wages for workers to decline or stay the same for decades and have hallowed out our democracy. We now have a government made of crooks who don't even pretend to care about what you the people think.
People will see this and they no longer benefit enough from the looting to be blinded by reality. These crooks will do nothing but dig their own graves in the long run, if they were smarter they'd give the citizens more of the crumbs they aren't going to eat and they'd lie better, like they used to. Since all liberals do, usually, is e mail their representatives and vote for the same crooks thinking they'll be supermen or women and do a better job at running their lives than the system allows them to, maybe now they'll get more active and raise more hell, maybe they'll step over and be open to different and better ideas. Just like in Honduras, they're showing their hand, hopefully the lesson learned doesn't translate once again into, "if we just vote for Democrats, or the right politician, the world will right itself".
and you're right, it is self-defeating. It seems that the fewer external restraints that are imposed on these guys, the faster they move towards their own self-made destruction. None of them , that I can see , are capable of imposing restraint on their own compulsions and behvior. If they are allowed to go for long enough without somehow destroying themselves, and if the government continues to be unresponsive to the will of the people, they will eventually radicalize enough of their former supporters that things will finally end up being taken to the streets.
Whenever it comes about that evil gets its unrestrained day in the sun, it always self-destructs, and always far sooner than would have otherwise happened. The unraveling of the economy seems to me to be just one indication of that process already taking place.
PATRIOT ACT: crammed down Congress' throat.
TARP bailout: crammed down Congress' throat.
Health care plan: crammed down Congress' throat
This issue is too complex, and the price of failure too high, to be rushed through Congress like shit through a baby. Haste not only makes waste, it makes me suspicious of motive.
Tell that to someone dieing of cancer that has no health insurance. The obstructionists are making it take too long. This not about debate it is about breaking brick wall after brick wall down. I bet you have health insurance, too.
Read the bill and tell me 1. the curcumstances of the person you give as an example and 2. specifically how this bill will help.
If said person can not afford big-HMO insurance this bill offers them a public option that no providers will accept.
The draft that circulated this week does have some valuable items in it - anti-recission, pre-existing condition ban. This can be passed on their own without a giveaway to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.
And what in hell does being insured have to do with how one views this situation?
You're both right and wrong. THIS bill is a disaster, thanks to both parties and rejecting the best and most efficient option (single payer). The health insurance industry has the man with the most power in reforming health care, Baucus, in their pocket and entrenched interests in the insurance industry control both parties. So like every other big issue facing this country, we don't do what is best and prove that we are now incapable of solving the biggest issues in front of us. We have a broken government and our system is outdated, with no direct participation from the public in the functions of government. We are a depoliticized country who doesn't do much of anything but vote for the same crooks every few years.
However, if the best option was available, it WOULD make sense to hurry along. It would make no sense to wait, people's lives are at stake.
Like I said though, THIS bill makes a bad situation no better, it does nothing to solve the fundamental problems of the system since doing so would mean doing away with private insurance companies and profit in health care. Oh well, you get the government you vote for and you get the country you create. Neither traditional conservatives or liberals seem to have any better ideas than voting for one of the major crook parties and watching them "comprimise" with each other's ideologically narrow and barely different platforms and ideas. There are better ideas, there are a few people in the Democratic Party who articulates these ideas but you Democrats ignore them for status quo candidates time and time again. There are always crooks wanting power, we the people give them the power. It is our fault we're in this position, not the crooks we gave the power to.
I think lately they have been stealing the power. I am sure during the last election many voting boxes were rigged, but they did not syphon off enough votes to stop Obama. Would we even be talking about healthcare reform if McCain had won?
They siphoned off enough votes to disguise Obama's landslide victory. ... I voted for the guy, but, frankly, it's become clear he's neo-Clintonian, and for me, that's not a good thing.
U.S. Representative, South Carolina’s 6th District
[ http://www.govtrack.us/congress/person.xpd?id... ]
Let them go.
This bill is so fatally that is really is worse then nothing. At least the version that I read last week. A watered down public option that pays Medicare rates that doctors are not required to accept. A mandate to support the insurance gangsters. Let them rip it up and start from scratch.
There's also a political upside from doing nothing. The Rs will be seen as obstructionist. The Ds don't get straddled with a bad bill that ends up not working. The number of House seats that flip is minimized. Yeah, I KNOW that the prolems get worse every day. But the problems most often cited will not get fixed by this flawed bill.
the GOPers and the Blue Dogs. In the meantime, momentum builds for a single payer system. In any event, even the shittiest bill that gets passed can still be overturned or fixed once all the politicians who fucked over Americans by prostituting their offices to the insurance, HMO and pharma gangsters hve been booted out of office. I think all acts, in just this peculiar case of healthcare reform, that screw the people are going to prove policitally suicidal for the unwise politicians. All they are doing is earning their personalized political equivalents of the Darwin Award.
What's worse? The fact that even the biggest optimist knows that what they are rushing through will turn into massive crap with massive pork intertwined, or the fact that it is even necessary to basically pester the shit out of people that were elected to supposedly represent their citizens?
What happened with legislation rushed through in the last few years? TARP? Stimulus 1,2, and 3? Patriot Act? Wiretapping?
Yes, there are millions without healthcare, but there have been millions without healthcare for years. A few months to get actually decent legislation, instead of watered down insurance company bailout cash is of greater importance. Anything any government rushes through always tends to be complete garbage legislation that benefits very few except the rich and the corporate.
Political capital is everything, and IMO they need to do this NOW while they have some.
... control both houses, 60 filibuster proof in the senate and the white house, can't get a health care bill passed? Typical of a mass of people all trying to fuck a football. This is a survival of the richest democracy. If life could exist on Mars... I'd move.
The Dems won't fix health care for the same reason the Repubs won't ban abortion. The "unsolved" problem gives them something to run on every election cycle. If either party did something about their bases' hot button issues what reason would the base have to vote for them?
Sammy, I think you're giving them too much credit.
As long as the delay is ostensibly to "improve" the bill, we should push to have single payer considered and scored. If, as many of us believe, a single payer system for primary care would save a lot of money and the CBO scored it accurately, the "Blue Hogs" would lose one of their specious arguments (not that they'd admit it.)
some say this healthCare legislation is being "rushed" some say it's been talked about by lawmakers for
60 years. this has been a serious issue for this country for many years but now many in this country are More Vulnerable than ever. WHY? because of the ever desire for a global economy. corporations and globalfinancial/economic elites have been taking away from the middleclass in order to level the playing field for developing countries like CHINA. personally, i believe president obama has good/appropriate intentions. the opposition is healthCare/corporation special interests that aren't interested in allowing the middleclass to return to a more dominating role if you will. i believe because it can/could undermine other investments in other developing countries. they want CHINA to be/continue to be the manufacturing KING of the world. WHY? unlimited human work force("cheap labor"),infrastructure and NOW china is implementing universal healthCare. if we had a universal healthCare system (SINGLE PAYER) we would become very competitive in the global economy. it may happen eventually but the china economy is NOW the darling of wallStreet. they talk about china everyday.
where they should just get the fucking thing passed now while they have the capital and improve on it later
that may be the strategy for the democrats/obama. have a basic law/legislation passed and build on it. the (r) and some blue dawgs won't like that. as always the devil will be in the details.
We can only hope
But if we keep on riding them hard about the Single-payer it might help them with the blue dogs to get it passed quicker with their shitty version, then go back and get it right.
Might just work
it will instead be subjected to the death of a thousand different subversions....which may end up turning out to be the long way around toward finally getting single payer. Truth be told, though, nothing of substance appears like it is ever going to happen absent a second revolution that takes place in the polling booths.
Good. I am so sick of these wankers watering down legislation to make the right wing loonies happy and then the right wing loonies vote against it anyway. F*ck 'em coming out the gate. Vote against OUR bill, not some mishmash designed to make Limpbaugh happy.
That said, I'm of two minds about the delay. There's a part of me that would like to see these SOBs come back to their districts; we could give 'em an earful then and make them explain why insurance companies are more important than their constituents.
After Waxman showed them the door, the Blue dogs were promising, in effect, to show him what kind of havoc livid Blue Dogs could wreak. I think the Blue Dogs are instead going to find out what kind of havoc pissed off voters can wreak on them. November 2010 is going to be a bloodbath for these assholes.
We now get health "insurance" reform instead of the health care reform we desperately need. Nothing ever changes. Health insurance has dug us all into a hole, and like always the DC solution is to keep digging.
Fundamental change my ass!
Pelosi and Hoyer were in attendance...ooooh...such leadership.
Were they there to ensure that proper order and seniority pecking order were maintained as people went up for the coffee and bagels?
We just delivered 32,274 petition signatures to House Majority Whip James Clyburn, demanding the House pass health care reform before its three week vacation. Clyburn personally accepted the petitions and said "it's important to get this done." (James Clyburn)
[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oHxCDzRPp4 ]
If you want action, deliver a petition with the signatures of the CEOs of the insurance and pharmaceutical companies.
Because we know that they are all that count with the 535 bought and paid for members of Congress.
Democrats should stay and pass the bill. If the repubs want to go let them go home and pass it without them.
Pelosi and Reid ought to hold a special session for those who hung around, and vote the thing in, counting all those who didn't vote as absent. Let the GOPers and the GOpers operatives, the Blue Dogs, go home. then get the job done without their obstruction.
John, I deeply and sincerely hope that your obvious, heartfelt zeal in cheerleading for Obama's healthcare plan does not turn into an embarrassing and painful realization that we have been "had" once again, by this administration. No joke, I really do. But I have this irritating and nagging feeling inside me that is indicating, "Careful what you wish for!"
I think Paul has the right idea. If some legislators want a break to go home, let them. The remaining members can then pass a bill that has some balls to it. Just offer that threat. "You guys can go home if you want to, but those of us who care about this will stay and continue to legislate. It's your choice." The Dems just need to grow a pair and do what is RIGHT, not do what is expedient. I have to believe that the majority of Democratic reps really know what is the morally (and fiscally over the longterm) right thing to do, but the question is, do they have the sack to stand up to their Repub colleagues and to the MSM? I hope they do, but I don't believe that they do. I hope that I'll be proven wrong, but I don't expect to be.
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