Brown Wins

In a special election that stunned the Democratic Party last Tuesday, the citizens of Massachusetts elected Republican state senator Scott Brown to the Senate. While much debate has centered around the countless campaign gaffes committed by defeated Democratic candidate Martha Coakley, now is no time for retrospective second-guessing. With a monumental—and increasingly controversial—health care bill at stake in Congress, leaders of both parties must look past the superficialities of last week’s race and focus on the policy issues that affect the lives of all Americans.

President Obama’s win in the 2008 presidential election was due in part to a message of post-partisan politics. However, recent votes on the Congressional floor have shown that the politicking in Washington today is characterized by more of the same divisive partisanship from before. No members of the GOP voted for the Senate version of the healthcare bill, and only one Republican representative affirmed it in the House. With a filibuster looming upon Brown’s election, Democrats in Congress should now take a new approach to the formulation and passage of health care legislation. Both parties must work together, cast partisan and ideological barriers aside, and consider all interests to craft a workable bill to pass with votes across the aisle.

The new composition of the Senate will change the terms of engagement between Republicans and Democrats. While some in the Democratic party wish to see the current bill scrapped entirely until a less volatile period arises, this would be a costly mistake. The failure of healthcare reform to gain traction in Congress in 1994 derailed efforts to tackle the issue nationally until 2008; as the percentage of uninsured Americans continues to increase, the issue continues to become more pressing every single day. In addition, the perceived failure of the Democratic party to enact their agenda, even with a 59-vote majority, will create the impression that it is ineffectual and dogmatic; this image would cost them dearly in this year’s midterm elections. Democratic leaders must thus continue the work that has already been done.

The outcome in Massachusetts reflects a national stance on the healthcare debate in Washington, namely that 55 percent of Americans now feel that the current bill should be altered to garner more Republican support. Reworking the bill does not mean discarding it entirely. However, it is clear that the public wants to see an end to the fierce partisanship of the deliberation on Capitol Hill. Accordingly, the Democrats should honor the will of the people by opening up the legislation to Republican ideas to achieve a bill with the bipartisan support to ward off a Senate filibuster.

Some Democrats have regarded Brown’s election as akin to a political and moral apocalypse and have proposed several legislative ploys to pass the current version of the bill. We applaud Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s pledge to seat Senator-elect Brown before holding a vote on health care. Any technical exploitation of the limbo after the election would come across as manipulative and undemocratic.

However, another option that remains is reconciliation, a complicated legislative procedure that limits debate and amendments on bills and requires a mere 51 votes for passage. While this would circumvent the challenge brought upon by Brown’s election, it would not only be undemocratic but also, according to those familiar with congressional rules, would result in a watered-down bill missing key provisions to expand coverage and protect American insurance buyers. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad explained that “insurance market reforms, all the changes designed to encourage wellness and prevention,” among other things, could still be easily jettisoned because they do not relate directly to deficit reduction, which is the sole goal of reconciliation itself.

The legislative procedure is already confusing enough to the average American; Congressional leaders must not resort to such convoluted and reductive measures to pass bills as important and complex as healthcare reform. Again, the best approach to take looking forward is open discussion of the issues on both sides of the aisle. Only pragmatic accommodation can reconcile the bitter partisanship plaguing this process.

In the spirit of compromise, Democratic leaders may have to restrain their idealism and succumb to the political reality that Senator-elect Brown represents. Brown has vowed to kill the current version of the bill, leaving the Democrats with no choice but to change it or lament its demise.

It cannot be denied that the central tenets of the bill are controversial and politically-divisive; the near-perfect party-line vote late last year demonstrated that Republicans stiffly oppose the current, Democrat-dominated version of the bill. The politically expedient action to take now is to remove the provisions that make the bill most intolerable to Republicans in hopes that some middle ground can be reached. While neither party will be completely satisfied with the final product, the important thing is that it will stand the greatest chance of codification and will be most palatable to the general public while making many moderate improvements to the current health care system in the United States.

Though many provisions critical to reform will likely be cut under this process, their displacement should not be too heavily bemoaned. While the scope of the resulting bill will probably be far narrower than reformers had hoped, we believe that Congress should take up these crucial measures in the future, when there is less antagonism between the two parties and more opportunity for compromise. History leaves reason for optimism. The original Social Security bill in 1935 covered far fewer people than it does today, but efforts in subsequent years capitalized upon its passage to include addenda that expanded its welfare net. Similar expansions have occurred with Medicare coverage. Congress must seize the momentum of this bill and address the discarded elements in the near future to further ameliorate the malfunctions and inequities in our healthcare system.

Finally, both parties must make a more conscious effort to explain the details and potential impact of their legislative work. No American can be expected to peruse the 2,000-page document to formulate an opinion on the bill. This bill will dramatically affect all Americans and therefore must be made accessible and comprehensible to the public. Elected leaders must take it upon themselves to ensure that their constituents are knowledgeable about the significance of reform, in an accurate, unbiased manner.

Looking forward, the Democrats must end the finger-pointing over Coakley’s stunning defeat and focus on adapting to the political realities of the day. To ensure that the reform debate does not wither away with a partisan filibuster, the Democrats must work with the Republicans openly and honestly to improve the welfare of the people. Brown’s election by no means spells the end of the health care debate. If anything, it should herald the new era of compromise and bipartisanship that Americans were promised.