Likely Opponents

For senators who are on the fence, click here.
For likely supporters, click here.

*Uninsured numbers come from 2008 U.S. Census Bureau data.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) made waves Monday when he announced that he would retain the robust public plan offered in the Senate HELP Committee bill rather than sticking with the more conservative strategy to create health care cooperatives, as dictated by the Senate Finance panel’s proposal. Reid’s plan tweaks the HELP provision slightly by allowing states the option not to participate. Snowe, however, has been urging a public plan “trigger,” and said she’s “deeply disappointed” in the opt-out model.

Without Snowe — and without Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) — Reid and the Democrats are back at the drawing board on how to rally 60 Senate votes.

But yesterday, in the lone decision to include an “opt-out” public insurance option in the bill, Democrats may have just lost the Maine moderate, who has said all along that she won’t vote for a public option unless it’s in the form of a trigger. Here’s Snowe’s statement on the announcement:

I am deeply disappointed with the Majority Leader’s decision to include a public option as the focus of the legislation. I still believe that a fallback, safety net plan, to be triggered and available immediately in states where insurance companies fail to offer plans that meet the standards of affordability, could have been the road toward achieving a broader bipartisan consensus in the Senate.

TPMDC’s Brian Beutler has pointed out that the statement falls short of explicitly pronouncing opposition to the overall bill because it includes the opt-out plan. But it was just a few days ago that she was making such pronouncements, as Beutler also reported.

Landrieu had previously expressed strong opposition to a public option, telling the Monroe, La., News Star that there were “few, if any,” circumstances under which she’d back a government-run plan to compete with private insurers. She also refused to commit to opposing a GOP-led filibuster to prevent a bill with a public option from going to the Senate floor for an up-or-down vote.

Now, however, she appears open to a compromise on the public option, which could take the form of a trigger or an opt-out solution that would allow states to withdraw from a national plan. “I conveyed to Leader Reid that a number of moderates still were extremely concerned about a government-run, taxpayer-funded, national public plan,” she said in a statement on Friday after meeting with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). “However, I am encouraged that the conversations taking place over the past week among Senators who back different versions of a public option could potentially lead to a compromise. I believe this compromise should happen sooner, rather than later, so we can get to work on other critical aspects of heath care reform.”

Landrieu also now says she’s unlikely to support a filibuster against a health care bill.

With Landrieu “On the Fence,” there are no Democrats remaining in the “Likely Opponents” column in the Senate Public Option Scoreboard. Just one Republican — Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine — is “On the Fence,” and none are “Likely Supporters.” Overall, there are 47 probable yes votes for a public option, 38 likely no’s and 15 senators on the fence.

Catch all of the latest updates and a full rundown of senators’ stances on the public option at TWI’s Senate Public Option Scoreboard.

Here’s the statement from Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee’s health subpanel, reacting to reports that the White House is leaning toward a trigger in lieu of a strong public option in the Democrats’ health reform legislation:

Historically, ‘trigger’ mechanisms have not been successful, and they are not a substitute for a strong public health insurance option. A ‘trigger’ simply delays price competition, which in turn will delay affordability for consumers and moves us farther away from the goals of health care reform. Already, we are seeing insurance companies threatening to game the system, by raising their prices in advance of reform. The only way to curb price-gouging by health insurance companies is with real competition on day one—that is the public option.

Any questions?

After months of wrestling over how to approach the popular but politically thorny public option, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is leaning toward including such a provision in the bill he’s weaving together from elements of the Finance and HELP Committee bills, The New York Times reported last night.

Mr. Reid’s intentions, which are subject to change, reflect a calculated gamble that all members of his party would vote for the public insurance plan if it included some mechanism for states to opt out. [...]

“There is a growing sense that we need to lead on this issue and not wait for it to be offered on the Senate floor,” a senior Democratic aide said. “The idea is that it’s better to show some fight.’’

For public option supporters, there’s a clear advantage to bringing the public option to the floor rather than trying to attach it as an amendment once it gets there. Namely, that strategy would shift the burden of rallying 60 votes from those wishing to attach the public option to those hoping to remove it — no minor distinction in a chamber featuring 60 Democrats and 40 Republicans.

The opt-out strategy also has obvious advantages. Republicans have been united in their strict opposition to the public option in almost any form. But they also pride themselves on being strong states-rights advocates, and they would have a difficult time explaining to voters at home why it’s a bad idea to allow each state to decide whether the public option is right for its residents — particularly since one in six of those residents currently lacks health insurance, in large part because they can’t afford it.

So why have Democrats been so reluctant to include the opt-out provision? Two words: Olympia Snowe.

The White House wants a bipartisan bill, and Sen. Snowe (R-Maine) has already signaled her disapproval of the opt-out plan. Snowe instead has been a long-time advocate of a trigger strategy, which would allow for the creation of public insurance plans in regions where private companies don’t meet specific cost and coverage targets by a certain deadline down the road. The Obama administration is reportedly leaning toward the trigger in order to get Snowe on board.

In certain respects, the trigger is attractive. If the goal is really to make coverage more affordable, the threat to private companies of having to compete with a public plan might just be enough to dissuade them from hiking premiums unnecessarily. But this depends on where those affordability thresholds are set, and whether they’ll remain in perpetuity, pegged to a reasonable cost-of-living index.

The real trouble with the trigger is that it would be limited in scale. In some regions, insurers might meet the cost and coverage targets, thereby precluding the creation of a public plan; in others a public plan might pop up. But this is a far cry from creating the patient pools of the size necessary to compete with the giant insurers on cost. Indeed, liberals have blasted the trigger as a euphemism for no public plan at all.

There’s yet another fallback plan here — one that hasn’t gotten nearly the attention it probably deserves. During the Finance Committee markup of that panel’s health reform bill, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) offered an amendment allowing states to create their own public plans to compete with private insurers. That opt-in approach passed the committee by a vote of 12 to 11, with Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) the only member to cross party lines. Only residents earning between 133 and 200 percent of poverty would be eligible for the Cantwell plan, but roughly 75 percent of the nation’s uninsured population is estimated to fall within that range.

That’s not everyone. But it’s a good start.

Doug Hoffman, Michelle Malkin and Dick Armey (doughoffmanforcongress.com, michellemalkin.com, house.gov)

Asked what he’d do if he got to Congress, Doug Hoffman hesitates. He has a few ideas, such as revisiting the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, putting the breaks on cap-and-trade legislation. But the idea of winning the Nov. 3 election and becoming the only non-Republican, non-Democrat in the House is a bit much. The national media would descend on him, right away. And that still takes Hoffman by surprise.

Image by: Matt Mahurin

“I’m not in this to get the splash and the notoriety,” said Hoffman, “I’m only in this, as an average American, standing up and saying it’s time we take our country back. But, certainly, if it does encourage other people to get up and do that, then so be it.”

In July, Hoffman bid to become the Republican Party’s nominee for a special election in New York’s 23rd Congressional District. The nominee would be chosen by party leaders in the district’s 11 counties; few people were surprised when they chose Deirdre “Dede” Scozzafava, a five-term assemblywoman who’d voted with Democrats on abortion and labor issues, factors that could help the party hold a historically conservative district that had voted for the Obama-Biden ticket last year. Hoffman, a 59-year-old accountant making his first run for office, forged ahead and grabbed the nomination of the venerable Conservative Party.

Since then, Hoffman’s campaign has become this election cycle’s great conservative crusade. On Sept. 5, the candidate was endorsed by 9-12 Candidates, an offshoot of Glenn Beck’s 9-12 Project, and a reflection of the support he was getting on conservative blogs. On Sept. 28, both Fred Thompson and the Club for Growth put their weight behind Hoffman, with the Club putting $250,000 into TV ads attacking Scozzafava and Democratic candidate Bill Owens. Those endorsements, coupled with reports that Scozzafava was struggling, brought the American Conservative Union and the anti-abortion rights group Susan B. Anthony List into the fray to back Hoffman. On Monday afternoon, FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey announced that he’d campaign for Hoffman, putting the Tea Party movement’s seal of approval on the upstart campaign.

Two weeks out from the election, the battle in upstate New York is being portrayed in the press as a “civil war” between Republican factions. That might understate how much support for Hoffman, and how little for Scozzafava, there is in the conservative movement. As far as the roiling Republican base is concerned, support for Hoffman has become a test of whether a conservative leader can be trusted. Conservative media, from magazines to blogs, are using the low-stakes special election to test their ability to drive news cycles and raise money.

“This is not a tea party hangover,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the Susan B. Anthony list. “It is every piece of the conservative base–the Club for Growth, social conservatives, right to work, pro-lifers, everyone–coming together.’

The timeline of Hoffman’s surge could become a guide for other conservative rebellions. On Sept. 14, The Weekly Standard ran a glowing profile of Hoffman by conservative journalist Kenneth Tomlinson (”he joined the Army reserves, got married, started a family, and went to work for Price Waterhouse”), that made the case for a “Buckley scenario” in NY-23. Tomlinson’s reference was the 1970 campaign in which the Conservative Party’s Jim Buckley, brother of the late National Review Editor-in-Chief William F. Buckley, blew past a liberal Republican and Democrat to win a Senate seat from New York with 38 percent of the vote.

Tomlinson’s scenario was less eccentric than it may have looked. Rob Ryan, Hoffman’s campaign manager, cut his teeth on Buckley’s unsuccessful 1976 re-election bid; he came on board after a conversation with John McLaughlin, a Republican pollster who was one of the first to rule Scozzafava out as a credible candidate.

The campaign set about working conservative blogs, conservative media and Tea Party groups who were plugged into both to drive home the message that Scozzafava was a liberal, backed by unions, who would say anything to anyone. The Republicans who’ve endorsed her, said Ryan, have “fallen for a scam.”

“I’ve long said that she’s the Bernie Madoff of New York Republican politics,” said Ryan.

“If you’re talking face-to-face to Assemblywoman Scozzafava,” said Hoffman, “she’ll tell you what you want to hear and it sounds great. And then she’ll talk to another group of people and tell them what they want to hear.”

Conservative media outlets pushed Scozzafava harder than the candidate could have expected. A reporter for Human Events got her campaign to say that Scozzafava opposed “card check,” labor reform that would make it easier for workers to start unions, while she’d said the opposite of that in a union questionnaire. The Weekly Standard asked the campaign whether Scozzafava would promise not to switch to the Democratic Party if she got to Congress; her noncommittal answer sparked the rumor that she might actually consider bolting the GOP. Conservative muckraker Michael Patrick Leahy conducted interviews for his TCOT Report web site that pieced together a “breach of trust” in the process that selected Scozzafava.

Stories like these motivated the conservative “netroots” to jump into the race for Hoffman. The key mover was Patrick Ruffini, a veteran of the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign who had programmed fundraising drives that netted hundreds of thousands of dollars for Republican candidates in previous special elections. But on Oct. 17, Ruffini endorsed Hoffman, arguing that “the RNC and NRCC are doubling down on a flawed candidate with little chance of generating any significant momentum in the last 16 days.” Coming from a consultant who drove crucial funds to Jim Tedisco, the failed Republican candidate in the June NY-20 special election, this was an indictment of the GOP.

“What’s noteworthy about the comparison between NY-20 and NY-23 is that Jim Tedisco was not a textbook conservative either,” Ruffini told TWI. “In fact, his reluctance to oppose the stimulus early on was a factor in his defeat. Yet the conservative grassroots went all out for Tedisco because he agreed with us on most issues and was a good fit for a district we had a real chance of picking up. Scozzafava, on the other hand, appears to agree with us on nothing.”

None of the conservative activists that TWI spoke to were particularly worried about being seen as “spoilers” if Owens wins NY-23 for the Democrats. David Keating, the executive director of the Club for Growth, said that Scozzafava had no chance of winning anyway, and that nothing could be spoiled. The Susan B. Anthony List’s Dannenfelser suggested that a Scozzafava victory might be the worst possible outcome.

“We’ve seen this with Olympia Snowe,” said Dannenfelser. “We don’t need another Olympia Snowe. We will be dealing with her for the rest of our days.”

As the campaign draws to a close, Republicans who’ve endorsed Scozzafava have been scorched by Hoffman supporters. Conservative blogger and columnist Michelle Malkin, who used her syndicated column last week to label Scozzafava “An ACORN-Friendly, Big Labor-Backing, Tax-and-Spend Radical in GOP Clothing,” blasted the RNC and Newt Gingrich for endorsing the candidate. “If you have given to the NRCC, RNC, or Newt Gingrich under the impression that they are using the money to support conservatism,” wrote Malkin, “you might want to ask for your money back.” Later, Malkin posted an RNC mail survey defaced by a Hoffman supporter, and let Hoffman write a guest post on her site.

If the conservative base pulls off the NY-23 upset, it would get a congressman who backs every one of their key priorities. In an interview with TWI, conducted while he drove to speak at the opening of his fourth campaign office–one fewer than Owens, three more than Scozzafava–Hoffman sounded conservative notes on taxes, climate change legislation, the stimulus, abortion rights, and gay marriage.

“The jury’s out on what’s really going on and whether we have global warming or not,” said Hoffman, explaining why he’d oppose cap-and-trade legislation, “but we all want to protect our environment.” Unlike Scozzafava, he opposed and opposes the economic stimulus package and further bailouts, and said he’d use whatever clout he had in Congress to stop funds that hadn’t been appropriated yet, making an exception for “infrastructure” spending.

Due, in large measure, to the efforts of Senator Olympia Snowe, who has worked tirelessly, the legislation passed by the Senate Finance Committee represents a substantial improvement over the costly and flawed alternative approved by the Senate Health Committee as well as the House bills.

That doesn’t mean, however, that Collins would support the bill as it stands. Indeed, her statement also takes time to blast provisions she said would raise costs and steal choices from consumers and businesses. A final proposal, she said, shouldn’t slow Medicare growth to the extent that the Finance bill does, and it should take longer steps to limit medical malpractice suits.

Still, Collins said she “share[s] the goal of passing responsible health care reform and, working with members on both sides of the aisle who share these concerns, I am hopeful that many improvements will continue to be made to produce a bill that can achieve bipartisan support.

Our goal should be legislation that protects affordable health care choices, safeguards Medicare, and reduces costs to the consumer and the taxpayer especially at a time when we simply cannot afford to pay more.

That’s not an endorsement, but it’s certainly a more tempered approach than that coming from GOP leadership.