December 22, 2009 07:03 PM UTC

Bennet Disses Process, Defends Health Reform Bill

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• by: Colorado Pols

The second of three critical votes on landmark health reform legislation went off successfully in the Senate early today, while Denver Post reporter Michael Riley takes a look at how we got there:

Sen. Michael Bennet on Monday broke with his party’s leadership on health care, criticizing Democrats for cutting “backroom deals” to ensure the bill’s passage and thumping fellow senators for holding important policies “hostage.”

The nine-minute speech on the Senate floor was a significant defection from the upbeat tone Democrats have been using to describe the health care breakthrough brokered over the weekend, provoking glee among Republicans and dismay from some Democratic colleagues.

Ticking off positive achievements, such as closing the prescription-drug loophole and providing tax breaks to small businesses, Bennet, D-Colo., vowed to vote for the bill – despite “the same tired Washington ritual” that produced it…

Without mentioning specific names, Bennet essentially attacked a core group of moderates in his own caucus who had extracted significant concessions by withholding their support, including Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., who helped kill the public option, and Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., who gained restrictions on abortion and millions of dollars in extra Medicaid payments for his state.

And the speech publicly set Bennet against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who on Monday defended the side deals – excoriated by Senate Republicans – as a legitimate part of the legislative process.

“That’s what legislation is all about,” Reid said at a Capitol Hill news conference Monday. “It’s the art of compromise.”

You might not like the rapid-fire dealmaking that brought this bill to the brink of final passage, and of course Republicans are going to scream bloody murder all the way to the final vote: but Harry Reid is right, what you’re seeing–and what Michael Bennet is excoriating–is what happens with every major piece of legislation. It gets amended and it gets larded up. Republicans should be reminded of the funding bills for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that they larded up with totally unrelated provisions to win the necessary support over and over again, and don’t even get us started about the backroom process that gave America Medicare Part D in 2003. It’s how business in the Senate gets done–what legislation from the last few decades do you cherish? We’ll show you a smoke-filled room where the details were hammered out.

Bennet understands that the bill must pass, his party’s future depends on it. That’s why liberal stalwarts like Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders are ‘holding their noses’ and voting yes too.

At the end of this long battle over what most consider the most important policy objective of President Barack Obama’s first term, the last-minute exchanges of fire are liable to be incredibly vicious: the looming failure despite millions of dollars spent by the insurance industry lobbying against this bill, and the “Tea Party” protesters whipped into a rage over the last six months becoming more seditious in their blatherings by the day. What Democrats are counting on is a change of mood once final passage is achieved and a cooler assessment of what the bill will actually do becomes possible.

And we think that’s the right approach: what we’re left with in this bill are mostly things that are broadly considered uncontroversial, like bans on denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions, a mandate to broaden the risk pool, and requirements that premiums pay more for care and less for overhead. What’s left is the stuff the industry and Republicans wanted to kill under the guise of killing ‘death panels,’ because if Americans had an unterrorized understanding of what’s being proposed they would support it–just like they did before the over-the-top attacks began last August.

In the end, passage of this bill will create space for improvements to be made as the plan ramps up. But without this starting point, there won’t be another opportune chance to move health reform for years–and the political costs for Democrats if they give up now will be much higher.

UPDATE: Bennet’s floor speech in its entirety after the jump. To provide context, it’s worth noting that Bennet was apparently responding to this bit from Washington Post blogger Chris Cillizza:

Strategists at the Senate GOP campaign arm were rejoicing over the weekend with the news that targeted Democrats including Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) and Michael Bennet (Colo.) were going to vote for the measure. Unlike Nelson or even Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu (D), who is up for reelection in 2014, neither Lincoln nor Bennet got anything major in exchange for their vote — meaning they could face the blowback from those unhappy with the legislation in their respective states without an accompanying sweetener to make the bill more palatable.

It would seem that after enduring “fair-haired boy” criticism for months, being criticized for not lining up at the proverbial trough with everybody else was a little too much for him.