Yes, but I suspect that whatever system we have, once there are officials in
place to facilitate it, then human nature, being what it is, some folks will
find a way to capture power and run the show. If we imagine that the
Progressives win the fight and take over the party and put rules in place, will
they act more democratically after some time passes?
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Saturday, June 15, 2019 10:19 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Ways and Means Committee Chair Doesn't Want
Medicare for All Hearing to Mention "Medicare for All"
More blather, proving once again that we have before us a government of a few
people, by a few people, and for the Ruling Class. Democrats need to reclaim
their Democratic Party and once in control the Democratic Party should set
standards, screen those wishing to run for office as representatives of the
Democratic Party, and if they violate their contract with the Democratic Party,
they should be fined and removed from future consideration.
All "outside money" should be held suspect.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/15/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Ways and Means Committee Chair Doesn't Want Medicare for All Hearing
to Mention "Medicare for All"
By Ryan Grim and Akela Lacy, The Intercept
14 June 19
In preparation for Wednesday's hearing on Medicare for All before the
powerful House Ways and Means Committee, the panel's chair met
privately with Democrats to lay out how he wants it to unfold.
Rep. Richard Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat who has been in office
since 1989, told the Democrats on the panel that he didn't want the
phrase "Medicare for All" to be used. Instead, he said, the hearing
should focus on all the different ways to achieve "universal health
care" or "universal health coverage," which he said was a better term
to deploy. Medicare for All, he argued, was wrong on policy and is a
political loser, sources present for the meeting, held last Wednesday,
told The Intercept.
Neal confirmed that he recommended a shift in emphasis. Asked whether
he encouraged members in private to focus tomorrow's hearing more on
"universal health care" than Medicare for All, Neal said the
conversation would be more about "universal health care and access,"
pointing to his continued support for the Affordable Care Act.
"I think what we're talking about, we're talking about universal
health care and access," he told The Intercept. "That's the emphasis.
So we have not ruled anything out or ruled anything in. And we think
that continuing to gathering information - I mean, I helped to write
the Affordable Care Act, I'm naturally in favor of expanding it, and,
you know, 100% of the children in Massachusetts are covered, 97% of
the adults. We've had a good experience with it."
The hearing will be held at 10 a.m. on Wednesday in the Longworth
House Office Building and will include five witnesses, all of whom
are, at a minimum, sympathetic to Medicare for All. That the committee
is holding a hearing at all on Medicare for All is a win for the
Congressional Progressive Caucus and its co-chair, Rep. Pramila
Jayapal, D-Wash., and signals momentum for the legislation. A Rules
Committee hearing in April marked the first of its kind in history for
the push for single-payer, and moving to the bigger stage of Ways and
Means, which has jurisdiction over taxation and government revenue,
represents a new high-water mark for Medicare for All. Holding
hearings is the start of creating the legislative history of a bill
and often signals - as it does in this case - that public support for
a measure has risen to a significant enough level that Congress is willing to
spend its limited attention on the issue.
Jayapal, a lead sponsor of the House Medicare for All bill, and her
co-chair Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wisc., won a commitment for a Ways and
Means hearing from Nancy Pelosi as the party leader was working to
round up votes in her bid for House speaker. But converting that
pledge into a hearing required the assent of the committee's chair,
Neal. When Neal came to speak to the CPC on April 30, Jayapal pressed
him in person, and he committed there to the hearing. The result is
Wednesday's hearing, but its title, "Pathways to Universal Health
Coverage," hints at the internal tension.
Some of that tension comes from Democrats who are pushing alternatives
to Medicare for All, such as Rep. Brian Higgins, D-N.Y., the lead
sponsor of a measure to allow people over the age of 50 to buy into
Medicare. After Neal consented to the Medicare for All hearing at
Jayapal's request, Higgins pressured him for his own hearing on the
Medicare buy-in proposal. (Higgins had declared publicly he would not
support Pelosi for speaker in 2018 but relented when she publicly
agreed to make the Medicare buy-in legislation a priority and
recognized him as the lead sponsor of it.) Instead of doing multiple
hearings, Neal told Higgins to include his proposal in the Medicare
for All hearing. Neal and one of his staffers both confirmed to The
Intercept that the measure was added to tomorrow's hearing at
Higgins's request. "As a part of the agreement with the speaker, we
were sort of abiding by that agreement," the staffer accompanying Neal
on Capitol Hill said.
Higgins said Neal including the buy-in measure in tomorrow's hearing
was "a good acknowledgement of the speaker following through on her
commitment to make a good faith effort to get Medicare at 50 on the
agenda." He said it was "fair" to say that Neal had been encouraging
people to frame tomorrow's discussion around pathways to universal
health coverage rather than focusing on Medicare for All.
"If we do nothing to try to get a Medicare for All - first of all,
there's not consensus on what 'Medicare for All' means," he said. "Is
that Medicare for everybody that wants it? Or is that Medicare for
everybody, and it's compulsory?" Higgins warned against "obliterating"
private insurance, which he said lost the party support with the passing of
the Affordable Care Act.
Higgins supported the ACA at the time but said that while it was
"deeply flawed in many, many ways," its biggest flaw was "that it
didn't have a public option, because you need that countervailing
force to private insurance. And I think that if we could accomplish
that this year, that would be a major accomplishment."
But getting rid of private insurance all together would be a mistake,
Higgins said. "Do we really wanna create that schism going into 2020
for ourselves but also for the presidential election? The thing that
we should be looking at - and we can do this all at the same time - is
Medicare at 50 and concurrently working toward a more ambitious
Medicare plan for those who want it. I mean, let's be practical about
this stuff."
Neal is widely known to be skeptical of Medicare for All, and
insurance companies and drug makers are among his biggest financial
backers. He fended off a progressive primary challenge in 2018 but is
likely to face a renewed one in 2020. He was a close ally of former
caucus chair Joe Crowley, and privately among his colleagues is
hostile to the new progressive energy - and support for single-payer -
that swept into the House in 2018.
Speaking last week at a workforce development event at Springfield
Technical Community College in Massachusetts, Neal said the two people
he turned to most for economic advice were Bob Rubin and Jack Lew,
both of whom are former secretaries of the Treasury, according to a
source who was at the event. Rubin, a former Goldman Sachs executive
and a chairman emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, argued in
a May op-ed in the New York Times that the secret to cutting health
care costs is to spend more on social programs like "food stamps, free
school lunches and public housing."
Neal actively opposed efforts by the CPC to place progressive members
onto the Ways and Means Committee, people involved in that fight told
The Intercept. Other chairs of top committees, including Frank Pallone
at Energy and Commerce and Maxine Waters at Financial Services, did
not object to progressives joining their panel, which has created an
ideological imbalance across the committees.
Neal did allow some members of the CPC to join, but generally he only
accepted those who are also members or allies of the business-friendly
New Democrat Coalition, such as Reps. Jimmy Panetta, Steven Horsford,
and Brendan Boyle. Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Mich., was added to the
committee and subsequently joined the CPC. Neal also welcomed Rep.
Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., one of the most conservative Democrats in
the caucus, onto the panel, as well as Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Ill.,
who, like Murphy, is in the right-wing Blue Dog Coalition. Rep.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., meanwhile, sought a spot on the Ways
and Means committee and was turned away, landing instead on Financial
Services and Oversight and Reform.
Jayapal, who does not sit on Ways and Means and was not at the meeting
with Neal, said that she is confident the hearing will nevertheless be
a boost to the effort. "I wasn't in the room, but I would just say it
is impossible to have a hearing on Medicare for All without saying
those words," she said.
"I
am confident that our Medicare for All supporters on the committee
will talk about the policy and the bill completely. And I am 100%
focused on the fact that this is a historic hearing in a major
committee of record - something that has never happened before. We
appreciate the chairman holding this Medicare for All hearing."
One member of the panel who heard Neal's remarks but declined to be
named said that Neal's message was less about trashing Medicare for
All and more about making sure to highlight alternative paths to universal
health care.
Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., another Democrat on the committee, said he
wasn't at the private meeting but that members have been encouraged to
look at all available options. "We talk a little bit about everything,
but I don't think we've arrived at any point in terms of it," he told
The Intercept. Asked if Neal was pushing members away from Medicare
for All, Davis said, "I'm not sure I'd say he was necessarily the lead
on the thinking around that, but certainly in our health meetings
we've discussed everything."
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