The Fate of Health Care Reform and Corporate Elections

The big political news in the past week was the Massachusetts special election for the US Senate. Because the loss of the seat held by Teddy Kennedy means the loss of the Democrats' supermajority, there has been endless analysis, discussion, spin, etc. on what the election means in terms of the electorate's attitude towards the Democrats, the Republicans, and Obama; the fate of Obama's agenda, and most particularly, the fate of health care reform. As far as the overall "meaning" of the election, as usual I think some people may be reading too much into it. Sure, it's not a particularly good sign when a Republican wins in a place like Massachusetts, but it's not like they never win state-wide races there (Mitt Romney was their governor), and Brown, while definitely to the right of the average person in Massachusetts, is not as conservative as most Republicans. Furthermore, the Democratic candidate ran a rather bad campaign, to put it mildly, not even bothering to do much campaigning until it was too late. And the economy probably had as much to do with the result as anything, though of course the Republicans are at least as much to blame for that as the Democrats (perhaps the ultimate problem was, as usual, a intellectually-challenged electorate -- though that's not to say that the Democrats are such a brilliant choice, particularly this one).

However, there is no question that this result is damaging as far as the President's agenda. As far as health care reform goes, things are looking fairly bleak. But the problems for health care reform didn't start with this election. In fact, though bills were passed by both the House and Senate, neither of them was a particularly good one. I am not entirely convinced that what has been passed so far would be better than nothing at all, especially in the case of the Senate bill, which lacks even a weak public option. As for the House bill, though it is clearly superior to the Senate bill, the restrictions on abortion spending are a bit much to swallow, and the public option is about as weak as it could be. Now things are even worse, as one of the few options open to the Democrats is for the House to pass the Senate bill as is, to eliminate the need for another Senate vote that the Republicans with the addition of Brown can block. Then Americans would be stuck with the Senate bill, under which people will be required to buy insurance from the monopolistic private insurance companies that have helped block more substantial reform, without even an expansion of Medicare. Another option might be to use reconciliation to pass a modified bill in the Senate, but that may involve some political risks. Yet another possibility that some have considered is to pass a scaled down reform bill containing only provisions that even Republicans will find it hard to oppose (though they might oppose such a bill just for the sake of obstructing Obama). Finally, the Democrats could just give up, though that's not really much of an option either, considering how much political capital they and Obama have already spent (wasted?) on this issue.

I'm still not sure what I'd prefer to see happen myself. As I said, I'm not sure that the current bills are better than nothing. If passing the Senate bill was the only choice, I'd be tempted to say forget the whole thing, except for the possible damage to other parts of Obama's agenda, particularly the even more vital climate change legislation. Perhaps the biggest mistake Obama and the Democrats made was trying to compromise too much in an effort to get even a small amount of Republican support. The problem with trying to be bipartisan is that it takes two to tango, so to speak. The Republicans are clearly not interested in compromise on health care or most other issues, so there's not much point in compromising. That's not to say that the Democrats should be openly partisan (for that matter, some in their own party have caused problems as well). But Obama sometimes needs to just come out and say what the bottom line is, explain why (not that many people will really listen to actual logic) and simply ask all like-minded legislators to support his ideas, regardless of party. If no Republicans go along, so be it.

The other big story in American politics recently is the Supreme Court ruling overturning restrictions on corporate spending in elections, a ruling that has been widely decried, with critics including Obama himself (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100123/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_campaign_finance). Like so many other important cases in recent times, the ruling came in a 5-4 split, with Anthony Kennedy casting the deciding vote (in this particular case on the conservative side). As pointed out in one article (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100123/ap_on_go_su_co/us_supreme_court_conservatives_vs_liberals), liberal critics have in this case complained of judicial activism, a common complaint made by conservative critics against liberal rulings. A more telling criticism of Scalia, Roberts, et al. would be blatant hypocrisy, as it is the conservative judges who talk so much about the need for judicial restraint, strict-constructionism, and so on. Roberts actually attempted to deflect such criticisms by asserting that a failure to rule as they did would have been "judicial abdication". So no doubt he believes that the so-called Founding Fathers that strict constructionists like himself hold in such high esteem would have whole-heartedly approved of his ruling giving corporations more power in elections. Perhaps we can get something of a clue from this quote from Thomas Jefferson: "I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~ Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Logan. November 12, 1816

One of the biggest absurdities here is the assertion that corporations should be treated as persons and therefore their political speech should be protected. Granted, at least one commentator made some good points defending the ruling: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/01/22/citizens_united/ . However, while I agree that corporations already have so much power in American "democracy" that this may not really add much to that power, that there are definite problems with the loopholes in the laws, and that there are some risks inherent in any restrictions on political speech, in the end I still think the ruling is indefensible. I am dubious about the idea that the laws in place substantially restricted groups like the ACLU or Planned Parenthood, if nothing else because these kinds of groups would never have the money to spend on advertising for or against individual candidates. Any money that they have for public relations is spent advocating their causes in a more general way (and not with television ads, generally, as they can't afford them). The groups most likely to benefit from this ruling are the ones mentioned in this article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100122/ap_on_an/us_campaign_finance_analysis;_ylt=ArfHb.MZns4sneNX8XhtmGhH2ocA;_ylu=X3oDMTNoajBnNG1sBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwMTIyL3VzX2NhbXBhaWduX2ZpbmFuY2VfYW5hbHlzaXMEY2NvZGUDbW9zdHBvcHVsYXIEY3BvcwMyBHBvcwMyBHNlYwN5bl90b3Bfc3RvcmllcwRzbGsDYW5hbHlzaXN3aWxs , with the NRA and the US Chamber of Commerce (which has spent much of its recent efforts in opposing climate change legislation, in defiance of many of its own members) being particularly menacing examples. Of course the point that under rule of law we can't argue the constitutionality of a law based on its perceived positive or negative effects remains valid. But the real problem, of course, is the idea of corporate personhood. The concept makes sense if we are discussing the ability to sue or be sued in court, but when it comes to rights which were obviously intended for individuals (i.e., actual people), such as the right to be tried a jury of their peers, the right to vote, freedom of religion, and the right to free speech, the idea that corporations should also freely enjoy such rights is absurd.