In my view the Senate has been all too successful at its 'cooling' function. Since the ACA what significant legislation has it passed? Has it done anything besides obstruct in a decade?
The Senate is a brake on change. In the most egregious example, the House passed anti-lynching legislation for 50 years, which never made it out of Senate committee.
Patriot act was ultimately designed to avoid the types of failures to coordinate that stopped the authorities from preventing 9/11 attacks. It was very successful at that aim, but created a bunch of other problems in the process. My statement isn’t an endorsement of it.
ACA reduced the number of uninsured individuals by 50%, eliminated a few key policy holes (ie pre-existing conditions) and slowed cost growth.
The ACA is the exception that shows exactly how hard it is to pass such a bill.
The ACA passed with 0 republican votes. It only passed because Democrats controlled the House, Senate, and Whitehouse. That still wouldn't have been enough (due to the filibuster), but the Democrats also had a big enough majority (60 of 100) in the Senate to override any filibuster.
I do believe that if Democrats had that much political power today, we would see much more significant climate change billa being passed.
So the genius of the Senate is that it doesn't matter what wacky things Senators believe (and Senators tend to be much more reasonable than reps, who are really wacky due to them representing smaller constituencies).
The Senate is there merely to oppose popular legislation introduced in the house, because the Senate, by itself, can't force any legislation through.
For example:
When Obama had a majority in house + Senate (only for 2 years), there was very strong pressure for medicare for all or a medicare option, and it was blocked in the senate. He only got the half-a-loaf solution that is the current ACA through the Senate.
When Trump had a majority in the house + Senate (only for 2 years), there was very strong pressure to repeal ACA entirely, and ACA repeal passed the house, but was filibustered in the Senate (John McCain was the lone holdout in the GOP). If not for the Filibuster, ACA would have been repealed.
Thus the Senate allowed and then kept the half-a-loaf solution even though one side wanted to eliminate it and the other side wanted to push it much farther and both sides had the popular majority in the house, Senate and the Presidency, but they were still thwarted by the Senate, since they didn't achieve the supermajority needed.
But CA is now rolling out universal healthcare, so the point here is that in a Federal system like ours, if you don't get the supermajority, you do things at the state level, which is how things are supposed to work. We can have some states with very comprehensive social safety nets and some states with barebones protections and lower taxes, and people can choose where to live and how much they pay in exchange for higher service levels.
They really only had control for a couple of months. Abuse of the filibuster meant that they needed 60 votes in the Senate to get anything done. With Kennedy sick and Al Franken's election disputed, they didn't have 60 votes initially. After Kennedy died, the special election was won by a Republican, so they really only had 60 votes while Kennedy's interim replacement was in office. The ACA is what could be haphazardly slapped together and passed in that brief time.
They passed a reconciliation bill[1], which needed only a simple majority in both houses and is filibuster-proof. The only thing that stopped that bill from going through was a Presidential veto. The ACA is going to be repealed.
They had a short period with 60 senators until Ted Kennedy died, so they had to reconcile in the senate what was already passed in the house — they had 59/60 senators who wanted to pass Obamacare with a Medicare public option but Lieberman refused and again, 0/40 Republicans helped in any way. So we got the ACA, a flawed piece of legislation but one specifically chosen to engender bipartisan support since it was largely based on the free market Romney/Heritage plan from MA.
And then what health care proposals did the republicans pass when they had legislative control to make things better? Literally nothing. Vote after vote to repeal the ACA and “a plan” to replace it that’s been 6 months away from being released for the past decade. It’s insane people refuse to admit this out loud.
Haha, as if the Senate going blue would change this headline. The Democrats had 60/59 Senators 10 years ago and passed a disgusting reform that's ultimately not done anything about healthcare costs, and allowed those who benefit from the system to reap in even more money.
How did you expect them to get 60 votes in the Senate without moving to the “right”? You think a senator in 2009 was voting no because they thought the ACA was not sufficiently “left”?
Can you list those senators? Without that, it seems like you were dreaming of a fantasy ending.
Democrats have had the power to pass legislation without Republican support during the following periods:
* The 1993 - 1994 congressional term[1], during which they tried and failed to do healthcare reform, but succeeded in passing bills for medical leave, NAFTA, gun control, violent crime, taxes, and education.
* June 30, 2009 - February 4, 2010 (72 working days total)[2], during which they passed a major healthcare reform bill, the Affordable Care Act.
From 1981 - 1992, 1995 - 2008, and 2011 - 2020, Republicans have held the presidency or at least one house of Congress. During 2009-2010 and 2021-present, they have also abused the Senate filibuster to obstruct almost the entire Democratic agenda, with the goal of making the public perceive Democrats as ineffective. (As you have seen for yourself, it worked!) In the current term, the Democrats have a bare 50%+1 majority, which means that the most conservative Democrat (usually Joe Manchin of West Virginia) effectively has a veto.
On top of that, the Supreme Court has been controlled by Republican partisans since 2006, when Samuel Alito was appointed. Currently there is a 5-vote majority of extreme Republican partisans. This creates an additional Republican veto point for effectively any Democratic legislation.
One can (and should) criticize the Democrats for not ending the filibuster when they had the chance. But the reality is that the American legislative process involves a lot of veto points, and it only takes control of one to kill a bill.
The Republican Senate and House have voted multiple times to repeal the whole of the ACA over the past years. The only thing that has stopped it has been a presidential veto.
The ACA was passed with 0 votes from Republicans in the House or Senate, and there was a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. There was no need or desire for real comprise on the ACA.
In fact, after it passes, Speaker Pelosi and Senate majority leader Reid had a little parade where they gloated about getting it through without Republicans.
Medicaid has been expanded in the places where the vast majority of Americans live. Even in some red states.
Issues with the ACA are hardly limited to the Medicaid expansion. And labeling it as “something to pass quickly” does a disservice to the negotiation involved in the bill and how it almost didn’t become law in the end when the democrats lost their 60 seat majority in the middle of final negotiations and passing.
Not sure how anything new gets passed though. Even if warren or Bernie win, it’s unlikely they get 60 senate seats.
as they passed the ACA, they simply changed to rules to use the reconciliation process to pass what they wanted without the Republicans being able to say a word.
Reid was pro at changing the rules to prevent opposing views, people need to understand just how much of the problems in th Senate were his doing and his doing alone. Mister Nuclear just got nuked by the electorate
I'll have to re-read stuff on the ACA's passing through Congress.
But my statement about the supermajority is true. The Democrats (with Independents) had at most 60 members of the Senate (2009-2010), Republicans had from 39-42 (vacancies and other things going on).
Democrats did not have sufficient control of the Senate to guarantee they could get whatever they wanted.
It was watered down to make it a "budget bill" under the Senate rules so it could withstand filibuster. (In doing this, the ACA had to be stripped of almost all its cost-containment features.)
Under this same logic the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) would have lead to the impeachment of the President and most of the Democrats in Congress. It was HUGELY unpopular and has only recently become so-so... 5 YEARS after it was passed.
The Senate has turned into a freezer :)
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