Reporters just had a chance to quiz CAP's John Podesta and CBPP's Robert Greenstein at their joint conference on progressives and the debt. Both said some interesting things about health care. Greenstein said that health care reform efforts currently in Congress stand as a test case for whether real budget reform is possible; noting that past attempts to do the hard work of budget reform in 1990 and 1993 both blew back in the faces of the reformers (George H.W. Bush in the first case, and the Democratic Congress in the second). Greenstein and Podesta agreed that that landmark crime bill passed by the Democrats in August of 1994, including the right-wing angering assault weapons ban, and the failure of health care reform were the major causes of Democratic defeat, which is a theory that ties in well with my column today. Greenstein says that health care reform, a complex bill that accomplishes major goals while remaining deficit neutral, is an ideal opportunity for an object lesson in political courage. "The first test is the health care bill," Greenstein said. "It's a lot easier to have a big signature initiatives and not pay for it," he said, referring to the Bush administration practice of passing deficit-expanding legislation. "If we can get health care and people don't get punished for it," then political incentives in favor of reform will be much easier to identify. Podesta, in a more concrete item, suggested that there will be some "vestige" of a public insurance option in the final health care reform bill, saying that "bumpers" have been set up between Snowe's trigger option on the bottom and the House proposal's public option. He expects the final public option to end up landing somewhere between the two. Both men argued that even the Finance Committee's legislation is a good framework that achieves many of the goals the administration set out with eight months ago, and that it is key for disappointed supporters to understand that reform comes in increments, over years, and not necessarily all in one fell swoop.
-- Tim Fernholz
