Karen Tumulty has written a very good article on the politics of the Wyden-Bennett plan that's framed very strangely. She gets the central problem exactly right: Wyden-Bennett is better policy and worse politics than the likely alternative. It scraps the employer-based market and constructs something better and more rational in its place. But it scraps the employer-based market. Few believe that the politics will support such violent disruption. What's weird about her article is she calls the plan Wyden-Cooper and sells it as the effort of "two Dems." Cooper is Jim Cooper, the representative from Tennessee. And though it's indeed true that Jim Cooper is a House sponsor of the bill, he's not the lead sponsor: That would be Anna Eshoo, a liberal congresswoman from California (Cooper, by contrast, is a conservative Democrat much mistrusted by liberals -- and particularly mistrusted on health care. He's a strong supporter of the bill, but would be radioactive as a lead advocate). But more to the point, the key of the Wyden-Bennett process is, well, Bennett and Bennett's party. Bennett is Bob Bennett, the Utah Republican. He's the lead cosponsor in the Senate. In the House, Anna Eshoo is joined by Jo Ann Emerson, a Republican congresswoman from Missouri. What gives the bill life and force is that it's a proven bipartisan platform. It has eight Republican cosponsors in the Senate and a handful in the House. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker talk about it whenever they're given a chance. That's not to say it's certain that they'd vote for it. But this is not the project of two Dems. Indeed, it's been the Noah's Ark strategy followed by Wyden -- cosponsors are announced in bipartisan pairs -- that's kept the legislation alive.
