“I’m not going to get into the numbers today, but it’ll — I think if you’re not impressed, you should be.”
Harry Reid is pretty proud of his healthcare bill. The next few weeks will be intense and immensely important to him and his party. The ramifications of this bill will be seen and discussed for generations, similar to other fundamental legislative changes in the relationship between American government and its people, like the GI Bill and Medicare. They can’t afford to pull a 1994 again.
After the House passed their version of the momentous reform Obama promised during his campaign, Reid and his Senate Democrats are about to make the hardest push yet. Republicans hold considerable power in the Senate–mainly by just lying dead in the hallways–and the Democrats have an ideologically diverse party to wrangle. Reid will lose the sleep Pelosi is now making up.
Healthcare reform is not just economically important and a revision of 1/6 of our economy. It also is vital for Democrats seeking re-election. If healthcare reform fails, it would not be 1994 all over again–it would be worse. The GOP would make a comeback after years of mismanagement, corruption, and ineptitude, and after having done close to nothing of substance in their role as a minority party. .
When healthcare reform does pass (Democrats cannot fathom a plan B), it will pay handsome dividends. As mentioned in the last post of this series, it will give them enough of a nudge to help them avoid the GOP takeover many pundits predict. Democrats need accomplishments to regain the footing they didn’t have most of this decade, and right the wrongs of administrations passed.
Jobs will rule 2010. Unfortunately, they will probably continue to be scarce well into next year. But those that do spring up, the green shoots economists and politicians always look for, will be seized for political ammunition. Healthcare reform has the potential of giving Democrats a shot of momentum, especially if the public option comes with the package. In part that is because healthcare reform and job production are not correlated factors, but causal.
The public option is an often misunderstood thing. But it is just another government-run and funded competitor, like the US Postal Service, in a market full of thriving private competitors.
As any other new business, it will need people and create jobs. The jobs will come from new bureaucratic institutions, new auxiliary departments, additional support by other already existing government agencies, and by the secondary markets and services any new business can create (developing applications for the iPhone is a prime example). Some are already predicting that healthcare reform, even without a public option, may help businesses create as many as 10 million new jobs due to the money saved in covering their employees. Adding the public option element will make this an exclusively Obama’s Democratic Party victory; any good news that trickles in will be attributed to no one else.
This big picture landscape will be used in small doses for 2010. Even if a few million jobs are created because of healthcare reform, they will not all suddenly appear in one year. It may take years to see the full effect of reform, but those jobs that pop up will be framed as part of a larger outcome. There are regional estimates of how much impact reform will have on local jobs and economies. (An example of that for the state of Colorado). Democrats will be most convincing if they keep their pleads for re-election local, and measured but hopeful. Otherwise, even the most ignorant voter will know they are making castles out of straw.
While they wait for the jobs to come in, the political boost Democrats will get after reform is passed will be felt instantaneously. It will revitalize a party that is exercising in shaky fashion the most power it’s had this decade. The last large piece of legislation the Democratic Congress passed was the stimulus earlier this year. The effect of that is still materializing and debated, so they can hardly count that as an achievement. But healthcare reform, which many thought was close to impossible, which crushed their party over 15 years ago, which most thought was just another campaign promise, would communicate political power like very little else could. “Yes, we ARE the majority party…See!” It boosts confidence in the loyalists and makes the undecideds curious: “Who are those studs with a hop in their step?”
This could turn two ways for the Democrats. It could either give them a short-term or a long-term boost. They can either have readily available results to tout in their favor in 2010 and 2012: new jobs, great hopes, a new, fairer, America. Or, it could give them a boost years down the line. This could be a legacy legislation.
The Republican party often recalls with pride President Eisenhower’s Highway Act of 1956. It was transformative, innovative, and had the long view always in mind. It was a bold stroke of risk taking that paid off. That was a legacy legislation. Democrats hope this will be as well. But they also need to show Americans they can benefit today. That is why linking small improvements to grand outcomes is so important. There jobs depends on it.
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