Health care: A history of last minute arm twisting

Source: The Truth or the Fight

The media love to play the upcoming health care vote as a sporting event, with daily play-by-play analyses of whether Nancy Pelosi will get the 216 votes she needs to pass the reform legislation. Speculations on the vote count are meaningless, however, until the very last minute. Those members of Congress whose votes mean success or failure are highly motivated to keep their decision secret. There’s a history in Congress of holding out, in hopes of being courted with offers favorable to a congressional district and re-election.
Karen Tumulty writes: “Keep in mind that it is not in the interest of the lawmakers who hold the key votes to show any flexibility at this point. The real movement comes at the very last minute. … [U]ntil a vote has been scheduled, and we are within 48 hours of seeing it happen, take anything you hear from anyone on Capitol Hill with a full box of salt.”

This is all so familiar

Tumulty cites some examples of this phenomenon from recent history.
Timothy Noah writes on Slate of Representative Nick Smith (R-Mich) being bribed to vote for the Bush Medicare prescription bill in 2003. The bribe took the form of an offer of money for his son’s political campaign. Smith described the last minute vote maneuvering as “the most intense and strongest pressure to change my vote that I’ve ever experienced.” Robert Novak reported: “On the House floor, Nick Smith was told … [that] business interests would give his son $100,000 in return for his father’s vote.”
Patrick Cockburn, in The Independent, discusses President Bill Clinton’s attempt to win votes for NAFTA:

In a final drive to win votes for the North American Free Trade Association, President Bill Clinton has offered support at the next election for Republicans who vote for it. ‘I don’t believe any member of Congress should be defeated if they vote for Nafta,’ he said.

Do you represent or do you lead?

The most dramatic story comes from one-term Congresswoman Rep. Marjorie Margolies (D-PA). She describes how her vote on the 1993 Clinton tax package cost her her seat in the House.

When I got to the House chamber, the Republicans were high-fiving, congratulating themselves on the fact that the votes were not there to pass the bill. Some Democrats were talking about switching their votes. I was told the president was on the phone. There was a line set up in an anteroom off the floor, and I took the call there. He basically said, “What would it take?” I told him what my reservations were. We needed more cuts, and we had to address entitlements in some meaningful way. We agreed to try to find more cuts–we ended up finding $100 billion additional cuts, though we weren’t able to get them passed. And we held an entitlements conference in my district. And, I told him, I would only be his last vote–only if he really needed me to get the bill passed. (There had been only two votes like that in history: the impeachment of Andrew Johnson and the vote on the draft.) …
There were three of us in the end, two of whom would have to cast the politically perilous “yes” votes: Ray Thornton, who represented President Clinton’s home district; Pat Williams, a Democrat from Montana; and me. Ray said he couldn’t vote for a 4.3-cent-a-gallon gas tax. Pat cast his vote, then I put my green voting card into the machine. The plan passed by my vote.
I recall Rep. Bob Walker, a Republican in the Pennsylvania delegation, jumping up and down (and he was a good jumper) and yelling, “Bye-bye, Marjorie”. And he was right. …
The unanswerable argument is: Do you represent, or do you lead? In the end, one must put aside all the chatter, noise, all the headlines, all the calls, close the door to your office, and make a very tough and often unpopular choice.

Change we can believe in

With the current health care legislation, we won’t know what went on behind the scenes until years from now, when the parties involved write their tell-all books. It appears, however, that arm twisting under the Obama administration is consistent with the “Let’s clean up Washington” message of candidate Obama. Dennis Kucinich is changing his vote based on principles. Bart Stupak is not changing his vote based on principles, despite 59,000 Catholic nuns who disagree with his claim that the bill allows federal funding for abortion.
There’s no way to know at this point which way the House of Representatives will vote. Or if the vote will really happen this week, as predicted. All we know for sure is that, any day now, this long, drawn-out, highly emotional issue will finally come to a vote in the House. Either it will very narrowly pass or very narrowly fail. Either way, we move on to the next of many issues (and votes) on improving health care in this country.
Related posts:
Health care reform: Navigating the maze
Health care reform: Politics and substance
Why is it so hard to reform health care? Political structure
Edward Kennedy: Healthcare is a fundamental right, not a privilege
‘Mad Men,’ the sixties and the culture war over health care
Waste, Fraud, Abuse and the Mafia