Clyburn: Harry Reid Almost Killed Health Care Reform

9:40 am EST March 30th, 2010 | Democrats | 6 Comments

He needs more than a searchlight.

Clyburn said the election of Republican Scott Brown to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s seat was a turning point in passing the overhaul last week. He said at the time, the Senate was pursuing a 60-vote strategy for the legislation to get around filibuster threats by Republicans.

To get there, Reid made several deals with lawmakers, including giving up the public option on insurance and giving $100 million in extra Medicaid money solely to Nebraska to help win support from that state’s Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson. Dubbed the Cornhusker Kickback, it was eliminated in the revisions bill, but had caused a stir over such backroom deals that the Republicans pointed out.

‘So he got 60 votes. Well, the problem is the Nebraska thing, more than anything else, caused the defeat up in Massachusetts,’ Clyburn said.
That forced Democrats to rely on their majority numbers, he said.

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6 Responses to “Clyburn: Harry Reid Almost Killed Health Care Reform”

  1. Steve LaBonne says:
    March 30, 2010 at 9:46 am

    Well, those of us who were pointing out all along that taking reconciliation off the table was insane have every right to say “we told you so”. We could have had a better law and no Scott Brown.

  2. steve says:
    March 30, 2010 at 10:27 am

    I think it’s a stretch to say that the Nebraska deal resulted in Scott Brown. Brown’s Democratic opponent was a lousy candidate.

  3. anotherbozo says:
    March 30, 2010 at 11:12 am

    This may be all true, but Clyburn, with all respect, should bite his tongue instead of dissing Reid right now. Attacks won’t help Reid hang onto his seat in Nevada. And we may need it.

  4. LongHairedWeirdo says:
    March 30, 2010 at 11:18 am

    Having a lousy candidate is one thing, but there was a lot of anger over the ugly health care negotiations, as well. I think that without stuff like the obvious, blatant bribe, it would have taken the wind out of a lot of the opposition’s sails.

    A Republican doesn’t get elected to the Senate in Massachusetts based on a lousy Democratic candidate. It takes more than that.

    On the other hand, if Kennedy or Kerry had been up for reelection, it wouldn’t have mattered. So, yeah, the weakness of the candidate played a role, too.

  5. Parthenon says:
    March 30, 2010 at 11:27 am

    And we may need it.

    What for? The GOP is just going to vote no on everything so we might as well just have 51. I’ll grant I haven’t looked at the numbers in a while, but I don’t think we can lose ten (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong there). And haven’t you had enough of Harry Reid as majority leader?

  6. Sean D. Martin says:
    March 30, 2010 at 3:33 pm

    Said it many times: let ‘em filibuster.

    Let ‘em stand up in public and show their stupidity, either because they’re spending their time reading the collected works of Charles Dickens into the Congressional Record or because they’re actually speaking to the issue and explaining why they are against providing health care to US citizens.

    And while they do it the Dems should be flooding the airways with facts and info on what is truly in the bill and how it would benefit folks and how they’d have it as a law if not for the silly antics of the Repubs.

    I just don’t get the “oooh, scary” reaction folks seem to have to the mere whisper of a filibuster.