Why All House Democrats Must Vote for Health Care Reform [View All]

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Why All House Democrats Must Vote for Health Care Reform
Robert Reich
Former Secretary of Labor, Professor at Berkeley
Posted: March 15, 2010 04:21 PM

Health care reform is necessary, and House Democrats should vote for it because it's best for the nation.

They should also remember the political lessons of history. To paraphrase Mark Twain, history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. As the White House and the House Democratic leadership try to line up 216 votes to pass health care reform -- and as Republicans, aided by the National Association of Manufacturers and abetted by fierce partisans like Newt Gingrich, try to kill it -- I can't help thinking back to 1994 when the lineup was much the same.

I was serving in the Clinton administration at the time. In the first months of 1993 it looked as if Clinton's health care proposal would sail through Congress. But the process dragged on and by 1994 it bogged down. We knew health care was imperiled but none of us knew that failure to pass health care would doom much of the rest of Clinton's agenda and wrest control of Congress out of the hands of the Democrats. In retrospect, it's clear Republicans did know.

On February 5, 1994, the National Association of Manufacturers passed a resolution declaring its opposition to the Clinton plan. Not long after that, Michigan Democrat John Dingell, who was managing the health care bill for the House, approached the senior House Republican on the bill to seek a compromise. According to Dingell, the response was: "There's no way you're going to get a single vote on this side of the aisle. You will not only not get a vote here, but we've been instructed that if we participate in that undertaking at all, those of us who do will lose our seniority and will not be ranking minority members within the Republican Party..."

SNIP

...I remember how shocked we were the morning after the votes were counted. I asked one of Clinton's political advisors what had happened. "It was health care," he said, simply. (That advisor, by the way, is now in the Obama White House.)

Today's Republican battle plan is exactly the same as it was sixteen years ago. In fact, it's been the same since President Obama assumed office. They never were serious about compromise. They were serious only about regaining power. From the start, Republicans have remembered the lesson of 1994. Now, as they prepare to vote, House Democrats should remember the lesson as well.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/why-all-house-democrats-m_b_499753.html