With this week’s vote in the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Olympia Snowe (R) of Maine, along with 13 other Democrats approved the committee’s healthcare bill. The Times’ blog Room for Debate notes:
For months, [Snowe’s] support seemed pivotal to health care’s overhaul in the Senate. For much of the public, it’s puzzling that the politics of reshaping a sector that accounts for 16 percent of the G.D.P. should seemingly hinge on one senator.
Is this a healthy and expected consequence of Congressional politics? What might this say about how partisan politics has evolved? Is there a historical precedent that we might compare this to?
Sociologist Theda Skocpol, of Harvard University, weighs in on the debate:
No, it is not healthy. But the problem is not just Olympia Snowe — it is a set of Senate rules, formal and informal, that privilege a few votes from senators in small states.
This vote is not the final word, however. This is just a matter of getting a bill out of Senate Finance committee. Bills have to be merged for a final vote in each house, and a conference will work out final details between the Senate and House versions in due course. A lot can and will change.
Olympia Snowe is trying to maintain her leverage in this process, and she is in a sense a proxy for various conservative Democrats, too. She wants to try to shape the final “compromise” on a public option — essentially to block it with a “trigger” approach that would prevent a real option.
Remember, in the end, Olympia Snowe really cannot obstruct final passage. She may get in trouble with fellow Republicans in the Senate if she votes with the Democrats, but she will be in bigger trouble at home in Maine if she obstructs. Maine people want reform.
We have a long ways to go and this is not really all that decisive.
Comments 1
Arsento — October 14, 2009
In truth, immediately i didn't understand the essence. But after re-reading all at once became clear.