David Warsh (Economic Principals, 14 February 2010) points to two articles by David Rogers (POLITICO) related to passing major social legislation such as a health care bill. The key is to compromise to get “a” bill passed, which can provide a beach head for future modifications and enhancements.

The first Rogers article, Dems want to seize historical moment (POLITICO, 5 November 2009), comments on the passage of Social Security, the Civil Rights Act, and the non-passage of Bill Clinton’s health care program.

On Social Security in the ’30’s:

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey (D-Wis.) resurrects the saga of a long-forgotten, four-term Wisconsin [Republican] progressive [Gerald Boileau] who backed Social Security in 1935, only to be undercut by angry seniors stirred up by the promise of getting the same benefits free. …

[Y]ears after [Boileau] lost in the 1938 elections, … [he told Obey why he had lost the ’38 election]. Social Security proved a major factor, and Boileau ran afoul of an activist California physician, Francis Townsend, who wanted to give all seniors $200 a month outright. President Franklin D. Roosevelt insisted that the elderly contribute to Social Security to make it more sustainable. And the fight — which spawned Townsend Clubs to organize seniors — dovetailed with a larger struggle between New Dealers and critics like Huey Long or that forerunner of modern bloggers and talk shows, “radio priest” Rev. Charles Coughlin.

For Obey, the great lesson is that so much is now forgotten, while Social Security endures and is embraced by the elderly.

“It just goes to show you that the little differences that we think are so important at the time, little shortcomings … don’t seem important. What’s important is, you have a terrific social insurance program,” Obey said. “So my point is whether we have the strongest public [insurance] option or the second-strongest public option [in the current health care bill], we’re still going to have a damned good product in comparison to what we have now.”

On the Civil Rights Act in the ’60’s:

[House Majority Whip Jim] Clyburn (D, SC), who came out of the civil rights struggles of the ’50s and ’60s, has reminded his caucus that nothing so big was ever done in a single bill.

“The civil rights community, Whitney Young, Roy Wilkins, Martin Luther King Jr. — all these people were for a big, comprehensive Civil Rights Act,” Clyburn told the caucus. “Johnson realized he couldn’t get in one fell swoop all that they were asking for and made it very clear to them in the negotiations: ‘If you want me to put this bill on the floor, I’ll put the bill on the floor, but it’s not going to pass. If you want to pass something, then we have to go into this bill to see what will pass.’”

The voting rights provisions came out and didn’t pass until 1965, after the presidential election. And while the 1964 law outlawed discrimination in the private sector, it wasn’t until 1972 — when Clyburn was on the staff of a South Carolina governor — that the same requirement was imposed on state and local governments, which had resisted the federal mandates.

“I didn’t want anyone to think that if you don’t get everything you want in this health care bill right now, that’s the end of the game,” Clyburn said. “What we need to do is lay a foundation. Get passed what we can pass that will have a meaningful impact on people’s lives — not put too many of our people in jeopardy — and then build upon it later. It’s a long road.”

The second Rogers article, Can Judd Gregg help White House save health bill? (POLITICO, 11 February 2010), discusses the motivations of retiring Senator Judd (R, NH) and Rogers’s hopes that Judd will play a constructive role before and during the Obama “televised sit-down with Republicans on Feb. 25 on how to break the current stalemate [on the health care bill].

-RichardH