{"id":3271,"date":"2010-02-16T00:01:08","date_gmt":"2010-02-16T05:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=3271"},"modified":"2016-06-10T19:28:47","modified_gmt":"2016-06-10T23:28:47","slug":"david-rogers-on-passing-major-social-legislation-and-compromise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2010\/02\/16\/david-rogers-on-passing-major-social-legislation-and-compromise\/","title":{"rendered":"David Rogers on Passing Major Social Legislation and Compromise"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Warsh<\/a> (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.<\/p>\n

The first Rogers article, Dems want to seize historical moment<\/a> (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.<\/p>\n

On Social Security in the ’30’s:<\/p>\n

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. …<\/p>\n[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 \u2014 which spawned Townsend Clubs to organize seniors \u2014 dovetailed with a larger struggle between New Dealers and critics like Huey Long or that forerunner of modern bloggers and talk shows, \u201cradio priest\u201d Rev. Charles Coughlin.<\/p>\n

For Obey, the great lesson is that so much is now forgotten, while Social Security endures and is embraced by the elderly.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just goes to show you that the little differences that we think are so important at the time, little shortcomings … don\u2019t seem important. What\u2019s important is, you have a terrific social insurance program,\u201d<\/strong> Obey said. \u201cSo my point is whether we have the strongest public [insurance] option or the second-strongest public option [in the current health care bill], we\u2019re still going to have a damned good product in comparison to what we have now.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On the Civil Rights Act in the ’60’s:<\/p>\n

[House Majority Whip Jim] Clyburn (D, SC), who came out of the civil rights struggles of the \u201950s and \u201960s, has reminded his caucus that nothing so big was ever done in a single bill.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe civil rights community, Whitney Young, Roy Wilkins, Martin Luther King Jr. \u2014 all these people were for a big, comprehensive Civil Rights Act,\u201d Clyburn told the caucus. \u201cJohnson realized he couldn\u2019t get in one fell swoop all that they were asking for and made it very clear to them in the negotiations: \u2018If you want me to put this bill on the floor, I\u2019ll put the bill on the floor, but it\u2019s not going to pass. If you want to pass something, then we have to go into this bill to see what will pass.\u2019”<\/strong><\/p>\n

The voting rights provisions came out and didn\u2019t pass until 1965, after the presidential election. And while the 1964 law outlawed discrimination in the private sector, it wasn\u2019t until 1972 \u2014 when Clyburn was on the staff of a South Carolina governor \u2014 that the same requirement was imposed on state and local governments, which had resisted the federal mandates.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t want anyone to think that if you don\u2019t get everything you want in this health care bill right now, that\u2019s the end of the game,\u201d Clyburn said. \u201cWhat we need to do is lay a foundation. Get passed what we can pass that will have a meaningful impact on people\u2019s lives \u2014 not put too many of our people in jeopardy \u2014 and then build upon it later. It\u2019s a long road.\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The second Rogers article, Can Judd Gregg help White House save health bill?<\/a> (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].<\/p>\n

-RichardH<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[167],"tags":[35],"class_list":{"0":"post-3271","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-richardhsposts","7":"tag-social-security","8":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3271"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22800,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3271\/revisions\/22800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}