Time will tell if President Obama will be able to ram what he calls his signature issue through the Congress and the Senate this Fall. But the boisterous town meetings and the belligerence of those showing up to air their thoughts on health care don't bode well for the President. At least not on passage of the health care bill in its current form, to the extent that anyone can even say what is in the current bill.
The reasons are several.
1. Nancy Pelosi notwithstanding, it is hard for members of Congress to forget screaming constituents and the faces of angry voters encountered at town meetings. Nor is it easy to simply dismiss them as a small minority of brown-shirted thugs (Pelosi) or "evil-mongers" (Reid). I've staffed members of Congress who've gone through those kinds of meetings. They sear, fray nerves, intimidate and panic staffers. It is a wholly unpleasant experience and not something Members of Congress want to do again the next day. And truth be known, the hides of most politicians are pretty thin. Those with hides too thick don't last in public life.
2. It's about more than health care. The credibility of Congress was shot with passage of the stimulus bill and the cap and trade legislation. Members of Congress did not read the bill before they voted. We learned after passage of unconscionable pork barrel spending in a stimulus bill that has not worked; of hidden tax increases in the cap and trade bill not even the authors knew were there.
3. The deficit really bothers rank and file voters. Three times in the last week I've seen fresh polling data from areas in the Northeast that Obama handily carried; areas represented by liberal democrats in Congress. Voter priorities? Cut spending. Cut Taxes. Reduce Debt. Message to office holders? I've learned to live with less. You should too. The tide is against red ink, and labeling red ink and deficit spending as an "investment" doesn't wash, not even in profligate California.
4. The President has a credibility problem on health care. Not all Americans are economic illiterates. And they do fundamentally understand that bringing millions of new consumers into the marketplace with no corresponding increase in the number of doctors, nurses and health care professionals will cause prices to skyrocket, not decline as the President asserts. Americans do conceptually grasp the laws of supply and demand. Most people who have health care are not interested in seeing prices rise, or services rationed. And those video clips of the President in an earlier time advocating a single payer system don't help. The duplicity is devastating.
5. Too many in Congress are misreading polling data. While Americans do often complain about being denied a prescription drug, or being ill-served by a health insurance provider, they do have a recourse. A different insurer. A well timed hissy fit. Public exposure of an insurer's misdeeds often resolves a problem. Most insured know there will be no recourse against a government health care bureaucracy staffed by public sector union workers who have never had to keep a customer happy.
What now? Those blue dogs whose votes are needed to secure passage are going to return in a recalcitrant mood come September. The President may still get what he wants. More likely, he'll have to compromise or settle for nothing at all. Having called it his signature objective, he'll settle for something, anything, that can be remotely labeled insurance reform. But it won't be what he wanted, and reason he won't get it is because a majority of the voting public does not believe the Congress or the President are telling the truth.
