It’s finally over. The health care bill, with the last-minute fixes, has passed both houses of Congress. And everyone in the land is happy and content.
Well, nearly everyone.
Republicans aren’t happy. And the brick throwers aren’t happy. And Sen. Ben Nelson isn’t happy. And U.S. House Minority Whip Eric Cantor — who says Democrats are to blame for fanning the flames of the brick throwers — isn’t happy. And those attorneys general with nothing better to do than pursue futile nullification lawsuits (see: Suthers, John) aren’t happy.
Oh, and I almost forgot about poor Andrew Romanoff. He’s not happy, either. He’s really not happy.
And this may or may not surprise you, but it’s all Michael Bennet’s fault that Romanoff is not happy.
Romanoff and Bennet are, of course, battling to be the Democratic nominee in the U.S. Senate race. Bennet, who has the Senate job now, just voted for the landmark health care bill, which has been a cause for so much celebration, or not (see: above).
But, you may be wondering, why would that possibly make Romanoff — who is neither a brick thrower nor a Republican — so upset?
Romanoff says it’s because he wanted a public option in the bill — and, in Romanoff’s view, if only Bennet had been true to his word and stepped up in his role as junior junior senator, with all the power that entails, then Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid would have fallen in line.
OK, it’s a stretch. But it’s politics. And it’s primary politics — the strangest kind, the brother vs. brother kind (or in this case, the Yale Law vs. the Yale undergrad kind).
In primaries, the challenger has to move to the left or the right. And Romanoff — once known as the cautious, consensus-seeking, compromise-driven Colorado House speaker — has responded by taking his place manning the ramparts. He may or may not be wearing a beret.
I love primaries. Romanoff makes an issue of the public option. Bennet sees his chance and writes a letter to Reid demanding a vote on the public option by reconciliation. Everyone knows there won’t be a vote, so it looks safe and Bennet briefly becomes a hero to the left. But then senators actually start signing the letter, and the pressure goes up.
And by the time we get to reconciliation, everyone — by which I mean and the Service Employees International Union and Bernie Sanders — understands that there won’t be a public-option vote and are pushing the no-amendment theme.
But here’s where it gets good: Romanoff has Bennet in a bind. Bennet had run into the real world. The leadership had determined the votes weren’t there and that the risks were too high. Bennet could either play the game the way Romanoff himself has played it all his political life — patiently working the count — or he could go rogue.
But these are two guys who do not do rogue. They may both be running to the outside, but they’re insiders from start to finish. Romanoff has worked nearly his entire adult life in politics. Bennet’s only real job outside the political world was making deals for Phil Anschutz.
And yet, being politics, this is the world that Romanoff pretends to see: Under pressure from a Bennet-led charge, Obama would have had little choice but to put the public option back in the bill, even during reconciliation, no matter the risk to the entire bill or to Obama’s future or to the 32 million soon to be insured.
I asked Romanoff how he saw it.
“I led the legislature,” Romanoff told me. “I know people can change votes. I know there’s risk. But this is our best chance to get it passed.”
The bill was law, after all, by Thursday’s reconciliation vote, he said. The bill wasn’t at risk, only the fixes. Of course, there were other factors and other risks.
Senate leaders had promised House leaders they would vote only for the fixes the House had added. Republicans, meanwhile, were tossing in every possible amendment, including the infamous Viagra Vote, stretching out the process for no purpose other than to stretch out the process and to test party solidarity.
Romanoff is right that the bill needed a public option — that the insurance companies got a gift without it. Romanoff is right, too, that Obama — although he doesn’t say Obama — has been squishy on the public option. If you can’t pass it controlling the Senate, House and White House, when can you?
Romanoff says, “It reminds me of that scene in ‘Blazing Saddles’ when the sheriff puts the gun to his own head and tells the crowd, ‘He’ll shoot. He’s just crazy enough to do it.’ “
But when I asked Romanoff whether he would have voted for the bill without the public option — if that’s the only real-world choice he had — he didn’t put the gun to his head. He said, “Yes.”
In the end, that’s the only choice there was.
Mike Littwin writes Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-5428 or mlittwin@denverpost.com.
