First and foremost, from my perspective, is the apparent affect your tireless work had on the outcome, forcing him to examine the roots of our opposition to the bill, and helping him to understand the reasonableness of our objections.
For his part, he listened, and that is big, and ultimately he voted against his party’s leadership. We’ll take as an act of faith that he voted his conscience.
But what if he didn’t? Should the Congressman be condemned if his vote was merely an act of political expediency? The more cynical among us will point out that Ms. Pelosi had 40 votes to play with – to pass, the bill needed a majority of 218 votes, and there are 258 Democrats in the House. This gave her, ostensibly, a pocketful of dispensations which could be doled out to nervous Blue Dogs - or other vulnerable Democrats. Michael McMahon is one of these, since he is a freshman D in a district that is reliably Republican - 28 years worth - in a district that voted comfortably for John McCain in the last Presidential election.
To be sure, Congressman McMahon listed a goodly number of appropriate reasons for voting against the bill – indeed, had he gone a little further, he might have been able to justify supporting the Republican version of healthcare reform, which came to be known as the Boehner Amendment.
In a statement, the Congressman said:
"I believe that we need to reform the healthcare system, reduce spending, cut waste, fraud and abuse and expand coverage for more Americans. Unfortunately the bill that passed the United States House tonight does not do that.
The cuts to Medicare will affect seniors in my district, the cuts to the Disproportionate Share Hospitals (DSH) will make it harder for hospitals to service Staten Island and Brooklyn and the cost containment doesn't go far enough. There is no guarantee that this bill will reduce the cost of healthcare premiums for Staten Island and Brooklyn families."
To summarize, Congressman McMahon’s objections to HR3962 are as follows:
1. The bill does not reduce spending.
2. The bill does not cut waste, fraud and abuse.
3. The bill does not expand coverage for more Americans.
4. Medicare cuts will affect seniors in the district.
5. Cuts to Disproportionate Share Hospitals will affect service to Staten Islanders.
6. Cost containment does not go far enough.
7. There will be no guaranteed reduction in the cost of healthcare premiums.
A quick look at the Boehner amendment reveals that it would address many of these concerns; certainly the fiscal ones, according to the scoring by the Congressional Budget Office.
However, Congressman McMahon dutifully, and to no one’s surprise, voted against this Republican amendment, even though it would have overcome nearly all the hurdles that caused him to vote NO on the version that came to the floor. That may cause one to wonder if the stated reasons for voting against the bill were the real reasons he voted against the bill – or might he have voted NO to take political cover in his Republican district.
That would be known as having your cake and eating it, too.
(We should note that there is a distinct possibility that the bill will be back again for another vote, if and when the Senate passes its version. Having set a high bar, a bar any reconciled bill may not be able to hurdle, Congressman McMahon will be forced to vote NO once again. We certainly live in interesting times.)
Despite all of this, Congressman McMahon has voted the right way on HR3962, and in the end that’s all that we asked for. So kudos to the Congressman, and great big kudos to the tireless work of the hard-working, ordinary citizen-members of the Staten Island Tea Party.
We never stopped letter-writing, phone-calling, e-mailing, sign-making, trip-taking and generally being a tenacious bunch of pains-in-the-asses - and in the end, we learned that yes, we can make a difference.
I’m very proud of you all.
