"...because we're biting off more than we can chew in a country this big and complex and complicated"

Or is it because we've got one party that refuses to move ahead without the consent of the opposition party, while the opposition party refuses to move ahead at all? That's explanation enough for why complex legislation can't get passed.

I think alexander the small is right about incrementalism. Like when you would like to build a car. First you would start with an alternator, then, some spark plugs. After a couple of years you might then add some tires, and maybe a water pump. If all went well, then after about 50 years you could have a brand new automobile.

I can't believe no one ever asks him "if this country is, as you say, big, complex and complicated, doesn't that suggest that our programs, projects and legislation will inevitably be big, complex and complicated as well? how can you realistically expect to address the issues of a big, complex country with teeny-weeny bills?"

and if, as Steve ponders, America isn't as competent in the 21st century as it was in the 20th, shouldn't we try to pin the Republicans down into saying so - and then ask at the top of our lungs why they hate America so much, why they are denigrating America?

Why would you hope that Obama could prove Alexander wrong? He's spent a year proving him right.

Once upon a time there were Republicans who believed in America:

“President Eisenhower … gave the nation its biggest construction project, the huge interstate-highway program that changed the shape of American society and made possible the expansion of the suburban middle class.”
James M. Perry
The Wall Street Journal
October 27, 1995

“More than any single action by the government since the end of the war, this one would change the face of America with straightaways, cloverleaf turns, bridges, and elongated parkways. Its impact on the American economy—the jobs it would produce in manufacturing and construction, the rural areas it would open up—was beyond calculation.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower Mandate for Change 1953-1956 (1963)

I don't watch the Sunday shows anymore but, I'll eat my computer if there was a Democratic senator on to rebutt Lamar's lies.

Shorter GOP POV: "We got ours, and we like things just the way they are."

As the largest part of the deficit is related to health care costs and will only grow beyond Congress' ability to cut spending or raise taxes to cover for it, is Alexander saying that America is too complex to save? Should we declare bankruptcy now and be done with it?

The article and those commenting neglect to point out- -and perhaps recognize-- that the House and Senate bill(s) being considered are incremental improvements, mostly insurance reform and NOT reform of health car. How much it will improve health care AND its delivery is NOT a given fact--- and many of the (assumed) benefits or dysfunctions don't occur for years. The unrelenting rise in medical costs is likely to continue to wreak havoc within the system and beyond it, and pretty much everyone will be affected, directly or indirectly if either of these bills pass in their current form. Like the inadequate stimulus package, they'll simply slow in inexorable march to the unavoidable crisis.

The article and those commenting neglect to point out- -and perhaps recognize-- that the House and Senate bill(s) being considered are incremental improvements, mostly insurance reform and NOT reform of health care. How much either would improve health care AND its delivery is NOT a given fact--- and many of the (assumed) benefits or dysfunctions don't occur for years. The unrelenting rise in medical costs is likely to continue to wreak havoc within the system and beyond it, and pretty much everyone will be affected, directly or indirectly if either of these bills pass in their current form. Like the inadequate stimulus package, they'll simply slow an inexorable march to the unavoidable crisis.

Is there a good reason that we couldn't just call their bluff. Play small ball. Propose a bill that prevents insurance cos. from discriminating because of pre-existing conditions. They have to take all comers. And you'd have to have community rating or they'd simply price out of the market anyone with a pre-existing condition. No personal mandates. No tax increases.

The insurance cos. would scream bloody murder because people would be able to game the system and not buy insurance until they needed it. But the GOP couldn't oppose it; they're the ones who want incremental changes.

So insurance rates skyrocket and the whole system comes crashing to the ground. And then the gov't would have to step in with single payer.

"There was a time when great men dreamed great dreams, and achieved them. Now we live in a day when small men dream small dreams... and achieve them, too."

The good senator is just being a good soldier and is following his orders from Frank Luntz: admit the health care/insurance system is broken, but stall, obfuscate, and derail any and all progress toward fixing it. Allowing progress to be made would give Obama a political victory.

Who cares if people are going bankrupt, losing their savings, their houses and even dying because the health care in this country is tied up in a massive for-profit insurance scheme?

There is no such thing as a win-win to them. They think only in terms of what they can politically gain at their opposition's expense. If Obama and the Dem leadership stand to gain - even if everybody gains -, they will have none of it.

WHY are healthcare costs skyrocketing?

Two reasons: ONE: Advances in medicine (surgical and pharmaceutical), and TWO: An extremely unhealthy population.

The first is a good thing, the second a bad thing.

Diet, exercise, avoiding stress (and fast moving objects) can reduce health care costs to near zero.

And that is an individual choice, no government assistance required.

An old chestnut re-polished: "Thou shall not speak ill of the republic party". Barack Obama

Yeah, but it's okay if you want to bomb Iran, we can pass that!

Mother Fucking Douche!

How long would any of us expect to remain employed if we, like Lamar, publicly declared that we were effectively unable or unwilling to do our job?

Diet, exercise, avoiding stress (and fast moving objects) can reduce health care costs to near zero.

Yeah, we've all noticed that healthy-life-style libertarians are immortal.

In their own minds.

Until they're not, at which time they somehow invariably deign to accept help from the same common-good institutions to which they were adamantly opposed when they were young and healthy.

The idea that @Day proposes - that healthy living is all that we need to bring health care costs to zero is ridiculous on its face. Believing it is dangerous and the worst kind of "blame the victim" mentality.

We are all - even the most obsessively health minded - going to die. Not too many of sudden event with no prior illness. It's been shown that a person who is morbidly obese actually costs less overall than someone who takes care of themselves. The obese person is dead by the age of 60. The healthy person racks up another 30 years of medical costs until they finish their lives costing over $100,000 a day in an ICU until their family agrees to stop the medication keeping the blood pressure up and turn off the ventilator.

Alexander fools no one. What he really means with all this talk of incrementalism is that America should be ruled by its special interests. That is really why comprehensive bills are too "complicated." Alexander's is the age-old familiar voice of conservative reaction defending the status quo and its privileges in the name of the greater good.

Global warming, for example, will stop being a "hoax" or even a disputed science once the big oil companies have bought up all the patents for alternative energy and feel confident they will be able to dominate the new "green energy" era the way they ruled the age of fossil fuels.

All those tea partiers out there who've been sold on the simple equation that the choice is between "freedom" on one side and "government" on the other, need to be reminded that power adhors a vaccum. And a big, complicated country like this one has to be governed by someone. So, the choice is really whether the tea partiers want to be governed by a democratic government that in some way it controls or a corporate, financial and religious oligarchy it doesn't.

Just 15 years ago, the top six banks in the country controlled assets that equalled 17% of US GDP. Today, the top six banks control assets worth 65% of GDP. And that concentration of wealth -- and by extension power -- happened in just the last decade and a half. And just a few weeks ago, the Supreme Court said those banks can spend anything they want to protect their interests.

The wealthy oligarchy is slowly consolidating its power while its paid Republican henchmen in Congress man the barricades to prevent the Democratic majority from crossing No Man's Land and accomplishing any of its objectives that might threaten the oligarchy's position or privileges until the oligarchy can regain control of the government once again.

Conservatives, like Rich Lowrey the editor of National Review, who have been busy rewriting history to say that the founding fathers built a constitutional system specifically as a celebration of laissez faire, free market fundamentalism -- and the elites that come with them -- should be reminded that concentrated economic power was one of the things the founders feared most, creating as it does the disparities of wealth and power that lead to class divisions and social disharmony, which are death for republics.

Which is why early on the founders deliberately did away with those feudal priviveges that allowed the wealthy to pass along their estates intact to their eldest male heir for fear that this would create a permanent hereditary governing elite -- something the GOP is trying to create today by repealing inheritance taxes and other levies against those who earn their profits by taking their cut of the labor of the rest of us.

Perhaps the country is too big, and a good solution complicated by our current political situation.

So let's get rid of the dead weight that is the South and select states like Utah, Idaho, and Wymoming. Then maybe we can actually confront the problems we face, rather than denying them.

Saw a poster on the wall in a warehouse once: "Those who say it can't be done should stay out of the way of those who are doing it."

Of course the real problem is that to reform something so massive as the health care system, it takes too many pages.

social security was an incremental program. the medicare we have today wasn't passed and perfected with one bill.

yet this HCR, which is nothing but a gift the insurance companies, to ensure all americans must buy their goods and services or suffer a penalty, must be done - whole hog - right now.

benen - who pays your salary? atlantic monthly or cigna?

As a long-time Tennessean, I can vouch for Lamar!'s intelligence. He understands the issues just fine. He's just being an asshole.

It's been sad to see him go from a Howard Baker acolyte and pragmatic Republican to spouting winger bullshit.

Alas, "This Week..." is serving up puff balls and basically is not calling out politicians who are lying. When Republicans are allowed to argue that it must be bad because it was "pushed" through on Christmas eve--like their delaying tactics had nothing to do with that, then claim it's being rammed through via reconciliation, ignoring the fact that they just admitted it was already passed.

At least the BBC journalist on the Chris Matthews show pointed out that the filibusters are being waged to waste one of the most precious resources--time. That was only hinted at on "This Week..." in the interview with Nancy Pelosi.

The blogosphere can pull back the curtain, but the MSM still needs to open its eyes.

Incrementally speaking, more and more people are losing health insurance and incrementally rates will increase for the ever shrinking pool until incrementally there will no longer be a pool.

hamletta

I couldn't agree more about Alexander. I used to work in public education at the state policy-making level, and Alexander was really considered on the progressive cutting edge of education reform when he was Education Secretary, and then later. I worked with the guy who co-wrote a book with Alexander on reform, so my impression of his was that he was a moderate and sensible Republican who got it. I've been stunned to see his transformation into your garden variety Southern reactionary since he's been in the Senate. I don't even recognize the guy. Just one more reason to lament how the GOP has been taken over by the mob.

I've watched the comprehensive immigration bill, I've watched the comprehensive health care bill....

I honestly don't know if Alexander is right about what America's institutions are capable of accomplishing. ....hopes that lawmakers can respond to big problems with equally big solutions are a thing of the past. It's possible we've entered a period in which our challenges are too great, and once-strong American institutions are simply no longer up to the task.

Alexander is right - Social Security, Immigration & Health Care reforms all failed. It's just not possible today to have large scale reforms - perhaps when our debt is 100% of GDP it will be possible, but not for the foreseeable future. This is not an argument for incrementalism, just an agreement that as a nation, we're just not up to the task today of addressing major problems.

If the "greatest deliberative body in the world" as the US Senate is so fond of proclaiming itself can't solve complex problems that, if unsolved, threaten to destroy our society, than perhaps the issue is not the complexity of the problems but the incoherence and incompetence of the institution. We are not playing a video game here (although I more than half suspect that a group of somewhat above average Warcraft players could probably do better than the likes of Inhofe, Bunning and McConnell). WE are facing a world-wide situation that if not addressed radically and soon, threatens to rip the social fabric to pieces and leave a world of chaos, upheaval, and mass death for our grnadchildren. If this does not change, those grandchildren, however few of them will survive, will curse our names and memories. Do any of the power-besotted egomaniacs that vote "No" on every attempt to deal with a pressing reality even care? I doubt it.

You know, having the folks who don't believe in evolution now pushing incrementalism is just hysterical. We should tell them the health care bill is intelligent design.

Speaking of immigration, during the Great Depression FDR made it a point to keep immigration to 20,000/year.

We have 700,000 legal immigrants/year and half a million illegals.

Now tell me how we're going to get ahead on jobs with that going on.

Of course nobody wants to talk about this, as if it were not a HUGE part of the problem and has been for years.