The Senators -- and the Yankees -- Need to Get On With It

by Tim Foley

categories: Enemies of Reform, Obama and Congress, The Uninsured and Underinsured

Published November 06, 2009 @ 07:03PM PT

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The New York Yankees may be World Champions, but they’re noteworthy this year for another reason: they have come up with the most obnoxious way to prolong games. All other teams in baseball have “mound conferences” -- timeouts when the catcher, the pitcher and sometimes the pitching coach meet on the pitching mound to make sure they know how to handle the next batter. But the Yankees do it with chutzpah -- all of the infielders are there discussing what pitch to throw next. I guess they think the second baseman might have a good idea on whether the hitter is thinking fastball or curve. Even that may be ok, but the Yankees also do it with shocking and excessive frequency -- including eight times in a single inning for one World Series game. The delays not only make already-long games much longer, but they’re prompting Major League Baseball to consider rule changes and disciplinary action.

I say if MLB does find a solution to the Yankees having Tupperware parties on the mound every time the score gets close, we should use it on the United States Senate.

If all goes well, the U.S. House of Representatives will vote on a historic comprehensive health reform bill tomorrow night. If all isn’t well, it may take a couple of extra days, making this the first health care deadline that the House leadership has missed in this months-long process. But the Senate is a different story. Despite a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee bill that was finished in mid-July and a Senate Finance Committee bill that was finished over a month ago, Majority Leader Reid still has given no clear indication of when a Senate debate is likely to start, let alone end. The same Senate health care bill process that Sen. Max Baucus once confidently predicted would be over by the Fourth of July will now be lucky to finish by Christmas -- but, the Majority Leader cautions, don’t hold us to that.

To be clear, I’m not advocating a “rush it and get it wrong” approach like what the Bush Administration and Republican-controlled Congress did with Medicare Part D, introducing the bill and passing it within hours. Despite the Republican nay-sayers channeling their inner Simon and Garfunkle and proclaiming, “slow down, you move too fast” no matter what deadlines the Senate Democrats blow through, we’re far, far away from anything that could remotely be considered rushing. As Ezra Klein points out, “If you're tracking Obama, then he's been moving on health-care reform for 29 months. If you're tracking the congressional process, then it's 17 months. If you're tracking the first new bill introduced in this round, then it's 33 months.” As Obama liked to joke about the presidential campaign during its final months, “There are babies walking and talking who weren’t even born yet when we started all this.”

More to the point, although the extra consultation time may help the Yankees make a perfect pitch, more time does not guarantee a better result for the Senate. Instead, it means more time for industry lobbyists to get to work on undermining the financing provisions. It means more time for recalcitrant centrist Democrats to up their own importance by publicly expressing their doubts. It means the continued clogging of the legislative pipeline, kicking other priorities like job creation, financial regulation, climate change and more down the road. It means continuing to paralyze states, who need to reform their own health care budgets in the face of their rising budget deficits but are afraid to make a move until they know how the federal reform will affect them. And, worst of all, it means delaying further the positive effects of reform at a time when the country is still shedding jobs and with them, benefits (albeit at a much slower pace than a few months ago). It means more going without care and yes, more literally dying because our dysfunctional health care system leaves them behind.

Maybe Robinson Cano and Derek Jeter know how to get Lincoln, Landrieu, Nelson and Lieberman to vote for cloture. Let’s call a timeout and ask them. Or, better yet, let’s start the debate on the damn bill.

(Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisptacek/ / CC BY 2.0)