Bill and Hillary Clinton understood individual members of Congress just fine. They just didn’t get Congress.
That’s the picture that emerges from the documents released by the Clinton presidential library Friday on their efforts to pass health care reform in the 1990s. For years after the effort failed, the generally accepted storyline was that they cooked up the health care plan in secret, didn’t work with Congress enough and that’s why it stalled.
Continue Reading
Not true, according to the documents released Friday, which include transcripts of briefings Hillary Clinton gave to members of Congress and memos from White House advisers. They show that she was constantly being urged to hold more meetings with key members of Congress, including Democrats and Republicans, in early 1993 when the plan was being put together — and she was being advised on how to stroke the egos of individual lawmakers.
(Also on POLITICO: Hillary Clinton dissed individual mandate)
And yet, the Clinton White House didn’t put the pieces together to see the coming collapse, with Democrats unable to get on the same page and Republicans under pressure to say no to the whole thing.
Clinton herself took pains to convince congressional Democrats that the White House had listened to them.
“We labor under getting about 535 different [inaudible] views on how to do this,” and the White House tried to “do it the best way we can figure out,” Clinton told Senate and House Democratic leaders in a September 1993 briefing, according to one transcript.
But for much of 1993, the White House didn’t see the political realities that would bring the plan crashing down — including the pressures within the Republican Party that eventually created a solid wall of opposition.
(Also on POLITICO: Hillary Clinton aide advised: 'Don't be defensive')
“The Republicans are finding themselves in a dilemma. Many do not particularly want to help the President, but many also believe they cannot be perceived to be standing in the way of health reform,” White House health care adviser Chris Jennings wrote in a May 1993 memo to Hillary Clinton. “In addition, there is [sic] a significant number of Republicans who sincerely want to participate in shaping the response to the health care crisis.”
Jennings later worked for the Obama White House as an adviser on the implementation of Obamacare.
The documents paint a picture of a political environment that was starkly different from the one President Barack Obama faced in 2009, when the Republicans didn’t worry about looking like they were standing in the way— because they were convinced the Obama plan would be rejected by the country and there was no political price to be paid.
But even in 1993, the Clinton White House ran into political headwinds that doomed the plan: Democrats who warned the White House that the plan was too complicated, and Republicans who eventually united against it.
(Also on POLITICO: Dingell in '93: Clinton health bill 'in disarray')
The May 1993 memo was a setup for a meeting between Clinton and a group of mostly moderate Republicans. Unlike the political environment Obama faced, the Clinton White House was talking to Republicans like then-Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole, and Sen. John Chafee of Rhode Island, who were more moderate, not ideological firebrands. Chafee, in particular, was working with a group of centrists from both parties to craft a bipartisan proposal.
Still, the Clinton White House did have an inkling that Republicans would face political pressure not to help the administration in any way — a reality that would become painfully clear when the health care bill reached the Hill.
“[M]any of the members fear that working with us will make them perceived to be co-opted by the president,” Jennings wrote. “If this occurs, they fear that they will be castigated by their colleagues for unduly assisting an Administration that some of the conservatives believe is on the ropes.”
And the Republicans weren’t even the worst of the headaches the Clintons faced. It was the Democrats they had to get on board — and the ones who became increasingly convinced that the White House didn’t understand Congress.
Source: Top Stories - Google News - http://ift.tt/1fx1vQ7
0 comments:
Post a Comment