Wednesday, March 24, 2010

A Blue Dog Explains His 'No' Vote

By Brian Friel  

Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark.

"There are some who want to kill health care reform. We don't," Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., the head of the House Blue Dog Coalition's health care task force, told National Journal (subscription) last July, after leading a contingent to the White House to negotiate on an early markup of the bill. But even though the Blue Dogs have won a number of concessions from liberals over the course of the health care debate that Ross now says "made the final product a better bill," he still decided to vote against his party's signature legislation on Sunday.

In an interview with National Journal on Monday, Ross reflected on the year-long debate, why he ultimately voted no and what could have been done differently.

NJ: A moment that stands out in the health care debate is the Blue Dog stand in the House Energy and Commerce Committee last summer, when seven Blue Dog members read an identical opening statement at the start of the committee's markup, forcing Democratic leaders to negotiate with Blue Dogs on the public option and other matters. Looking back now, what effect do you think that stand had?

Ross: I think as I reflect back on it, I think we were under a lot of pressure and got beat up in the summer for delaying a vote from prior to the August break to what ended up being November in the House. But as a result of the issues we raised and the time we bought, it made the final product a better bill.

NJ: In what ways?

Ross: I'll give you an example. Liberal groups were beating me and some of my colleagues up last summer for trying to weaken or eliminate the public option. And then when the president finally comes out with his own bill, it didn't have a public option either. And then those on the left ended up actually supporting it, if not embracing it.

NJ: How does the final bill look, given the concerns of Blue Dogs over issues such as cost containment and Medicare reimbursement disparities?

Ross: Time will tell. There are some provisions in the bill that hopefully will address some of these concerns, but they still don't fully address the disparity that you find between rural hospitals and those in urban areas. That's something that's very important to me and my constituents -- having access. They want affordable health insurance, but they also want access to health care.

We went in July from a public option based on Medicare rates to not even having a public option in the final bill. This bill moderated a lot. It just didn't get to a point where I could support it. What was frustrating to me is, it's nearly 3,000 pages; there are 10 or 20 bills within this bill. If we could have had an up-or-down vote on each of these proposals separately, there's a lot of them I could have supported: I could have supported health insurance reform, I could have supported making insurance affordable for the uninsured. Unfortunately, I didn't get that opportunity. I think some of them could have received bipartisan support. Just a few weeks ago we passed a bill in the House to repeal the antitrust exemption for health insurance companies. That received bipartisan support.

NJ: Why were the 53 Blue Dogs so divided on the final bill, with about half voting for it and half voting against it?

Ross: The Blue Dogs are a group of fiscally conservative Democrats. They come from different parts of the country, and we all have different constituencies. We're not going to vote in lockstep on every issue. Health care is one of hundreds of issues we deal with in the Congress. I suspect those who voted for it felt they were voting the wishes of their constituents just as those of us who did not felt that we were voting the will of our constituents.

NJ: Why was the unity in last summer's markup not there on the final vote?

Ross: We had the votes on the committee to force a negotiation. When it was in the committee, that was the place to have some success at trying to moderate this bill.

We're Democrats. I know there are some within our party that get angry or frustrated with us from time to time. But the reality is, you do the math, you take the 53 of us and subtract if from the Democratic majority and we'd be in the minority again. I think most people in our party recognize that. I feel like with that comes a responsibility. The people we represent are in the middle, and it's our job to try and bring some of these proposals back to the middle and moderate them. And we had a great deal of success in doing that with health care reform. It's just that at the end of the day, a lot of our provisions were accepted and some weren't, and it was still a bill that my constituents thought was too big and too costly, and so did I.

NJ: How do you talk about the bill when you're at home, since you voted against it but it was a priority of the party?

Ross: My constituents know where I am, and I know where they are, and they know how I voted. As I walk the streets of my district, people are more focused on the economy and jobs. That's the issue that concerns them most. They understand I voted against it. They understand it passed. Now we'll have to step back and see what this means. It will be years before we know on some of it because a lot of it doesn't take effect until 2014, 2015, 2016.

The bottom line is, I believe we need health care reform. I believe I helped make the bill better. But things like an individual mandate are the type of thing that the people in my district do not support. At the end of the day, I listened to the people I represent and voted no. Our governor, who has I believe the highest approval rating of any Democratic governor in America, came out today and said he would not have voted for this bill.

NJ: On the central Blue Dog issue of deficits and debt, do you see enough being done to bring those down?

Ross: The fact the president has appointed a fiscal commission is a step in the right direction. I hope he will put as much time and energy into that as he did with the health care debate.