Medicaid and Medicare are in trouble because health care costs are rising so fast, which argues for health-care reform rather than cuts in these important programs. Yet if health-care reform has any prayer of controlling the rising tide of health care costs, the plan must allow beneficiaries to opt into a public insurance plan -- something Republicans and the health-care establishment are determined to fight. So it's critically important that the Senate wrap health care into a reconciliation bill that can be enacted by a majority vote in the Senate.
Obama should fast-track health care and stop trying to court Republicans. Every House Republican and all but three Senate Republicans voted against the stimulus; all Republicans in both houses voted against the budget. During the recess they hosted "tea parties" claiming that Americans are over-taxed. Over the weekend, House minority leader John Boehner called the idea of carbon-induced climate change "almost comical."
Republicans are already off and running toward the midterm elections of 2010, even starting to run ads against House Democrats in close districts. They seem hell bent on on becoming a tiny, whacky minority -- the party that denies evolution, denies global warming, denies Americans need a major overhaul of health care, and denies the economy needs anything more than a major tax cut to get it moving again.
