Eric Massa has taken to local mail and media to explain his vote against the healthcare bill. The online Corning Leader has a story about Massa's plan to send letters to 40,000 constituents in the 29th. The Messenger-Post has a summary of Massa's reasons for voting against the bill.
Reader Elmer sends yesterday's Corning Leader column [pdf] by Joe Dunning, who discusses the Democrats' losses in last week's elections. Frank Coccho, the controversial former mayor who was beaten by Tom Reed, tried again for the job and was beaten soundly.
Dunning's take on the new voting machines was that the process lacks some privacy at the voting booth and when the ballot is scanned.
True to his word, Eric Massa voted against final passage of healthcare reform in the House. Earlier, he voted against the Stupak amendment which restricted use of insurance for abortions.
In the comments and via email, some readers are wondering if this was an "insurance" vote which would help Massa's re-election among conservatives. I doubt it, for a couple of reasons.
First, Massa spent much of the last few months stating his opposition to the first House version of healthcare reform. The bill that passed last night is not fundamentally different from that first version. A last-minute reversal on Massa's part would have been surprising and difficult to defend, regardless of the politics of the final vote.
Second, the conservatives who don't agree with Massa on healthcare also don't agree with him on other issues, such as abortion. They'll have no problem finding a reason to vote against Massa, even if they appreciate his vote last night.
Finally, the election is a year away. By then, all the fussing and fighting over this bill will be over. As this McClatchy summary points out, there's nothing hugely radical in the bill. And even if the same measure passes in the Senate (a big "if"), it still won't go into effect until 2013. It's hard to see how last night's vote will be the pressing issue of the 2010 campaign.
Evan Dawson at 13-WHAM interviewed Eric Massa this morning.
What's old: Massa is still planning to vote against the current incarnation of the healthcare bill.
What's new: Massa's calling for a pullout from Afghanistan, a "sinkhole of a country" with elections that are "at best, a farce". Evan also embedded one of Massa's floor speeches that lays out his opposition to continuation of the war.
The Corning Leader documents the use of new voting machines in Steuben County. Steuben's machines were used for the first time in Tuesday's election.
Steuben is apparently one of the few counties in the 29th using the new technology. According to the Leader, Chemung County used lever machines. When I voted yesterday in Monroe County, I used the same lever machine technology that's been in use for 50 years.
The Leader reports on the usual screw-ups that accompany any roll-out of new technology. Tallies on the Steuben County website are wrong. A breakdown at one polling station required the use of a plan B that involves paper ballots.
Since turnout on Tuesday was a fraction of what it will be a year from now, I hope Chemung and Monroe aren't going to use that election as the first test of their new machines.
There's been a lot of bullshit promulgated about NY-23, but in the end a simple truth prevailed: Parties lose when they split their votes. Dede Scozzafava's piddling 5% of the vote would have been enough to put Doug Hoffman over the top. Instead, NY-23 went to a Democrat for the first time since the Civil War.
If a third-party candidate enters the NY-29 race, we can expect a similar outcome. Parties win when they energize their base and reach out to the middle. They lose when they divide the votes of the reach-out candidate and the base energizer. All the talk of RINOs, the constitution and "true conservatism" won't change that basic fact.
National blogs like RedState are saying "This is a great win for conservatives." Insofar as I can understand the thinking that would lead to such a statement, my guess is that the author is blithely assuming that NY-23 will be a Republican gimme in 2010.
I invite those who think NY-23 will be a turnover in 2010 to take a look at the history of SD-AL. In a June, 2004 special election, Democrat Stephanie Herseth squeaked out a 51-49 victory. Five months later, she beat the same opponent by a couple more percentage points. Ever since, she's had easy wins in a conservative, rural district.
Incumbency is very powerful, and the current attitude of the conservative Republican base is creating incumbents in districts where they shouldn't exist. Bill Owens now has a year to show the North Country what he's made of, courtesy of Dick Armey, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh. As a Democrat, I can only hope that Republicans continue to listen to people who define "winning" as something other than "gaining a majority of votes in an election".
Reader Elmer sends today's Corning Leader story [pdf] about Amo Houghton endorsing Tom Reed.
This is expected and unsurprising, though perhaps a little early. I wonder if there's an insurgent candidate in the wings who might be emboldened by the example of Doug Hoffman in NY-23.
Elmer's second question comes from a Politico article about the complexity of the healthcare bill. Elmer challenges me to intepret this paragraph, which is part of the Politico story and was supposedly taken from the bill:
(a) Outpatient Hospitals – (1) In General – Section 1833(t)(3)(C)(iv) of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1395(t)(3)(C)(iv)) is amended – (A) in the first sentence – (i) by inserting “(which is subject to the productivity adjustment described in subclause (II) of such section)” after “1886(b)(3)(B)(iii); and (ii) by inserting “(but not below 0)” after “reduced”; and (B) in the second sentence, by inserting “and which is subject, beginning with 2010 to the productivity adjustment described in section 1886(b)(3)(B)(iii)(II).
It's incomprehensible unless you have a copy of Section 1833 of 42 USC 1395, obviously. (rimshot)
Actually, what's going on here is that we're looking at we're looking at the "legislative language" of the bill. Here's an article that explains the difference. When the committees debate the bill and amendments, they debate a human-readable text that explains what's going on with the bill. Then lawyers translate that to language that amends current law, and we get word salad like the paragraph above.
So, I don't know what that paragraph means. But I'm pretty sure that it was debated in plain language by the appropriate committee before it got translated into legalese.
One thing I do know is that the legislative process has gone on this way for a hell of a long time, it's disingenuous for John Boehner to bitch about it, and a lawyer like Tom Reed is better-equipped to understand it than the average person.
Reader Elmer sends today's Corning Leader stories [pdf] about the race in NY-23. Dede Scozzafava's drop-out and some GOTV by Vermont Democrats are detailed.
In other NY-23 news, the Watertown Daily Times' endorsement of Bill Owens says that Dede Scozzafava has "quietly and thoughtfully" been encouraging supporters to vote for Owens. [via Talking Points Memo] When the mess in NY-23 is over, I'll have more to say about how that race might impact the 29th.
Elmer also sent some photos from today's Corning Leader [pdf] from the Hammondsport Seaplane Homecoming. One photo includes Massa and some naval officers.
Reader Elmer raises a couple of good questions in the comments. One is about the effect (or lack of effect) of the stimulus, the other is about the complexity of the healthcare bill. Let's start with stimulus.
My simple-minded answer to the question about whether the stimulus helped is that it's pretty clear that it worked. What I mean by that is that there's no question that government spending turned around the GDP numbers. This Washington Post story is accompanied a great graph showing that GDP whipsawed from - .5% to +3.5% in one quarter. As the Post reports, there's really no way that would have happened without government assistance. Here's a breakdown of that growth. A lot of it was in sectors that had government stimulus programs, including consumer spending on cars and residences. Those were stimulated by Cash for Clunkers and the $8,000 first-time homebuyer incentive. Also, with state government spending falling, the federal government has stepped into the breach:
All the strength in third-quarter government spending came from a 7.9 percent rise in spending at the federal level, reflecting in part the boost from the stimulus program. That offset a 1.1 percent drop in state and local spending, where budgets have been hard-hit by the recession. The expectation is that the stimulus program, which is helping states weather the recession, will keep government spending growing in coming quarters.
As for jobs, here's a New York Times roundup of the claims of job saving by the stimulus bill. The Times story indicates that main group assisted so far has been workers in education. The White House claims that at least a million jobs have been saved. And there's a lot of dispute about the numbers, which are premature at best.
Elmer's specific question is what did it cost to save each job. There are two answers to that question. The first is that it is too early to tell. The second is that the answer depends on whether you think that we were on the edge of another Great Depression, or if you think that we overreacted. If you think we were facing a hundred-year catastrophe, then the number of jobs that could have been lost is more than triple the current unemployment rate, which means that more than 30 million jobs were saved. If you think this was a garden-variety recession, then that number is a few million.