With 60 votes, as promised.

Even though there’s still one more hurdle (getting the House and Senate to agree), this really is a huge achievement.

Matt Yglesias:

As you know, my view is this: For all its flaws, if signed into law this bill would be the greatest progressive social policy achievement in over forty years. It’s fine not to be satisfied with this legislation, but it’s perverse not to be happy about it. The important thing is to try to make sure that we don’t need to wait another forty years before additional major improvements become possible.

Ezra Klein:

H.R. 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, passed with 60 votes, and though that sounds a razor-thin margin given the odd rules of the Senate, it is a landslide in the more normal context for major choices in American politics. The last time a president won with 60 percent of the vote, for instance, was when Lyndon Johnson trounced Barry Goldwater in 1964. Health-care reform passed the House with only 50.5 percent of the body voting for it. And the senators making up this morning’s 60 votes actually represent closer to 65 percent of the population. Harry Reid has much to be proud of today. [...]

Passing legislation, it turns out, is a long and ugly process. God, is it ugly. The compromises, both with powerful special interests and decisive senators. The trimming of ambitions and the budget gimmicks and the worship of Congressional Budget Office scores. By the end, you’re passing a compromise of a deal of a negotiation of a concession.

But bad a system as it might be, it’s the only one we’ve got. At least for now, this is what victory looks like. The slow, grinding, ineluctable advance of legislation that is quite similar, albeit not identical, to what you began with. It’s not pretty, and it doesn’t necessarily feel like winning is supposed to feel. But this bill will do most of the things supporters hoped it would do: cover about 95 percent of all legal residents, regulate insurers, set up competitive exchanges, pretty much end risk selection, institute a universal structure that we can improve and enhance as the years go on, and vastly reduce both medical and financial risk for families.

It’s been a long time since the legislative system did anything this big, and people have forgotten how awful the victories are. But these are the victories, and if they feel bad to many, they will do good for more. As that comes clearer and clearer, this bill will come to feel more and more like the historic advance it actually is.

Today is a good day for America.

Tags: health care reform, healthcare, Senate

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 24th, 2009 at 12:38 pm and is filed under Some Pulp. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.