Sometimes I wonder if I’ve just drunk too much of the Kool-Aid because I seem to always find myself agreeing with Barack Obama.  I’m not exactly a my team/your team kind of guy (I’m always the one that admits a bad call in my favor in sports, for example), so I don’t really think this is what’s happening.  I just think my political disposition is squarely in line with this President, which apparently is something of a rarity among Democrats lately.

When I checked in on the blogs late last night and saw the tax deal that was struck, I stuck out my lip, slowly nodded my head, and said, “Hmm.  Not bad.”  Which is not to say that I was necessarily excited about the deal, but it had a little more “sugar” in it than I had expected. 2% payroll tax cut?  Sounds good to me.  UI extension for 13 months?  Not bad.  Temp extension of Bush tax cuts for 2 more years?  Could be worse.

I think thats the key phrase.  It could be worse.  But could it be better?  The kids over at DailyKos would have you think so.

But what is this magical solution that our President has so stupidly failed to see?

Is it to have a staring contest with a emboldened political party that will clearly not back down, while raising taxes on lower to middle class families during a sluggish recovery that is still posting 9.8% unemployment?  Is that the solution America is craving?

Is it the likely death of unemployment insurance for people who are out of work through no fault of their own?

How about a guarantee of zero fiscal stimulus for 2011?  Is that the silver bullet to economic recovery?

Do people honestly believe that anyone will remember this in 2012?  Or that they’ll even blame Republicans for it?  That ship has sailed.  The only real chance of using this issue as an electoral bludgeon was before the midterms, not after, which I will remind everyone is exactly what Obama wanted to do, but the Democrats in Congress punted.

So now the tricks and gimmicks are over.  It comes down to what’s best for the economy today.  Middle class tax hikes, or temporary extension of tax cuts for the rich?  Extended unemployment benefits, or an expiration?  Fiscal stimulus, however modest, or pro-cyclical contraction?

I’ll take the deal.

The story is that Obama had nothing prepared when he addressed the House Democratic Caucus today, and it definitely has a very loose structure. But I think this is one of his bests. It is very inside baseball stuff, but it gives you a nice window into this man’s soul.

The close:

And now a lot of us have been here a while and everybody here has taken their lumps and their bruises. And it turns out people have had to make compromises, and you’ve been away from families for a long time and you’ve missed special events for your kids sometimes. And maybe there have been times where you asked yourself, why did I ever get involved in politics in the first place? And maybe things can’t change after all. And when you do something courageous, it turns out sometimes you may be attacked. And sometimes the very people you thought you were trying to help may be angry at you and shout at you. And you say to yourself, maybe that thing that I started with has been lost.

But you know what? Every once in a while, every once in a while a moment comes where you have a chance to vindicate all those best hopes that you had about yourself, about this country, where you have a chance to make good on those promises that you made in all those town meetings and all those constituency breakfasts and all that traveling through the district, all those people who you looked in the eye and you said, you know what, you’re right, the system is not working for you and I’m going to make it a little bit better.

And this is one of those moments. This is one of those times where you can honestly say to yourself, doggone it, this is exactly why I came here. This is why I got into politics. This is why I got into public service. This is why I’ve made those sacrifices. Because I believe so deeply in this country and I believe so deeply in this democracy and I’m willing to stand up even when it’s hard, even when it’s tough.

Every single one of you have made that promise not just to your constituents but to yourself. And this is the time to make true on that promise. We are not bound to win, but we are bound to be true. We are not bound to succeed, but we are bound to let whatever light we have shine. We have been debating health care for decades. It has now been debated for a year. It is in your hands. It is time to pass health care reform for America, and I am confident that you are going to do it tomorrow.

Thank you very much, House of Representatives. Let’s get this done.

Now go read the whole thing.

The thing that is so frustrating about talk a paring down the current Senate bill is that the Senate bill is already pared down.  We went through weeks and weeks of rubbing Ben Nelson’s and Joe Lieberman’s feet by getting rid of the public option, taxes on rich people, and any other good policy ideas that twinged an already raw nerve of “looking liberal.”

What we’re left with then is just basic insurance reform, which goes something like this:

1. People are pissed that insurance companies are screwing them by claiming pre-existing condition exclusions.
2. In order to stop (1), we ban this practice
3. In order to accomplish (2) without people abusing insurance companies (i.e. get insurance when they get sick), we impose an individual mandate.
4. In order to accomplish (3) without forcing poor people to go bankrupt buying health insurance they can’t afford, we provide subsidies to buy insurance.
5. In order to pay for (4), we cut waste in Medicare and impose new taxes.

There’s really nothing here to take out, because it’s all related; you take out one, and all the cards fall.

It’s not just me saying this either.  Check with the experts:

“The idea of scaled back reform, and particularly of doing insurance reforms by themselves, is a fantasy,” says Richard Kirsch, director of the reform campaign Health Care for America Now. “The public wants to stop insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. You can’t do that without a mandate; you can’t do a mandate without subsidizing coverage; you can’t subsidize coverage without Medicare savings and new revenues. The public wants to end medical bankruptcies – but to do that you need to provide affordable coverage to people and you need to mandate decent insurance benefits and put a ban on annual and lifetime caps. Doing all that requires setting up exchanges and subsidizing coverage.”

Thankfully, President Obama sees things the same way:

If you ask the American people about health care, one of the things that drives them crazy is insurance companies denying people coverage because of preexisting conditions. Well, it turns out that if you don’t — if you don’t make sure that everybody has health insurance, then you can’t eliminate insurance companies — you can’t stop insurance companies from discriminating against people because of preexisting conditions. Well, if you’re going to give everybody health insurance, you’ve got to make sure it’s affordable. So it turns out that a lot of these things are interconnected.

Now, I could have said, well, we’ll just do what’s safe. We’ll just take on those things that are completely noncontroversial. The problem is the things that are noncontroversial end up being the things that don’t solve the problem. And this is true on every issue.

Where does that leave us?  It leaves us with 256 gutless, crybabies huddled in a corner.  No one but Congressional Democrats are so good at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

The path is simple.  Pass the bill.

A few months ago I was back in Boston chatting with some old republican friends. We talked business and politics. Where the two topics met, they mentioned “You may be a blue liberal now, but when your business takes off you will be on our side.”

If you are a democrat when you are poor and a republican when you are rich, you don’t actually stand for anything but yourself.