Doctor Howard Dean: Democrats only need 51 votes in Senate to pass health care reform

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Doctor Howard Dean was a guest on Countdown last night and he made the point that I have made here previously: Democrats don't need 60 votes for cloture in the Senate to end a filibuster by Republicans of health care reform. Only 51 votes are needed in the Senate because the health care reform bill falls under the purview of budget reconciliation, thanks to the Rules Committee. 'Countdown with Keith Olbermann' for Tuesday, July 7:

OLBERMANN: [W]ith [Al] Franken now on the health committee, can Harry Reid—if he can‘t muster 60 votes for health care reform—are we sure that he can muster 60 votes to stop Republicans from filibustering health care reform?

DEAN: We don‘t need 60 votes from health care reform. All we need is 51. We have reconciliation. The Republicans made it really clear there‘s not going to be any kind of a bipartisan solution that‘s going to be any good. All of the demands that they made have essentially already gutted health care reform.

So, the real only solution here is to get to 51 votes. I don‘t think Al Franken went to the Senate to be a rubber stamp. I know the Senate‘s used to being a rubber stamp from when President Bush was around. But this Senate is not going to be a rubber stamp. They‘re going to do what they think is it right, and hopefully, that will be what the American people want.

OLBERMANN: You know, we talked about rubber-stampness last time, and obviously, Democrats got to where they are today by running a nationwide progressive agenda. What happens to the party now if Senator Reid and President Obama let a handful of so-called blue dogs hold that agenda hostage or even slow it down?

DEAN: Well, then there‘s trouble. We‘re going to lose seats in 2010 if we don‘t pass what the president said was change you can believe in.

You know, change—a little change is not change you can believe in.

You need a lot of change, and the president‘s delivered on that so far.

But the health care reform is his biggest—his biggest problem.

You know, the issue is not so much blue dogs running the show or whatever. The issue is people not having enough nerve, you know, not having enough spine to do the right thing.  Look, this is a battle between the insurance companies and the American people. Seventy-two percent of the American people want a really good health care reform bill that includes their ability to choose between a public and private plan — 72 percent.

So this change—this is not about being conservative or liberal. This is about whether you side with the insurance companies or whether you side with the American people, and it‘s as simple as that. And now, we‘re going to find out whether this is really change you can believe in or something else.

OLBERMANN: As you correctly point out, the public‘s always ahead of the media and the politicians on these things, and if the politicians and the media don‘t listen, they pay the price.

Sen. Harry Reid has purportedly instructed his lieutenants: "Forget the Republicans." They are obstructionists who only seek to preserve the status quo; they are not agents of change. Republicans will do everything in their power to obstruct the change that the American people have demanded with their votes in the past two elections. Their partisan goal is to embarrass President Obama with failure on health care reform, as they did to President Clinton. Any Blue Dog Democrats who want to side with Big Pharma and Big Insurance over the will of the American people do so at their own peril.