Unlikely duo lays claim to role in healthcare debate

Sometimes if you want a seat at the table, you need to build your own chair.

That’s what Reps. Jim Langevin (D-R.I.) and Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) are working on as the unlikely pair position themselves for a major debate on healthcare reform in 2009 by laying down a marker this year.

{mosads}“How can we be players so that we are in the mix in this debate?” Shays told The Hill during a recent joint interview with Langevin. “We start here to get people to pay attention,” he said.

“Whether it’s now or after the election, the time has got to come. … The American people are going to demand it,” Langevin said. “The simple fact of the matter is: It has got to get fixed at some point.”

Players on Capitol Hill and K Street have been gearing up since the beginning of last year for the possibility of healthcare reform taking center stage in Washington for the first time since President Clinton’s plan crashed and burned in 1994. Langevin and Shays want in.

Lawmakers, especially Democrats, like to say that the public should have access to the same healthcare that members of Congress have. The Langevin-Shays bill would essentially grant that, all for the projected cost of $540 billion a year.

Shays thinks healthcare can do for him what campaign finance reform did a few years ago. “This is my campaign finance reform,” he said.

And like campaign-finance reform, Shays thinks health reform isn’t going to happen quickly or without a struggle. “I think it’s a four-to-six-year effort.”

Though the political benefits of interposing themselves in the healthcare debate could be significant if positive change occurs, the lawmakers also face considerable risks.

Shays again faces a tough reelection campaign in his increasingly blue district. He was the sole survivor of a Democratic wave that swept New England swing districts in 2006 when he beat Democrat Diane Farrell with barely 51 percent of the vote.

Langevin risks running afoul of his own caucus by providing Shays with political cover on healthcare, a traditionally Democratic issue. With Democrats eyeing Shays’s seat, Langevin’s alliance could raise eyebrows — and blood pressure.

These two rank-and-file lawmakers face long odds in getting their bill noticed. Indeed, Langevin originally introduced the legislation in 2004 and Shays was the first co-sponsor.

Neither of them sits on a committee with jurisdiction over health reform, nor are they part of their parties’ leadership structures.

Powerful committee chairmen, congressional leaders and lawmakers with lengthy histories on health issues will take center stage if Congress turns to healthcare. Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) will be among those looking to control the agenda. Other powerful lawmakers with specific ideas will compete for attention, including Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.).

Whoever wins the presidency in November, be it Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) or Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), will naturally take the lead.

Nevertheless, Langevin and Shays will press on with their nascent strategy, reminiscent of what Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) employed when he brought Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah) aboard his healthcare bill. Reps. Brian Baird (D-Wash.) and Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.) co-sponsored the House companion.

Crossing party lines has worked before for Shays, who teamed up with then-Rep. Marty Meehan (D-Mass.) to curb the influence of money on the electoral process. Working in tandem with McCain and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), Shays and Meehan pushed their bill for seven years before President Bush signed it into law in 2002.
Shays and presumptive GOP presidential nominee McCain angered many fellow Republicans with an aggressive — and some say disloyal — promotion of campaign finance reform. Conservatives viewed it as an unconstitutional infringement of free speech and as a handicap to GOP fundraising that had topped Democrats’ for years.

As it did for McCain, however, the issue helped Shays brand himself as a centrist and a dealmaker, and endeared him to his constituents.

Shays has never been a darling of the right. The American Conservative Union gives his voting record a lifetime score of 44.83; for 2007, it’s just 20. Shays voted with his party to authorize the use of military force in Iraq, a decision he continues to defend despite the fact that it nearly cost him his seat.

Langevin voted against invading Iraq and has a reliable Democratic voting record despite being outside of the party’s mainstream on issues such as his opposition to abortion rights. The liberal Americans for Democratic Action gave his 2007 voting record a score of 100.

Though Langevin ended up beating her handily, he endured an attack from the left during the 2006 primary from Brown University Professor Jennifer Lawless, who won 24 percent of the vote. Langevin ran unopposed in the Democratic primary this year and is expected to win reelection easily in November.

The Langevin-Shays bill hews considerably closer to Democratic principles than Republican. Indeed, Langevin described the system as “managed competition,” the same phrase used to describe — and doom — Bill Clinton’s plan.

Similar to the Hillary Clinton and Obama plans, Langevin-Shays would permit anyone to buy private insurance through a federally managed system, which Langevin said he hoped would gradually replace employer-sponsored health insurance. People would be required to get insurance and employers would be required to pay into the system. Hospitals would be subject to a new tax based on the assumption that fewer uninsured people will mean fewer unpaid bills.

This approach is drastically different from the free-market proposals promoted by McCain, of whom Shays was an early and enthusiastic supporter. Shays, however, believes his Republican mates are at greater political risk than he is when they refuse to consider Democrats’ ideas.

“Some of my colleagues have taken themselves out of play,” he said.