Hickenlooper and Kasich Offer Bipartisan Health Care Plan – Susan Witkin, KOA

“Goddammit, I’d piss on a spark plug if I thought it’d do any good!”

(General Beringer, WarGames, 1983)

The American people are so desperate for breaking the gridlock in Washington and making some progress on health care that they will welcome the improbable plan of Governors Hickenlooper and Kasich. In a Friday, September 1 interview with KOA’s Susan Witkin, we discussed the politics of the initiative.

The Hickenlooper/Kasich (with six other governors) got very strong coverage over Labor Day weekend. They sent a letter to Congress and will testify before the Senate Health Care Committee on September 7. Of course, as can be expected with any bipartisan effort, the right and left immediately attacked it as too little or too much (not repeal - right, not single-payer – left). But the governors labeled it as a pragmatic first step presented by the executives who will be held most responsible by voters if the current system simply collapses next year.

Can bipartisanship actually gain some traction? There are at least a handful of senators that would support a stop-gap measure and more than 40 House members of the Problem Solvers Caucus who had their own bipartisan plan issued last July. But legislative leadership is differential to the extremes in their respective camps and the congressional process is cumbersome and can be derailed.

Both Kasich and Hickenlooper are ambitious and want to be part of the national conversation on how to break the gridlock (and possibly move on to a new job). It remains difficult to see how either one of them can affect their respective parties, but there is clearly a vacuum, which they are enjoying trying to fill.

See The Buzz: Country ready for an independent?