Congress: Conyers is alive and well

Every day more and more evidence piles up that Democrats are going to regain control of the Congress. It’s so compelling that even Democrats in Congress are beginning to believe it.

Here’s how I know: Rep. John Conyers’ universal health care bill that has been lying dormant all these years has suddenly come alive. If the American people could have voted on the bill, Conyers’ legislation would have passed overwhelmingly when it was first introduced. But everyone knew that in a GOP-controlled Congress where the health care industry underwrites most of their campaigns, it didn’t have a prayer. So no one paid it much attention.

In a recent speech, Sen. John Kerry called health care “the great unfinished business of half a century.” He noted that for five decades, presidents “have approached this challenge, then backed away—and powerful interests have had their way.”

That’s why states took the lead. Last spring Massachusetts and Vermont both passed versions of universal health care. Illinois is knocking at the door as is Maine. Just this summer, San Francisco passed universal coverage and other California cities are making similar noises.

Any politician with presidential ambitions wants to get out front on this issue. All are envious of Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney who got a jump on everyone when his state passed a health care reform bill that won him accolades across the nation. Close scrutiny of the Massachusetts law indicate it is quite a few rungs short of its promise of providing a ladder to affordable care for every resident, but his boast as “the man who brought universal health care to his state” is the brightest nugget in Romney’s otherwise lackluster presidential campaign.

No slouch at fattening his campaign resume is New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson who governs a state with the second highest rate of uninsured. He appointed a task force to study whether universal coverage will work in New Mexico, or at least measure up to whatever it is Mitt Romney is boasting about back in Boston. Earlier in the year Richardson vetoed a bill that would have funded a study of universal health care but that was BM (Before Massachusetts).

For years, labor unions have wanted health care taken off the collective bargaining table and have been active participants in statewide universal health care campaigns. Now as they perceive Democrats regaining control of the Congress, they’re giving new attention to the Conyers’ bill. Hundreds of local unions and central labor councils have endorsed HR 676, including state AFL-CIOs in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Connecticut and Kentucky. Just the other day the nation’s largest labor union, the National Education Association, signed on.

There is a huge and anxious audience impatient for government to do something about our country’s biggest domestic crisis. Health insurance premiums have gone up five times faster than worker incomes so it isn’t just the uninsured who are panicky. Businesses and state governments know too that health care costs are unsustainable.

Now that gasoline prices are also out of sight, oil companies are as profitable as the health insurance industry. Since the Bush administration has good friends in both camps, don’t expect any summoning of company executives to the White House for “jawboning” to bring down prices. The only solution is the traditional one: throw the bums out.

Once that’s done my guess is we’ve got a better shot at universal health care (with states leading the way) than energy independence, if global warming doesn’t get us first.