Three Democratic senators have spent years of their Capitol Hill careers trying to pass a health care law that would cover millions of uninsured Americans. But by the time that crowning achievement, now known as Obamacare, gets through its first year, all three will have left office.
Sens. Tom Harkin of Iowa, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and Max Baucus of Montana — Senate committee chairmen who helped write the law and push it through the Senate — are all retiring at the end of 2014. All are devoting at least a portion of their remaining time in office trying to protect the president’s legacy legislation from political opponents — and make the law work.
The three departures will mark a unique, single-issue Senate brain drain, which also included the retirement of Chris Dodd of Connecticut in 2011 and the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy in 2009. And the generational change comes just as the health care law’s major coverage expansion provisions — the state exchanges, Medicaid expansion and the individual mandate — are coming out of their infancy. The employer mandate, which the White House has delayed, will take effect as these lawmakers’ replacements are sworn in.
“It will be a loss not to have them around,” said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who wrote much of the House’s health bill.
Their departures, part of the rapid turnover the Senate has experienced in recent years, means there will be few Democrats in the Senate who played a central role in getting the Affordable Care Act written or enacted in 2009-10 other than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Their absence could be felt if the Senate tries to modify any pieces of the law, or when it comes to defending the law against critics.
There are several up-and-coming Democratic senators with an interest in health care, such as Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Al Franken of Minnesota and freshman Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin. Ron Wyden of Oregon is also in line to become chairman of the influential Senate Finance Committee if the Democrats hold the Senate.
But each of the three retiring lawmakers left a mark on Obamacare, the biggest expansion of health coverage in generations.
Baucus spent the spring and summer of 2009 trying to bring a small bipartisan group of lawmakers together. Any lingering chance of bipartisanship, though, was extinguished by the fiery August 2009 town halls. Baucus got a bill through his Finance Committee with one Republican vote — that of Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, a moderate who also retired last year.
Rockefeller, a senior member of the Finance Committee and chairman of the Commerce Committee, crafted several of the law’s insurance reforms and a panel on Medicare spending that might not even have its members appointed until after his retirement.
Harkin, then a senior member and now chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, wrote the section on prevention and wellness.
Since the health care reform law passed in March 2010, all three, to varying degrees, have pushed the White House to implement the law aggressively. All have sometimes gone public with critiques when the White House hasn’t done what Congress intended. But Baucus, Rockefeller and Harkin all stress that they back the law 100 percent; they want it to work.
In separate interviews with the lawmakers or their staffs, all three say that they’re going to use the next 18 months to secure the law’s legacy. They want to protect it from Republicans who would repeal or dismantle it, as well as from friendly fire from Democrats who, purposefully or not, could undermine the law.
Each holds frequent, private meetings with top officials at the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services. Rockefeller said the meetings are “not very pleasant.”
Rockefeller is focused on shoring up Medicaid, which has been deeply important to him since his days as a VISTA volunteer in West Virginia.
Senate retirements to leave health-care void
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