The direction of health care reform in Congress is in the hands of the Gang of Six senators on the Senate Finance Committee. Two of the Republican members, Grassley and Enzi, seem to be in the gang because they are friends on the Head of the Committee, Democrat Max Baucus, and not because they are centrists. The conventional wisdom is that these two are not going to sign on to anything that might be a win for Obama because the Republican caucus is breathing down their necks just in case they have any inclination to let centrism trump party. This leaves Olympia Snowe as the only Republican in the gang who might be pliable.
An interesting article by Ezra Klein in the Washington Post offers a paradox. According to the article, Snowe is on the left of two of the Democrats in the Gang of Six. The Democrats need sixty votes to avoid a filibuster. This implies in a first order analysis that the pivotal vote is not Snowe but a more conservative Democrat like Kent Conrad. This would imply a conservative leaning bill.
But now it gets interesting and I am going to offer my own simple analysis which differs slightly from Klein’s.
Conservative Democrats do not have to prove/signal how conservative they are if a Republican votes for health care reform. So, actually Snowe is the pivotal voter and if she votes for reform, her preferences will determine the shape of the final program as Conrad can safely vote for something a bit more leftwing.
Suppose she decides not to vote for reform as she is also under pressure from the Republican caucus. Then the conservative Democrats do have to signal they are not liberals by moving to the right. This implies the pivotal (Democratic) voter has shifted to the right if a Republican fails to join the coalition voting for reform. A Republican’s departure leads to a more right-wing bill. This is the paradox.
Snowe can do her own analysis and realize what her vote means for healthcare reform – a more right-wing bill not a more left-wing bill.
More broadly, signaling to constituents matters (for re-election) to policymakers as well as their own preferences. The two forces together can lead to subtle policy choices by the winning coalition. Not sure if there is some formal poli sci work on this or not.
Cheap Talk 
4 comments
Comments feed for this article
September 3, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Thorfinn
Interesting analysis.
What’s missing here is the strength of party discipline. Republican legislative appointments cycle around, so right-wing leaders have power to discipline centrist Republicans. Democrat legislators have seniority, and lack this power. Even if Snowe would love to sign a bill (Maine has a health insurance monopoly), and is very popular at home, she may be pressured to avoid it.
You’d think Snowe could offer an ultimatum at this point. Outline a right-wing bill–even one that’s more rightist than she would prefer herself (to shield herself from attacks by fellow Republicans)–and offer her support only if everything is included. She needs a bill a lot less than the Democrats do, so she has quite a bit of bargaining power.
Another lesson here is that non-parliament systems have tendencies to look more like parliaments. Substantive “bipartisanship” is now all but dead; let’s just let the majority do whatever they agree on, and give the Republicans space to figure out competing alternatives.
September 3, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Anthony
This requires Ms. Snowe to be a game theorist. You’ve also perhaps oversimplified her option set.
To keep her seat, she has to stay just conservative enough to prevent a credible primary challenge from succeeding, but not so conservative that she loses her centrist voters to a Democrat opponent. Voting against the final bill helps much more on the first than second count, getting the bill modified to be more centrist then voting for it helps her more with the second than the first.
So I think her best option is to find one big thing to change about the bill and insist on that, then publicize it to her voters. The big thing merely needs to be big to Maine voters, which creates some possibilities she might not have elsewhere.
September 4, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Lyle_s
Thorfinn, I don’t understand the statement that the Democratic leaders don’t have the ability to influence Democrat legislators to vote the party line. Or maybe I just don’t believe it. If you come back to visit, can you expand on that statement for the ignorants like myself?
September 4, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Thorfinn
Lyle_s,
Republicans give all-important committee chairmanships on a rotating standard, and the whole delegation has a voice on who gets them. Democrats, on the other hand, hand them out on a seniority principle, so they have no real leverage over other Democrats beyond threatening to launch another primary candidate (Lieberman-Lamont). This is how Democrat senators like Byrd and Kennedy can be so powerful–they’ve been in office forever, and feel little pressure to toe the party line.