While everyone is busy crying about losing the HCR battle, they’re loosing sight of the fact that it’s only one battle in a war we’ll be fighting the rest of our lives.

Fresh off the wires.

By Raquel Brown, Media Consortium Blogger

By Raquel Brown, Media Consortium Blogger

Taking on a filibuster might actually produce some good results.

Yesterday, the Senate Finance Committee finally passed its health care bill.

Baucus Health Care Bill Passes Senate Finance Committee

Why is Congress so immobilist and weak when it comes to passing legislation that will solve problems, and also, so very strong when it comes to blocking it? There are many causes and reasons that we’re all aware of, and many of them are inter-related, but from the viewpoint of those who want change, the biggest problem is the power that individual Congresspersons and Senators have relative to the whole of either the House or Senate, or to the majority in their political parties. The sources of this individual power are two: the seniority system in both Houses of Congress, and the filibuster in the Senate.

It’s the power of a large number of individual Congresspersons and Senators that makes Congress strong in blocking legislation and weak in passing it. Individuals with power over particular legislative domains are powerful enough to block legislation, but each of them is too weak alone to pass legislation, without compromising with many other others, and watering down, or undermining, whatever legislation it is they’re trying to pass. So, it’s this individual power that is the source of imbalance among the branches. And if we want to fix the imbalance, we have to do something to eliminate the sources of that power.

Both those for and against the public option are making the exact same argument, presenting the same case … both are arguing it will force the reduction of healthcare costs …

ACTION UPDATE: Pressuring Baucus from the left on the Public Option