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#ObamaCareFAIL
January 31, 2010
TPM has a go at why the health care reform bills are on life support right now.
I’m linking to it not for the post — which is what you would expect — but for the fight in the comments, which more than anything helps explain what’s going on.
Needless to say, I hope they stay in that state till November, and don’t realize that they can have most of what they want simply by passing the Senate bill in toto…
Well, we’ll see what happens.
Apparently, it was a damned near-run thing.
Categories: USA! USA! USA!
I don’t think they can pass the Senate bill in the House even if it was their only option. There are several reasons for this:
1. They probably don’t have the votes for it. Why? Simple. The House Bill passed with 220 votes. You need 218 to pass something. Robert Wexler is no longer in Congress, he resigned. That’s 219. Joseph Cao has said he’ll vote against the Senate Bill based on, among other things, the Abortion language. That’s 218. Bart Stupak will not vote for it because of the abortion language. That’s 217, so already, if nobody who voted against it the first time flips, it’s dead. Stupak claims to have at least 10 more democrats like him who will opposed it based on the abortion language. Let’s say he’s only got 7. That’s still 8 votes short of passage. Even if he’s got zero, it’s short of passage unless someone flips the other way.
2. Politically, it’s borderline suicide for Democrats who voted against it the first time to vote for it this time. First off, they probably voted against it because of their district, or out of philosophical disagreement. It seems very unlikely that anybody who was philosophically opposed to the House bill is OK with the Senate bill. And as far as their district goes, if they were afraid enough of their district to vote against the bill the first time, the Democrat’s signature issue, how do you think being labeled, not only for the bill, but also a flip-flopper, will do to them? It’ll destroy them. You basically have to have Democrats that are willing to throw away their seats to get the bill. You might get one or two, but I doubt you’d get enough.
3. Scott Brown. Do you REALLY think enough D Congressmen are stupid enough to not realize what it meant? I know there are some that are diluting themselves and others that buy the D spin, but can you REALLY see people who voted against the bill the first time being convinced to switch to support it when Brown ran his entire campaign on “I’m the 41st vote against the HC bill?” You MIGHT have been able to get a few to switch before, now? Not if they still plan on being in Congress in ’10.
4. AFL-CIO. They’ve basically forbidden the Senate bill be passed because it will tax their health care plans. It’s one thing for D’s in tough districts to piss off Daily Kos, it’s another thing entirely to piss off the unions. Virtually every Democrat in congress in a marginal district outside the south owes it’s seat to unions. I’m not exaggerating. Scott Murphy, Bill Owens, Tim Bishop, Carol Shea-Porter, Bill Delahunt (Brown just got 60% of the vote in his district), Rick Larsen, Loretta Sanchez, John Salazar, Betsey Markey, Jim Hynes, Chris Murphy, Melissa Bean, Joe Donnelly, Tim Waltz, John Hall, Eric Massa, Jason Altmire, Chris Carney, Tim Holden, John Murtha, Paul Kanjorski, Ron Kind, Steve Kagan and probably a lot of others I’m not mentioning owe their elections to the unions. It’s not that the unions will not vote for them, most will, but they won’t work for them, they won’t spent money on them, they won’t send volunteers to their events, etc. That would essentially doom every one of them provided their Republican opponents are even marginally credible.
I actually think reconciliation is their best bet, but I also think that’s politically suicidal. It would by necessity drag out the debate for months and then saddle people with a bill they don’t like only a couple of months before election day.
So, back to the point, the bill is dead.
This should be the bill’s mascott: http://www.comicbookmovie.com/images/news/comic-news/deadman072006.jpg
One other thing: Do you think the House D’s, already out on a limb, want to go on record as voting for the Cornhusker Kickback and the Louisiana Purchase? I sincerely doubt it.
Finally, they can’t “Fix” the union problem with the bill by passing a subsequent bill, as some have suggested, most likely. Again, most D’s wouldn’t want to vote for that as a stand alone bill, and I 100% guarantee you no Republican would. It gets filibustered in the Senate. They could try to pass THAT through reconciliation I guess, but I don’t think that’s legal.