House Democrats given suicide mission if Brown wins

NY Times:

The White House and Democratic Congressional leaders, scrambling for a backup plan to rescue their health care legislation if Republicans win the special election in Massachusetts on Tuesday, have begun laying the groundwork to ask House Democrats to approve the Senate version of the bill and send it directly to President Obama for his signature.

A victory by the Republican, Scott Brown, in Massachusetts would deny Democrats the 60th vote they need in the Senate to surmount Republican filibusters and advance the health legislation.

...

Some Democrats suggested that even if their candidate, Martha Coakley, scraped out a narrow victory on Tuesday, they might need to ask House Democrats to speed the legislation to the president’s desk, especially if lawmakers who had supported the bill begin to waver as they consider the political implications of a tough re-election cycle.

It is unclear if rank-and-file Democrats would go along, and House Democratic leaders said no final decision would be made until they talked to their caucus.

But even as Democratic leaders pondered contingencies, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, insisted that the legislation would move forward, though she acknowledged that Tuesday’s results could force a tactical shift.

“Certainly the dynamic will change depending on what happens in Massachusetts,” Ms. Pelosi told reporters in California on Monday. “Just the question of how we would proceed. But it doesn’t mean we won’t have a health care bill.”

“Let’s remove all doubt,” she added. “We will have health care one way or another.”

Still, some lawmakers, aides and lobbyists described numerous obstacles to House approval of the Senate-passed bill.

...

In an interview on Monday, Representative Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat who opposes the Senate bill in part because of provisions related to insurance coverage of abortions, said: “House members will not vote for the Senate bill. There’s no interest in that.”

When the idea was suggested at a Democratic caucus meeting last week, Mr. Stupak said, “It went over like a lead balloon.”

“Why would any House member vote for the Senate bill, which is loaded with special-interest provisions for certain states?” Mr. Stupak asked. “That’s not health care.”

...


Forcing its members to eat a crap sandwich and lose the election appears to be the most likely option at this point. Listening to the voters does not appear to be an option for liberal Democrats who normally have a stronger sense of self preservation. They are really exposing who they are and it is not pretty.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains