Jane Hamsher is right. And she deserves a ton of credit for her organizing and indefatigable energy. She has obtained the pledges of enough House Democrats to assure that the House cannot pass a health care reform bill that doesn’t contain a public option. I am pretty confident that those pledges will hold through the first round of voting. What this means is that Hamsher has come close to guaranteeing that Pelosi and Hoyer will have to introduce a bill that has a public option and then protect against all amendments to strip it out. So, that’s good. That was job one, and I think we can get such a bill passed.
It won’t be easy, though. Many Blue Dogs will have a problem voting for the bill for one of two reasons. Some are just opposed to the public option. Others don’t want to vote for it when they expect it to be stripped out in the Conference Committee with the Senate. They might be willing to vote for it if it were actually going to become law because then people might actually use it and like it. But if it just a ‘left-wing’ vote for ‘socialism’ that won’t ever benefit their constituents, then they are going to be very reluctant to go along. What you should expect, then, is that the bill will pass with the minimum of votes to ‘protect’ as many vulnerable members as possible.
Once that happens, though, the bill will go to the Conference Committee and be merged with a Senate bill that has no provision for a public option. Here is where the conferees will be damned if they do and damned if they don’t. If they include a public option, the motion to proceed to a vote on the bill in the Senate will be filibustered by several Democrats. If they don’t include a public option, Hamsher’s pledgees will be obligated to vote against the Conference Report.
This is a classic Catch-22, and the most likely outcome is that the bill will have to put off for budget reconciliation in the fall.
That outcome is what I’ve been predicting for a while, but it’s hard to know how it is going to look as it unfolds. On the other hand, it’s possible that Hamsher’s pledgees (or some subset of them) will only feel obligated to keep their promise on the first bill, but will consider voting for the Conference Report to avoid having Obama fail at enacting health care through the normal process.
Should be interesting.
