Rumors are swirling like crazy tonight and the stuff is so deep down in the weeds that it’s over my head. Pelosi is having a lot of success in rounding up members, but it looks like Stupak still has a gun to her head. What I can’t tell you is whether she’ll be able to get Stupak’s support without Stupak actually getting his extreme anti-choice language in the bill. The reason I can’t tell you that is because the parliamentary gamesmanship that is going on is too opaque for me to be certain of whether Stupak might be able to prevail if given a separate vote on his language. It might pass the House, but I don’t think it can pass the Senate. And I can’t tell you for sure whether it failing in the Senate would sink the entire health care reform effort, or simply mean that the reform passes without the Stupak language. I wish I could help you out on this, but it’s above my paygrade. It depends on the differing interpretations of the House and Senate parliamentarians, and I don’t really understand the process under discussion or the likely outcome.
Basically, the Senate parliamentarian has ruled that the Senate cannot use reconciliation on a bill unless that bill is already signed into law. So, the House has to pass the Senate bill and then the president must sign that bill, and only then can the Senate take up reconciliation. But the House parliamentarian is allowing the House to concurrently pass the Senate bill and the reconciliation bill. So, if Stupak gets a stand alone vote on his anti-choice language and it passes the House, it would seem that the Senate could simply ignore it or defeat it. But I can’t be sure about that. If this is a clever way to let Stupak and his small gang save some face, I guess I am reluctantly okay with it. But if this is a cave-in that will either sink the reform effort or result in the Stupak language becoming law, then I am not okay with it.
I wish I could do better, but I honestly don’t understand the details here.
Stupak language becoming law could have the effect of mobilizing pro-choice voters to be single-issue voters for candidates. If this actually happens, good news for Connie Saltonstall.
that’s like trying to put a cherry on a pile of dogshit and calling it a sundae.
Perzactly.
But that might be the sorry state that this Congress is in.
Every other Dem voting no (or threatening to) is empowering Stupak at this point. Lots of blame to spread around.
Unlike Stupak, most of them don’t have primary challengers — yet.
It will be interesting to see if there really is a political cost in terms of White House or DCCC campaign support for Democrats voting No.
Michael Moore is in Stupak’s district? Connie Saltonstall should not want for campaign cash.
We need to pass health care. And if Stupak is holding the needed votes, we gotta live with it and fix it all later. It’s ugly but 32 million…
Just to be clear, that 32 million people don’t magicly have coverage immediately. Between now and 2014 it depends on what the insurance companies do with the high-risk reinsurance pool. And what employers do with tax credits and….it might not be affordable coverage immediately even if it occurs.
The folks getting immediate benefit are those currently having insurance, who no longer have to worry about rescissions or caps on benefits.
agree. But until we elect better Democrats we have to pass the bill that we can pass. Crap, there are already 30 some Democrats voting NO with or without the Stupak deal! So it’s an obviously really lousy group of Dems that Obama, Reid and Pelosi are stuck with.
Here we have the minority party voting 100% no and yet we have 30-50 Dems going to vote no also. It’s just a lousy, lousy situation we find ourselves in with so many not supporting the Democratic platform so I’m going to totally support Pelosi on whatever she has to do on this one.
Here we have the minority party voting 100% no and yet we have 30-50 Dems going to vote no also.
And yet the DCCC will defend those 30-50 to the death. And why are three committee chairs voting against it? Those three should have their chairs revoked.
President Obama, at least, said that he would withhold support for people who voted against the bill.
Or am I forgetting something?
Watching for him to deliver on this promise.
And, oh yes, validating that he actually has said this.
But a lot of Blue Dogs wouldn’t want him to come visit their district anyway. They only way to really stick it to the Blue Dogs would be to dry up their non-corporate campaign cash.
No, you aren’t. lol
The work on this bill, the position we’re in today, even though there’s been any number of screw ups when you put it up against what LBJ achieved and how he is touted as the great arm twister, hey, what he had to deal with was kindergarten.
A little off-topic, and it’s a little late for me, but if the Rate Authority is no longer in the bill, and if Congress therefore has no direct control over the cost of premiums, and if subsidies of premiums don’t begin until months/years later, then either the cost or the number of people covered may vary greatly. In other words:
How can the CBO score the bill when we have no idea how much the government will have to pay to subsidize 31 million new members
or
How can the Democrats claim how many people this bill will cover when they have no idea how many policies it can afford to cover with the stated budget?
The CBO score on this is like any CBO score, given the fact that they must estimate 10- and 20-year budget impacts: a SWAG. Businesses can’t anticipate where they will be in 5 years, much less 10 or 20. Congress is asking CBO to do the impossible just to give Congress a narrative for political cover.
The Democrats like all other politicians use “studies” to cherry pick estimates.
But the fact that they don’t know how much the policies will cost means that inevitably Congress will have to come back and deal with cost control–just like they are having to do with Romneycare, which is what the bill in Congress is modeled on.
That means that contrary the skeptics, Congress will have to fix the law and probably in the next session of Congress. The only question will be who will be in Congress to do the fixing and whether “fixing” is a mechanical or a veterinary term in this case.
The usually authoritative (in my experience) David Waldman discusses this at http://www.congressmatters.com/storyonly/2010/3/19/2200/-Stupak-takes-us-into-the-weeds-under-the-we
eds-of-reconciliation but does not seem to add anything beyond what we have here.
Maybe it’ll just go away.
How did American democracy get like this?
.
ABC News’ Jonathan Karl reports: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was asked about Bart Stupak’s suggestion that there could be another bill to address abortion funding and she said, “I haven’t heard any of that.”
“If you don’t want federal funding for abortion… and you want to have a health care bill,” she said. “This is it.”
She said members may be talking about various things and dismissively mentioned Stupak’s name, adding, “But right now we are just getting votes to pass a bill.”
“This bill is about health care and not about abortion,” Pelosi said. “There will be no further changes in the bill.”
h/t CatholicVoteAction
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
(Reuters) – The House will vote on Sunday afternoon on President Barack Obama’s top domestic legislative priority, which picked up fresh momentum by winning four new converts after receiving a good report card from congressional budget analysts.
“I feel very sure that we will vote sometime after 2 o’clock on Sunday and the bill will pass,” Democratic Representative James Clyburn, the top House vote-counter, told reporters.
Three new supporters were picked up when Representatives John Boccieri, Allen Boyd and Suzanne Kosmas announced they would switch from “no” votes last November to “yes” — bringing to six the number of House Democrats to do so in the past three days.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Ellsworth says he’ll vote yes.
Local freepers’ panties in a wad this morning over it. I’ll spare you the spewings.
Since Ellsworth is a Blue Dog through and through, I wonder if Obama said no campaign cash for you unless you vote yes. I mean, lets face it, Obama did win Indiana. So a Democrat to the left(however small) of Bayh can win there.
And as heir apparent to at least the nomination, Ellsworth is facing an expensive fight to succeed
Senator BlandEvan in November.This is the first time in this debate that I, too, have felt at sea understanding the legislative maneuvering.
But my gut instinct is that, if a deal with Stupack is made, it will look like this:
(1) Final “passage” of the Senate+reconciliation sidecar will NOT be dependent upon Stupack language passing muster (from the parliamentarians and legislators);
(2) The main purpose will be to enable Stupack to save face;
(3) Pro-choice groups will raise hell until they realize the #2 point.
(4) A final, final, final resolution of all of this (in the House) will occur on Sunday. In other words, the House will not need to take additional action, even if the Senate doesn’t approve of whatever the Stupack deal is. Sunday’s vote in the House is the last the House will need to take for the foreseeable future.
(5) Alternatively to points 1-4, Pelosi will magically peel off the last several votes needed to avoid further discussions with Stupack.
I’m still confident we’ll be proclaiming victory a week from now, just not sure how we get there.