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.
