Assuming that the House passes the health care bill tomorrow, the bill will go to the president to be signed, but the reconciliation part of it will have to go back to the Senate. And then the debate will be on just those reconciliation parts of the bill. In other words, the question before the Senate will be whether or not to strip out things like the Cornhusker Kickback, as the question of whether or not pass health care reform will have been already decided.
This puts the Senate Republicans in an awkward position. They want to run ads saying that both House and Senate Democrats voted for these sordid backroom deals, but they’ll be unable to make that argument if they all vote against stripping those deals from the final legislation. No wonder they’re so mad.
“Do your job,” is one of the saying’s most associated with NFL coach Bill Belichick.
If health care passes this week, it will—to a significant degree—be because people like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama have done their job…and done it well.
As Booman and others have pointed out repeatedly in the past year, our government contains numerous veto points that make progressive change difficult. As much as many of us have been infuriated at times at Pelosi, Reid, Obama and other Washington Democrats during this long year of struggling to pass health care reform, they are on the verge of doing it. They have done their jobs.
Pelosi and her leadership team pushed the bill through three committees, reconciled them, and passed a public option on the House floor by the narrowest of margins. Reid and his leadership team held all 60 Democrats together through multiple votes to pass a Senate bill before Christmas. Obama crafted and led a strategy after Scott Brown’s victory to bring the Democrats back together and on the verge of tomorrow’s House vote. Here’s hoping they can pull it off.
P.S. Much of Obama’s first year was spent attempting to slow down and stop the damage done by Bush’s administration, and by the conservative movement (e.g., the Iraq War, the Great Recession).
If health care reform passes, we may look back on this as the moment when, for the first time in 40 years, the US stopped moving to the right and began (barely, haltingly…but noticeably) moving to the left.
Well said.
The Dems are dropping the deem and pass rule. One less thing for GOP to bitch about.
I’m ready for the bitching to move to Immigration Reform. Yes! C’mon whiners, follow along…we are moving on to Obama’s next Waterloo.
They’re on C-SPAN
there’s Pelosi…designer duds and nary a hair out of place..
GO NANCY!!
Slightly OT: TPM is reporting that Tea Party pecker-heads are running thru the halls of Congressional office buildings harassing Democrats. Why is this being allowed? The double standard is appalling me! Can you even imagine anti-Iraq War protesters being allowing in those buildings, much less yelling and being menacing toward Republicans? Heck, SWAT squads and paddy wagons would have cleared them out immediately. And the media would have reported it was a good thing, too. Are they waiting for someone to get hurt before they guard the doors and block the entry of these crazy people?
Why is this being allowed?
C’mon……….you know the answer to that.
Those people are “Real Americans”. Not like that faggot Barney Frank.
We always knew this was the face of the Tea Party.
Can you imagine if it was a hoard of black people storming the halls of congress? How would that be reported?
Gangbangers attack nation’s capital in unprecedented looting attempt.
Exactly.
ah yes, and harken back to the first days of the Iraq War when the country’s treasures were being looted and we had to listen to Rumsfield blithely look the other way
So I guess the House has decided that they are going to trust the Senate to not f@#k them and go ahead and vote straight up on the Senate bill after “fixing it” prior to the vote.
Hopefully that signed letter from over 50 Senators to amend the bill will carry more weight than all the “sternly worded letters” of days gone by.
Tea Party Protests: ‘Ni**er,’ ‘Faggot’ Shouted At Members Of Congress
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/20/tea-party-protests-nier-f_n_507116.html
With all apologies to TarHeelDem can we PLEASE have a secession vote and leave the CSA to their apartheid Hell so we can have a decent country again?
i used your blockquote for my latest piece. It’s better than the TPM write-up.