Senior Political Analyst12/10/09 3:31 PM EST
Liberal blogger Greg Sargent notes that Speaker Nancy Pelosi is no longer insisting that the House will not pass a health care bill without “public option” government insurance. And she indicated something like approval of the Medicare buy-in provision which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is apparently backing now. “Let’s see what it is,” Sargent quotes her as saying.
“It might come as a surprise. We haven’t seen the paper from the Senate. There is certainly a great deal of appeal about putting people 55 and older on Medicare. That’s something people in the House have advocated for years.”
This suggests that Pelosi may have another strategy in mind: Have the House pass whatever bill the Senate passes. That would eliminate the need for a conference committee and the negotiations that would take place there. She might have a problem getting 218 votes for a bill with the Senate’s language on abortion—Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak has threatened that 20 Democrats won’t vote for such a bill—but she undoubtedly has a list of House Democrats who voted against the House bill but who might be arm-twisted into voting for the Senate bill.
House passage of a Senate bill would give Democratic leaders what they say they want—pass something, pass anything at all, avoid the failure of not being able to pass anything. If there are problems, fix them later. The president would certainly sign anything that comes to his desk.
If there’s any serious possibility of this scenario occurring, then the Senate vote on cloture will in effect be the final vote on health care. In that case, those who are trying to persuade Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu and Evan Bayh to vote against cloture can make the argument that a vote for cloture is a vote for enacting whatever makeshift bill Harry Reid manages to concoct.
No comments:
Post a Comment