March 11th, 2010, Washington, DC–From ALG News’ Capitol Hill Correspondent Derek Baker:
In the Senate, Minority Leader McConnell released a letter yesterday afternoon signed by all 41 GOP senators pledging to vote in favor of stripping any provision from the healthcare reconciliation bill that violates the Byrd rule. This essentially means Republicans are committed to vote as a block to remove any policy changes in reconciliation, even if they agree with the change, such as fixes to the abortion funding or immigration language.
Though the letter was addressed to Sen. Reid, the real target is Pelosi and wavering House Democrats, aimed at sending them a clear signal that any “deal” they are offered by Pelosi and Reid to “fix” the abortion funding language in the Senate-passed bill will be defeated in the Senate.
Interestingly, Rep. Bart Stupak, author of the “Stupak amendment” and defacto leader of the “Stupak 12” in the House, made it clear this week that he would not accept any promise of a future fix in exchange for his vote, stating, “If they say we’ll give you a letter saying we’ll take care of this later, that’s not acceptable because later never comes.”
Bottom Line: McConnell’s assumption in this strategy is that the chair would not overrule a point of order, thus the 41 votes would be enough to sustain the chair’s ruling (Biden can only vote on a 50-50 tie). Furthermore, if it got to that point, this means every pro-life GOP member would vote against language that would prohibit federal funds for abortion. Thus, the gambit is that this will be enough to kill the bill in the House.
In the House, Rep. Louise Slaughter, chairwoman of the powerful House Rules Committee, has reportedly come up with a way to move the Senate-passed healthcare bill in the House without actually putting it to a vote. Slaughter has proposed to craft a rule for the corrections (reconciliation) bill that would “deem” the Senate-passed healthcare bill as passed in the House. Thus, once the rule on the corrections bill was passed, both bills would be passed and the corrections bill would simply have to pass the Senate by a simple-majority.
This maneuver would essentially make the vote on the rule as a vote to pass the Senate version of ObamaCare, though Democrats would argue it was just a procedural vote.
Meanwhile, rumor has it that Pelosi will begin walking her members through the major provisions of the final “fix” package today. The package is not yet finalized, though Pelosi claimed what is left is “minor, mostly technical things.”
Bottom Line: As controversial as utilizing reconciliation to pass ObamaCare is, Slaughter’s proposed move is explosive, and will likely backfire if attempted. Slaughter and Dem leadership would be banking on this issue being too complex to understand for the average voter and therefore worth a shot as their last chance at passing ObamaCare.
At the other end of the Avenue, Obama is reportedly pushing Reid to strip the specific deals that were inserted into the Senate package to appease certain senators, including but not limited to the “Cornhusker Kickback” and the “Louisiana Purchase.” Politico is reporting that Obama has asked Reid to remove deals by senators from at least five other states.
This would presumably weaken Reid’s hand in pushing moderate members in his caucus to support the final fix package, but there is enormous pressure from Obama and Democrat leaders on every Democrat to just tow the line on healthcare at this late stage regardless of what’s in the final package.
Also, WH spokesman David Gibbs is relentlessly pushing the 18th as a deadline for a vote in the House, stating yesterday, “We still believe here in the White House a vote next week as early as the 17th or the 18th.” Meanwhile, Obama continues to crisscross the country selling ObamaCare, giving a nod to the economy and jobs by stating that passing ObamaCare is the best thing for the economy.
Bottom Line: Desperate times call for desperate measures, which is vividly on display this week. Obama is effectively doing a 180: after an entire year of choosing not to weigh in or even so much as comment on the special deals and payoffs in ObamaCare, now he gets religion and asks Reid to strip the special deals. This may be a story of too little, too late, too bad.
