…they don’t even have a plan on how to get them! Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) insisted this weekend that she “will be able to get the votes needed to pass sweeping health care legislation in the House.” What this really means is that she does not have those votes right now. And if you were watching the television yesterday it quickly became apparent that the leadership in the House has no idea how they are going to get them. First Speaker Pelosi on This Week:
VARGAS: If — but the point is when it does finally come to vote on it in the House, you’re certain that you can muster the 217 votes that you need…even with the differences over abortion language? Things…
PELOSI: Yes.
VARGAS:… that there are members of the House who voted in favor of it before, who are now saying, “We can’t vote for this bill, because of the Senate language on abortion?
PELOSI: Well let me say I have this in three — just so you know how we sequence this. First we zero in on what the policy will be. And that is what we’ll be doing — following the president’s summit yesterday.
Secondly, we’ll see what the Senate can do. What is the substance? And what is the Senate prepared to do? And then we’ll go to the third step as to what my — my members will vote for.
Meanwhile, Pelosi’s second-in-command, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) was singing a different tune on Face the Nation:
BOB SCHIEFFER: We’re back now with our panel. Steny Hoyer, there’s been a lot of back and forth. Senators say the House has to go first. Some in the House are reluctant to go before the Senate goes. Are you, number one, willing to go first and don’t you have to?
REPRESENTATIVE STENY HOYER: We– whether we’re willing or not, we have to go first if we’re going to correct some of the things that the House disagrees with, correct, change so that we can reach agreement, the House will have to move first on some sort of corrections or reconciliation bill
Although the left has been celebrating the passage of Obamacare in the Senate as further evidence that the President’s health care reform initiative is a done deal the health care reform fight is not over. The truth is that this bill can not yet be transmitted to the President until very different versions of Obamacare are reconciled. The House and Senate must agree on what to send to the President for his signature before this fight is over.
There are key differences between the House and Senate approaches to Obamacare as explained by Nina Owcharenko and Robert E. Moffit, Ph.D. in a paper published by the Heritage Foundation lists 6 key differences between the two bills. Procedurally, the House passed a version of Obamacare with a public option, an income surtax and with strong language forbidding the use of federal monies to fund abortion. The Senate chose not to take up the House bill and passed a version of Obamacare with no public option, taxes on expensive health care plans and with weak language forbidding the use of federal funds for abortion. Sens. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have since blocked the appointment of conferees to reconcile the differing versions of Obamacare. The options liberals have to get the bill to the President’s desk are therefore limited.
The Senate refused to take up the House bill and many claimed that the House bill was dead on arrival in the Senate. Presumably the Senate bill can’t pass the House, because of the more liberal abortion language, the radically different tax provisions and the lack of a public option. That leaves a so called “ping-pong” strategy where the House can either take up and pass the Senate version of Obamacare or they can take up the Senate bill, amend it, then send it back to the Senate. The Senate would then have the same option: take up and pass or amend and send back to the House. This ping-pong between chambers can happen a few times before the issue loses steam or the bill gets sent back and forth too many times to comply with the rules of the House and Senate.
Don’t forget that the American people absolutely hate this bill. Owcharenko and Moffit write “even if concessions and compromises can be made between the Senate and House versions, public opinion is solidifying against the legislation. A recent Rasmussen poll found that only 34 percent of voters say passing a health care bill is better than doing nothing. This is on the heels of a CNN poll that found 61 percent opposed to the bill and a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that found that only 32 percent think the health care bills are a “good idea.” Even though both the House and Senate have passed very unpopular bills, it is possible that some of these members will actually listen to their constituents and realize that support for this initiative may be the functional equivalent of political suicide.
Any way you slice it, Obamacare still has a difficult path to the President’s desk, because either the Senate or the House will have to back away from their position on important issues. The liberals are 75% down the road to government control of health care, yet they still need to make it that last 25% of the way. For those who have given up hope, you may be correct to say that this is a done deal, but many Members of Congress would have to back away from strong policy stands on the public option, taxes on health care plans, and abortion for Obamacare to get to President Obama’s desk in time for a victory lap at his State of the Union speech.