Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives appear to have abandoned their efforts to persuade a small band of pro-life members of their party to vote for a Senate bill that contains numerous provisions that subsidize elective abortion. Instead, the Democratic leaders are daring those pro-life members not to vote for the permissive Senate bill and take what they believe will be heat for defeating health reform. In something of a reverse grief cycle, Speaker of the House Pelosi has moved from bargaining to anger. It remains to be seen whether the death of the health care reform she favors lies along that axis or whether a resurrection is at hand.
The stakes could not be clearer for the “Stupak 12,” a group of House members largely from the industrial heartland who either have served in Congress for decades or who occupy seats that, though they may “swing” between the two major parties, don’t swing on the abortion funding issue.
District 1 of Ohio is a case in point. The seat is now held by first-term Democratic Rep. Steve Driehaus, who voted for both the comprehensive Stupak-Pitts pro-life amendment and for the House health care bill. Driehaus is facing a reelection challenge from the candidate he defeated in 2008, Steve Chabot. Chabot also strongly opposes abortion but is a declared foe of the massive health care reform legislation. Cincinnati is one of the most conservative areas in the state and it was long represented by former Cincinnati Mayors Tom Luken and his son Charlie Luken, Democrats who, like Chabot and Driehaus, consistently voted for abortion funding limits like the Hyde amendment.
Strong opposition to federal payments for abortion permeates Ohio 1 and other districts now held by the Stupak 12. These members of Congress are likely aware that throughout the entire history of the abortion funding debates in Congress, it has been axiomatic that the House of Representatives has favored tighter limits than the generally more permissive Senate. Repeatedly since 1976, when the Hyde amendment was first adopted, the House of Representatives has initiated restrictions on abortion funding on the appropriations bills that, constitutionally, must originate in that chamber. In those years when attempts have been made to liberalize the funding law, it was invariably the Senate that pushed for expansion against strong House resistance.
It’s the height of irony therefore that President Obama and the Congressional Democratic leadership have been asking the Stupak dozen to accept that the Senate will rescue them politically by adopting abortion funding limits that will be omitted when the Senate bill is approved on the House floor. It is doubly ironic because, once Stupak and company have presumably abandoned their bedrock principles, the Senate bill would go directly to the President for his signature. Senators who favor both abortion funding and Obamacare will have achieved their goal and will have no incentive whatsoever to adopt a reconciliation bill that contradicts their own policy goals.
Considerations like this have kept the House of Representatives voting time and again over the last 35 years to insist on its position on abortion funding and compel the Senate to give ground in search of a compromise. Speaker Pelosi now seems to have recognized this fact and chosen to move on without as many as a dozen Democratic members she and President Obama desperately need.
This week’s election of conservative Sen.-elect Scott Brown (Republican) in a very blue Massachusetts has sent shock waves throughout the White House and congressional leadership. In the last few days, the media has filed countless articles about Democratic members dropping their demands to ramrod a massive overhaul on the health care sector and instead start over with smaller components.
That’s because despite some political analysis that stated otherwise, the Massachusetts senate vote was in part a referendum on ObamaCare. Politico reported this week that exit polls circulated by Republican polling firm Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates “found that 52 percent of Massachusetts voters said they opposed [President Barack Obama’s] health care push, and 42 percent said they voted to for Brown to stop reform.”
But this isn’t the first time the American public has come out against ObamaCare. Public opinion polls for the past year from Gallup, Zogby International and even the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press have shown a steady drop in support, and corresponding rise in opposition, to health care reform legislation that would bloat Washington’s powers over the private health care sector.
Kaiser Health News reporter Mary Agnes Carey has pinpointed some of the factors in ObamaCare that caused the greatest concern among a major voting group — Americans with job-based insurance who liked their coverage.
Some of the things that didn’t strike well with the public:
• Proposed cuts to the popular Medicare Advantage, in which one in four seniors are enrolled in the private-based health plans.
• Promises from Obama that a health care overhaul would cut health care costs. Subsequent reports from the Congressional Budget Office, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and other agencies would show that reform would bend the cost curve upward.
• A planned barrage of new taxes considered on everything from health insurance premiums and tanning beds to medical devices and cosmetic surgeries.
• Backroom deal-making that cut sweetheart deals for congressional members over Medicaid funding and other health care perks.
Add to all of these issues a complete lack of transparency in the last few weeks of the health care negotiations, which President Obama and others policymakers promised at the start of their reform efforts. When you add all of these issues — along with citizens’ protests at the Capitol and across America against government’s growth and greater spending — it’s no surprise that that voters would show their displeasure in the polls.
The real question now is if Congress will stop trying to overhaul one-sixth of the American economy and start over with real reform efforts that could garner genuine bipartisan support?