It’s been an interesting week politically. President Obama postponed an international trip so that he could be in Washington when the Congress completes work on the health insurance reform bill. (The White House had set a deadline of March 18, but now realizes that date might be inoperative.)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that the House will vote this week on final passage of the bill. White House advisers David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs took to the Sunday morning shows to insist that Pelosi has the votes to pass the bill in the House. That’s a point that has been anything but clear for the pass three months.
But this afternoon, Rep. Jim Clyburn, the Democratic whip in charge of vote-counting, acknowledged that there are not enough votes yet secured to pass the bill. Despite the best efforts of Axelrod, Gibbs, and even the president himself, Clyburn (pictured) simply stated the obvious. If Pelosi had enough votes to pass this bill, she would have done so by now. The fact that it’s mid-March and we still don’t have a completed bill is evidence that the votes are not there.
Since Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has decided to use reconciliation to make improvements to this awful bill, the House must pass the Senate version first. The Senate version is far more conservative than the House bill, which is why Pelosi is having trouble rounding up votes. In order for the bill to pass the House again, Pelosi has to convince people who voted against the bill last fall to change their votes this time. For any number of reasons, that’s a hard sell. So the arm-twisting continues.
All of this to pass a gutted bill that won’t significantly change the health care system in America. Wake me up when it’s over.
Posted on March 14, 2010 by Isaiah