President Barack Obama advised fellow Democrats against trying to jam a health care bill through Congress after taking a devastating hit from the loss of a Senate seat. He said Wednesday it's time to come together around a bill that can draw Republican support, too.
In a private meeting in the Capitol just now, a dozen or more House liberals bluntly told Nancy Pelosi that there was no chance that they would vote to pass the Senate bill in its current form — making it all but certain that House Dems won’t opt for this approach, a top House liberal tells me.
“We cannot support the Senate bill — period,” is the message that liberals delivered to the Speaker, Dem Rep Raul Grijalva told me in an interview just now.
Some had hoped Pelosi would push liberals to get in line behind this approach, in hopes of expediting reform, but that didn’t appear to happen in this meeting. Pelosi mostly listened, Grijalva said, adding: “We didn’t get any declarative statement from her.”
The meeting, which was polite but blunt in tone, underscores the degree to which Dems are scrambling to figure out a way forward on health care in the wake of last night’s loss. The unwillingness of liberals, and some in labor, to support passing the Senate bill means House Dem leaders need to find another way forward — fast — and leadership aides are scouring procedural rules as we speak.
Tellingly, House liberals also urged Pelosi to consider passing individual pieces of reform through the House as individual bills, and sending them to the Senate to challenge the upper chamber to reject them, Grijalva tells me. Liberals said this approach would be preferable to passing the Senate bill.
For instance, Grijalva said, why not send the Senate individual bills that would, among other things, nix the “Cadillac” tax or close the donut hole, pressuring the Senate to deal with each provision separately?
“If the Senate chooses not to close the donut hole, that’s their damn problem,” Grijalva said. “They’ve had it too easy. One vote controls everything. Collectively, we’re tired of that.”
Dem house vs Dem Senate, so MEM hows that upstate NY Republican civil war looking now?
Wonder BoyWonder Boy
rex's personal obsession
Registered: Wed Sep 12 2001
Posts: 5824
Loc: Fucktard Beach, Florida
Sen Evan Bayh, after Republican Scott Brown's victory yesterday: "If you lose Massachusetts and that's not a wake-up call, then there's no hope of waking up"
Edited by Wonder Boy (Fri Jan 22 201012:28 AM) Edit Reason: correctly attributed quote to Bayh
Could Massachusetts Sen.-elect (and sound climate science advocate) Scott Brown be wrecking the Democrat agenda across the board? Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski was joined today by three Democrat colleagues -- Arkansas's Blanche Lincoln, Louisiana's Mary Landrieu, and Nebraska's Ben Nelson -- in a move to prevent EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
Lincoln, a politically vulnerable senator who comes from a manufacturing state that leans Republican, warned that “heavy-handed EPA regulation, as well as the current cap and trade bills in Congress, will cost us jobs and put us at an even greater competitive disadvantage to China, India and others.”
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) is also working with Murkowski on proposals to stop the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
The Democrats are bucking Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who has criticized the Murkowski proposal.
I'm glad they are ignoring the wake up call. the worst thing for everyone would be that they pretend to care about America for 9 months and squeek by in the midterms. this way theyll be bounced come novemebr. let them keep going on shows and telling the American people they dont know what they are talking about.
