Procedure Could Undo Dem Dreams

March 10, 2010 / 10:20 am • By Dr. Melissa Clouthier

A parliamentary procedure could stand between Democrats and American cultural domination? Awesome. Via Bill Dupray this from the New York Times:

The White House and Democratic Congressional leaders said Tuesday that they were bracing for a key procedural ruling that could complicate their effort to approve major health care legislation, by requiring President Obama to sign the bill into law before Congress could revise it through an expedited budget process.

An official determination on the matter could come within days from the House and Senate parliamentarians, and could present yet another hurdle for Mr. Obama and Democratic leaders as they try to lock in support from skittish lawmakers in the House.

Meanwhile, Congressional leaders and top administration officials met in the offices of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, on Tuesday evening trying to resolve outstanding policy differences between the chambers.

House leaders were still navigating potential pitfalls, including a dispute over provisions related to insurance coverage of abortion, while opponents of the legislation, including a leading business group, planned a new onslaught of television advertisements attacking the proposal.

Many rank-and-file House Democrats are reluctant to approve the Senate-passed health care measure without a guarantee that the Senate would follow up with changes in a budget reconciliation bill. The Senate measure included a number of provisions House members dislike, including special deals intended to secure the support of individual senators, like extra Medicaid money for Nebraska.

You know why I still say this passes? Have you ever seen Democrats so determined in your life? This is everything to them. Everything.

It’s no longer about policy. It’s about pride.

They’re going to get this thing passed or die tryin’.

Posted in Democrats
Tags:

  • Patrick Glenn

    I am concerned about two scenarios:

    1. The Obama administration is using the dramatic lead-up to the “official determination” by congressional parlialementarians as a PR ploy – maybe they already know what “determinations” they’ll get from the parliamentarians and want to amplify them as much as possible because they think it will help influence fence-sitters?

    2. Or, on a tangentially-related line, let’s say the reconciliation route falls apart. At the risk of sounding cyncical and/or paranoid, what if Scott Brown has been setting up his recent votes in favor of cloture as a precedent based in principle (yeah, right), which he will then repeat when it comes time to vote on a new Senate health care “reform” bill that is based on Obama’s pre-Summit plan? He would still vote against the bill after cloture, pretending that he was still the 41st vote against. He might even be able get the two RINO Senators from Maine to play along. This is probably very unlikely, but just saying . . .