Nancy Pelosi says “we are very close,” to passing health care reform. She’s in a position to know, but from the outside, Democrats don’t look very “close” at all. That’s because Pelosi has said that there is zero chance that the House will pass the Senate health care bill unchanged. (“Our members will not support the Senate bill. Take that as a fact.”) And according to Pelosi, just having the Senate “fix” its bill at some point in the future won’t cut it—changes have to pass before the House votes on the Senate bill. So there’s still a lot to be done if the bill is going to pass. The Senate and the House will have to agree on a package of changes to the Senate bill. Harry Reid will have to find the votes to pass those changes through the filibuster-proof reconciliation process in the Senate. And then Nancy Pelosi will have to assemble the votes she needs to pass the modified Senate bill through the House.
There are a bunch of obstacles to this. As Greg Sargent has reported, Senate aides are balking at the prospect of passing the fixes first. David Waldman at DailyKos says it shouldn’t be a problem to pass the fixes first using reconciliation. But even if Waldman’s right, it hardly matters—what matters is that Senate aides think it’ll be hard to pass the fixes first. That essentially means that the two houses of Congress are waiting on each other to act. The House wants the Senate to move first; the Senate says (anonymously, so far) it can’t move first. That’s a recipe for disaster. It’s really important to find out whether what the Senate aide told Sargent is right. If the aide is right, Democrats are going to have to consider other ways to pass health care reform (or face the prospect of letting it die). And if the aide is wrong, well, what is the Senate waiting for?
Update: In the comments, Donny Shaw points to a Politico article that has Reid saying that passing the fixes through reconciliation before the House votes on the Senate bill is a “strong possibility.” That’s not that different from what Senate folks have been saying openly since last week, but it does indicate that Reid may think that Sargent’s aide is wrong about potential problems with passing the fixes before the actual bill. (Reid does say the House would have to start the reconciliation bill.)
Kevin is traveling today and tomorrow.
