The Big Question: Will Speaker Pelosi get the votes for healthcare?

Some of the nation’s top political commentators, legislators and
intellectuals offer their insight into the biggest news story burning up
the blogosphere today.




Today’s question:

Will
Speaker Nancy Pelosi get the votes to pass healthcare
reform?

Alan Abramowitz, professor of Political Science at Emory University, said:

Yes.  Probably.  Maybe.

John Feehery, Pundits Blog Contributor, said:

Not yet.  For her, the biggest problem will be the lack of trust between the House and the Senate.  Can she guarantee that the Senate will be able to jam the side-car using reconciliation?  Her members are going to walk the plank on taxing union health care plans, and if she can’t guarantee that the House repeal of that provision will get through the Upper Chamber, I don’t see how she gets the votes.  Oh, one more thing.  This bill will be a political disaster for the Democrats, especially the vulnerable ones.  That might hurt her get some votes too.  

Frank Askin, professor of law at Rutgers University, said:

I do not know how anybody except Pelosi herself (or maybe Chris Van Hollen) can answer that question with any degree of certainty….I sat on the floor of the Senate (as special counsel to the Democratic majority) during a 6-week Republican/Dixiecrat filibuster of Labor Law Reform in the summer of 1978.  Until the very last moment, the Democratic leadership was hopeful it would get a 60th vote for cloture, but ultimately had to giver up and pull the bill after 6 weeks.

A. B. Stoddard, associate editor and columnist, said:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) does not currently have the votes. There is no score from the Congressional Budget Office and therefore nothing by which wavering Democrats concerned about cost containment could be comforted. Until there is paper, there won’t be the votes. The Senate Democrats, who are meeting with the Senate parliamentarian to ascertain just what provisions can pass under reconciliation, must also assure House Democrats that a reconciliation package of “fixes” will make it off the Senate floor despite the efforts Republicans are expected to make to shut down the process.
 
Will there be votes on the House side for health care reform is a different question. Should the party somehow find a way to resolve the abortion issues in a separate bill or in some way in reconciliation I believe Pelosi will find her votes. But since we don’t yet have a date for passage — the White House continues to insist on March 18th but House leaders say no way — we won’t know anything about whip counts until just before the bill comes to the floor. It is unclear whether that can even happen by the Easter recess which begins Marchg 26th.

Justin Raimondo, editorial director of Antiwar.com, said:

On the question of whether the Democrats have the votes to pass healthcare “reform” – clearly, at this point, the answer is no. 

Even worse for the Democrats is that Speaker Pelosi – notoriously deaf, dumb, and blind to any sort of populist discontent – is talking about placing the much-touted “consumer protection” agency, which is supposed to guard against excessive profiteering by the insurance companies, “within the Federal Reserve.”

Of all the government agencies she and her fellow Democrats could have glommed on to, the Fed is the most secretive, the most unaccountable, and surely the most unpopular. There’s a reason why the majority of the members of Congress have signed on to a bill sponsored by Rep. Ron Paul that would audit the obsessively secret Fed. Naturally, Pelosi was not one of those co-sponsors, and that shows how immune she is to any sort of understanding when it comes to populist distrust of the government-business alliance that she and her party have signed on to.

It isn’t enough that Pelosi and the Obama Democrats want to force everyone in the country to buy health insurance they can’t afford: it isn’t enough that they’re handing Big Business a monopoly and guaranteed super-profits. No, the Pelosi crowd has to make  this act of mass thievery even more unpalatable by parking the “regulatory” agency that goes with the legislation in the very apparatus that was the instrument of the bank bailout – an even more massive subsidy to America’s plutocrats than even the healthcare “reform” scam.

Republicans all over the country are hoping and praying Pelosi does indeed have the votes, because then she and her fellow millionaire-Democrats will own this healthcare “reform” lock, stock, and barrel. And that angry, growling sound you hear is those peasants with their pitchforks coming up the road….