The House of Representatives is pretty far along in drafting a reconciliation "fix" to the Senate health reform bill, which they currently plan to pass a couple days after passing the Senate health reform bill. Speaker Pelosi, four days ago:
And, indeed, leadership is pressing ahead with the legislative process. Earlier today, outside of a caucus meeting, Pelosi said Democrats had already drafted much of a reconciliation bill, meant to amend the Senate package, and sent "a bunch" of its legislative language to CBO.
The Senate seemingly has enough votes to pass a reconciliation bill now. That doesn't necessarily mean that the Senate and the House agree on what should be in the reconciliation bill, and the House will undoubtedly wait on passage until such an agreement is reached. However, it still means that the reconciliation "fix" to the Senate health reform bill is not the main obstacle to passing health reform.
By far the bigger obstacle to passing health reform remains Bart Stupak's bloc. As this blog and many others have recounted on numerous occasions, Stupak supposedly has a group of about a dozen Democrats who voted "yes" on the health reform bill in November, but who will vote "no" this time around because the bill lacks Stupak's regressive language on reproductive rights.
In an attempt to circumvent this bloc, the House leadership seems to have secured the votes of at least three House Democrats who voted "no" in November: Jason Altmire, Brian Baird, and Bart Gordon. Still, that is nowhere near enough to cancel out a dozen members of the Stupak bloc. Additionally, Representative Mike Arcuri appears to be a non-Stupak bloc member who is flipping from "yes" to "no."
One problem is that no one seems to know exactly who is in the Stupak bloc. There is a lot of speculation, but little confirmation. What little information we do have is:
- Bart Stupak is definitely in the bloc
- Joseph Cao says he will not vote for health reform unless it contains the Stupak language, so he is in the bloc.
- Dale Kildee is not in the bloc, as Brian Beutler confirms:
However, Kildee's office tells me that his name doesn't belong on the list--he's still reviewing the Senate language.
Other than that, we have a list of about 15 theoretical members of the bloc, with no confirmation one way or the other. Here they are:
14 Dems who have voted with Stupak so far (which might be coincidental)
Carney (PA-10)
Costello (IL-12)
Dahlkemper (PA-03)
Donnelly (IN-02)
Doyle (PA-14)
Driehaus (OH-01)
Ellsworth (IN-08)
Hill (IN-09)
Kanjorski (PA-12)
Kirkpatrick (AZ-01)
Lipinski (IL-03)
Mollohan (WV-01)
Oberstar (MN-08)
Rahall (WV-03)
Three other members accused of being in the bloc
Marcy Kaptur (OH-09)
Solomon Ortiz (TX-27)
Charlie Wilson (OH-06)
Given that is only 17 possible names, why don't we just call up these offices and ask something akin to the following question:
Is Representative [insert name here] insisting that language akin to the Stupak amendment be passed as a precondition for considering support of the health reform bill?
Or something like that. It is only seventeen names, so it should be something that even a small news organization can pull off. Further, the nature of the issue means that even an equivocation from these Congressional offices is actually a "no," making this a particularly easy bit of news gathering. Either they are demanding the Stupak amendment as a precondition for considering the bill, or they aren't. There is no "maybe" on this one.
The number for the Congressional switchboard is 1-866-220-0044. I don't see any reason why we can't get all seventeen of these members on record today. People deserve to know who the members of the Stupak bloc actually are.
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