01/21/10

from Patriot Room

It's over: Pelosi admits she doesn't have the votes

by: Bill Dupray posted: 2010-01-21 12:35:00

And just like that, two days after the historic victory of Scott Brown, who was elected largely on his explicit promise to defeat Obamacare, the legislation is dead.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that the Senate will have to amend its version of a health-care reform bill before her chamber can pass it.


"I don't think it's possible to pass the Senate bill in the House," Pelosi told reporters after a morning meeting with her caucus. "I don't see the votes for it at this time."


And for those who dismiss the Massachusetts election as a fluke or aberration, it has proven to be perhaps the most significant single Senate election in American history and the straw that broke the camel's back.

Republican Scott Brown's victory Tuesday in a Senate special election in Massachusetts blindsided Obama and Democratic leaders, who had nearly reached the finish line on an ambitious overhaul of the nation's health-care system and were beginning to turn their attention to other challenges, namely creating jobs and lowering the deficit.


The loss of their Senate supermajority has required a frantic reassessment of their strategy. Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) have pledged to complete work on the massive bill they started nearly a year ago, but they have yet to identify a clear way forward that will appeal broadly to their rank-and-file.


They were blindsided? Really? They had no clue about the anger brewing in the country over this issue? Health care has been the only real legislation on the table since the stimulus bill one year ago. Saying they were blindsided is a little generous. It is more like they were busted.

So is it really dead? Does this sound like it will pass any time soon?

Reid, meanwhile, struck a more cautious note. "We're not going to rush into anything," he told reporters after a Senate Democratic lunch. "Remember, the bill we passed in the Senate is good for a year. There are many different things that we can do to move forward on health care, but we're not making any of those decisions now."

Keep in mind that no politician on either side ever comes right out and says "we were defeated, the legislation is dead." These bills are simply pulled and the proponents say they will keep working on it. When you hear that, you know it is dead. And that is what we heard.

For Obamacare opponents, there simply is no bigger victory than this. Opponents believe the bill was anathema to the very idea of what it means to be American. It was a European Socialist model of rationing, long waiting lines, more expensive care, and worst of all, a denial of the individual freedom for people to make health care decisions, literally matters of life and death, for themselves.

Proponents will be disappointed, but surely there are many bipartisan, incremental fixes that can be made such as allowing sales of insurance across state lines, making individual insurance premiums, not just employer-provided plans, deductible, allowing tax credits for doctors who see patients for free, and tort reform. These are a good start. You can try them out, and see how they work. Keep the good ones, toss the bad ones, and keep going. But to try to federalize 1/6 of the economy and have government control the health decisions of every American, was too much of an overreach. Democrats govern a Republic. Tuesday they finally seem to have learned what that four word sentence really means.