Pelosi, House Democrats Afraid To Pass Senate Bill As Is

Nancy Pelosi: "I Don't See The Votes"



As top Democrats cast about for a way to get health care reform back on track, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took one option off the table Thursday, saying her caucus doesn't have the stomach to pass the Senate bill unless changes are made.

"In its present form, without any change, I don't think it's possible to pass the Senate bill in the House," Pelosi said. "I don't see the votes for it at this time."

The White House and Senate Democrats had hoped the House could simply approve the Senate's bill and send it to President Barack Obama's desk, easily the quickest option available to the Democrats. But Pelosi's remarks remove that option from the mix of strategy and policy solutions party brass has considered to move forward in the health care fight.

"'Unease' would be a gentle word in terms of the attitude of my colleagues toward certain provisions of the Senate bill," Pelosi told reporters Thursday morning.

Pelosi’s remarks don’t preclude the possibility of the House passing a so-called “corrections” bill to fix parts of the Senate bill Pelosi’s members don’t like. Then the House would send the corrections bill to the Senate with a chance of melding the two pieces of legislation once the Senate has enacted the changes.

That’s one of two leading options for completing health reform now. The other — being floated by White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, sources say — is to pass a scaled-down bill that would focus on insurance reforms and some expansion of coverage. But neither has emerged as the most likely route to a final bill.

Also Thursday, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that congressional Democrats are weighing a quick pathway to passage because “I don’t think we want to do health care the next three months.”

“Obviously, you cannot just proceed as if nothing happened, because something very significant happened,” Schumer said referring to the party's defeat in the Massachusetts Senate special election. “There is a strong view in both caucuses that we want to do some good things in health care and the question is how — how much and how quickly.”

Asked whether he thought Democrats should simply move on from health care, Schumer was coy.

“I don’t think you can answer that question ‘yes’ or ‘no’,” Schumer said. “I think we need to do something on health care. The question is when and how much.”

But Pelosi foreclosed moving the Senate bill through the House absent some attempt to fix it, noting several provisions of the Senate bill that won’t fly in the House.

"There are certain things that members just cannot support," Pelosi said, citing the deal on Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson cut with Senate leaders and the White House to shield his state from future changes in Medicaid.

She added, "There's always been unrest in our caucus about the excise tax on so-called Cadillac benefits." That’s a tax on high-cost insurance policies that are held by many union members.

The White House and congressional leaders cut a deal with top union leaders last week to shield their members from the tax through 2017 — but that deal is not included in the Senate bill.

"We have to get a bill passed," Pelosi said. "We know that."

Earlier Thursday, Pelosi left a morning meeting with her caucus to meet with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to plot the path forward.

On Wednesday, President Barack Obama called for a quick consensus behind popular elements of the reform plan, even as sources insisted that the White House hasn’t fully gravitated to the stripped-down bill as the only path to saving reform.

“I would advise that we try to move quickly to coalesce around those elements of the package that people agree on,” Obama said in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “We know that we need insurance reform, that the health insurance companies are taking advantage of people. We know that we have to have some form of cost containment because if we don’t, then our budgets are going to blow up, and we know that small businesses are going to need help so that they can provide health insurance to their families.”


Sources: Politico, MSNBC, TPMTV, Youtube