The Washington Examiner posted an article on Friday suggesting that the House of Representatives may be as much as one hundred votes short of being able to pass the President's healthcare reform bill. The article points out that many Congressman in the House are frustrated at being asked to vote on unpopular bills that then die in the Senate.
The article points out:
The entire House of Representatives has to run for reelection every two years. Every House member is running in November. In 2008, the Democrat party specifically ran candidates in conservative districts who appeared to be conservative. Many of these candidates are now seeing their chances of reelection dwindle with each vote they are being asked to make on President Obama's controversial proposals. That is particularly frustrating when the bills they vote on do not get through the Senate. The feeling is that they have put their reelection in jeopary for no reason.""'Both ends of the Capitol -- the House and the Senate -- are starting to wonder if they're on their own,' the official continued. 'You have a lot of frustration there. And the White House's reaction to all of that seems to be, 'Run against Congress' -- which, as you can imagine, doesn't go over very well with House members. The White House reaction seems to be, 'Position ourselves against Congress.'""
Conventional wisdom is that the Democrats will try to pass the healthcare bill through the reconcilliation process--which would require only 51 votes in the Senate. There seems to be some real question as to whether or not the bill would pass in the House after that was done. There is a way to pass healthcare reform without the government taking over the whole healthcare industry, but President Obama does not seem to be willing to consider that idea.
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