This article is based on two articles, one posted at CNSNews.com today, and one posted at the Wall Street Journal today.
The CNS News story deals with Representative Bart Stupak, a Democrat from Michigan, making the statement that despite House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's claim that the healthcare reform bill passed by the Senate bans federal funding of abortion, it does not. Representative Stupak has publicly stated that he will not vote for the bill if it contains public funding of abortion. Senator Ben Nelson made the same statement, but was bought off; my feeling is that Represenative Stupak has stronger principles.
According the the CNS News article:
"The House reportedly would pass the Senate bill on the condition that the Senate uses the budget reconciliation process to pass changes the more liberal House wants. Under reconciliation, the Senate could pass health care reform with a simple majority, 51 votes, instead of the usual 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.
"Any abortion compromise would have to be included in a reconciliation package, a prospect that Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said may not even be possible. Conrad, who as Budget Committee chairman is an expert on reconciliation rules, said that abortion may not qualify for the special process normally reserved for budget bills."
The Wall Street Journal editorial speaks out strongly against using the reconciliation process:
"Yet this shortcut (reconciliation) has never been used for anything approaching the enormity of a national health-care entitlement. Democrats are only resorting to it now because their plan is in so much political trouble--within their own party, and even more among the general public--and because they've failed to make their case through persuasion."
If by parliamentary trickery, the Democrats pass the healthcare reform bill, they are going to have to deal with some serious problems in the area of public relations. This is a very unpopular bill. The taxes it calls for would start almost immediately, and the benefits would not start for three or four years. The Republicans can easily run on a 'repeal the healthcare reform bill' platform in November, and if they win, all of this bad public relations will have been for nothing.
The Wall Street Journal concludes:
"In other words, he's (President Obama) volunteering Democrats in Congress to march into the fixed bayonets so he can claim an LBJ-level legacy like the Great Society that will be nearly impossible to repeal. This would be an unprecedented act of partisan arrogance that would further mark Democrats as the party of liberal extremism. If they think political passions are bitter now, wait until they pass ObamaCare."
I agree. Hang on to your hats and make some popcorn, this may be quite a show!
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