Obama Citizenship

Abortion: The Unlikely Wrench in Healthcare

By Phil

While there have been three filibuster threats made so far regarding the “public option” aspect of healthcare legislation as the process moves to the Senate (Oops! Per TheHill, now Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont — like Lieberman, another Independent — is fighting for a stronger public option), abortion has now stepped up to become the current lightning rod on both sides of the political spectrum.

As OpenCongress explains:

The real news is the Stupak abortion amendment that was tacked onto the bill by conservative Democrats to block anyone using government subsidies to buy insurance from buying a plan that covers abortions, even if the abortion coverage is paid for completely with private premiums. Pro-choice activists are calling it a monumental setback for abortion access. …

The Stupak amendment?s best chance for inclusion in the Senate bill is for it to be added to the merged bill that will be brought to the floor by Senate Democratic leaders for debate. If it were presented as a floor amendment, it would be filibustered by the Democrats and would require 20 Democrats to break from their party and vote with the Republicans to get it passed. There almost certainly are not 20 Democrats in the Senate who support amendment. If it?s included in the underlying bill, it likely would not cause any liberal Democrats to vote ?no? on passing the whole bill. It didn?t lose any Democratic votes for the bill in the House.

Despite all the signs that the Stupak amendment will be included in the health care bills that pass both the Senate and the House bill, there are also signs that it could be stripped in the final blended bill. House chief deputy whip Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz [D, FL-20] said today that she was ?confident? it would be taken out by the conference committee. The final blended version that is produced by the conference committee will need to be approved once again by both the Senate and the House.

Here’s Ms. Wasserman-Schultz:

Oh, but it gets even more interesting. Via WhoRunsGov, 41 pro-choice Democrats have apparently signed on to a letter vowing to vote “no” on a bill that contains the amending language, enough votes to kill the legislation:

As Members of Congress we believe that women should have access to a full range of reproductive health care. Health care reform must not be misused as an opportunity to restrict women?s access to reproductive health services.

The Stupak-Pitts amendment to H.R. 3962, The Affordable Healthcare for America Act, represents an unprecedented and unacceptable restriction on women?s ability to access the full range of reproductive health services to which they are lawfully entitled. We will not vote for a conference report that contains language that restricts women?s right to choose any further than current law. [emphasis added; actual signatures still being garnered]

To top it off, HotAir.com reports that not only is the President hinting that the amendment will have to go, but Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards proclaims that she has “great faith in the leader [Speaker Pelosi]:”

However, as FrontloadingHQ reports, when push comes to shove, there may not be too many “passes” left out of the caucus to get the bill through without making a faction very disgruntled:

Knowing that it had the votes, the Democratic leadership allocated its passes to freshmen, those in Republican leaning districts or a combination of the two. Could the leadership have run up the score?* Sure, but it likely would have cost them. They’d either have to water the bill down now or likely watch as Democrats in close or Republican-leaning districts lose in 2010. As I see it, that’s not a winning strategy. If you’ve got — as a majority party — some votes to spare, you have some wiggle room and an opportunity to provide some cover for at most 40 of your more electorally vulnerable members. On a high salience issue like health care reform, why not use those passes?

Well, Pelosi, Hoyer and the others among the Democratic leadership did. But they didn’t use them all (by design, some have speculated — FHQ agrees). They only used 39 (and actually ended up having two to spare because of Joseph Cao’s late defection from the right side of the aisle). So sure, Democrats can be upset that they lost 39 votes, or they could be happy that the leadership didn’t have to use their full allotment of passes and gave cover to some of their members at the same time.

What’s wrong with that?

*Winning 218-217 is the same as winning 258-177: the bill passes. A wider margin would not have affected anything in the Senate. It would have been/will be close in the upper chamber regardless.

There is nothing wrong with this play at all, for the moment. However, I think we all know that the House is going to have to vote on the bill at least one more time, and anyone who knows anything about politics knows that “political capital” has to be collected before it can be spent.

So, if the Speaker has just spent the vast majority of her capital to get a basic vote out of the House, from whence will the next round of willingness come?

-Phil

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Photo courtesy OpenCongress

Full post as published by The Right Side of Life on November 09, 2009 (boomark / email).