Tuesday, March 2, 2010 – CNN is reporting that our president is planning to release a new health care reform plan on Wednesday in order to pass a health care reform package according to the White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.
The plan promises to include a free yacht to every American as well a full month of paid vacation. Actually the plan is just a means of passing the current bill which involves a simple vote in Congress of yay or nay.
How did CNN determine this to be a plan in the first place is a better news article then the article itself.
The plan is to simply have the House of Representatives pass the existing Senate bill and then have Obama sign it. This has actually the plan all along, or rather since the Democrats lost Massachusetts. Once it gets to the President he would then put in a few changes and then have the new bill pass both the House and the Senate under reconciliation rules which only needs 51 votes.
For a while it was unclear whether the House or Senate would pass reconciliation first, but House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., cleared the matter up in a Feb. 28 appearance on CBS News’ Face the Nation. “The House will have to move first on some sort of corrections or reconciliation bill,” Hoyer said.
The only question that remains is if the House have the votes? Does the Senate have enough votes? Probably yes. But what about the House? Firstly remember the House’s original health reform was way more liberal then the Senate and included a public option. Why would the House now choose the Senate bill?
The original House health reform bill passed very narrowly, 220-215, and since then they have lost more votes to various things from retirement to seeking new office. Balanced against these yeas is one nay, Nathan Deal, R-Ga., who just resigned effective March 8 to run for governor. That narrows health reform’s victory margin from five votes to three (217-214). If President Obama is serious about acting within six weeks, then the final House vote will come before special elections to replace Wexler (April 13), Murtha (May 18), and Abercrombie (May 22), and probably before any elections to replace Deal, too (though no date has yet been set). Even if the Democrats wait till late May, there’s a pretty good chance the special elections will keep the victory margin at three votes (219-216), because Murtha’s district tilts slightly Republican; McCain eked out a narrow victory there in 2008. (The other seats are unlikely to change party, judging from the Cook Political Report’s partisan voting index.)
