House Democrats just narrowly passed their health care
legislation, by a margin of 220 to 215, with 39 Democrats voting
against it, and just one Republican -- Louisiana's Joseph Cao --
voting in favor. Obviously, this is an historic victory for
Democrats as it's the first time that a health care bill of this
magnitude has made it this far. Passing it in the House gives it
momentum going into the Senate. And also, in a larger sense,
Democrats have proven once again that no matter how messy the
daily grind may look, they've eventually been able to use their
overwhelming majority to keep moving the health care ball down
field.
With that said, tonight's victory of a mere five votes, came at a
tremendous cost for the House leadership and may eventually help
doom the entire effort. In order to get over the top, Democrats
had to agree to pass an amendment that would bar taxpayer funding
for abortion. The measure is strongly opposed by pro-choicers,
and Planned Parenthood has
vowed to fight it. While pro-choice Democrats voted for the
bill tonight to keep the process moving forward, they did so
under the assumption that they could strip it from the bill once
the House goes into negotiations with the Senate. If the measure
gets stripped, suddenly there's a risk of pro-life Democrats
dropping their support of the final bill. And considering that
the measure only passed by five votes, Nancy Pelosi cannot afford
to shed more than a handful of members. Also keep in mind that
because 64 Democrats voted in favor of the Stupak anti-abortion
amendment, it means that should it get stripped from the bill,
Republicans will be on firm ground arguing that the remaining
legislation allows taxpayer funding for abortion. Yet if Pelosi
maintains the pro-life language, it's hard to see how staunch
pro-choicers support the final bill, and suddenly you could see
defections of liberals.
And of course, all of this assumes that some sort of bill passes
the Senate. Yet if it was this heavy of a lift in the House --
where it's supposed to be easy for the majority party to ram
things through -- it suddenly looks like a daunting task to get
to 60 votes in the Senate. So, clearly, this was a step forward
for Democrats. But tonight's victory could prove Pyrrhic.
