House Democratic leaders still do not have enough votes to pass health care reform, the chamber’s top vote counter said Sunday, even though the administration is aiming to have the bill passed this week.
The reality check came from Rep. James Clyburn, the House Democratic whip.
“No, we don’t have them as of this morning, but we’ve been working this thing all weekend,” Clyburn, D-S.C., said.
But despite the challenge of corralling wavering Democrats, Clyburn joined with other Democratic officials in saying he was confident the measure would pass, echoing comments from Speaker Nancy Pelosi Saturday.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the healthcare bill will pass by next weekend.
“We’ll have the votes when the House votes, I think, within the next week,” Gibbs said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Gibbs added that those on next week’s Sunday talk shows “will be talking about healthcare not as a presidential proposal but I think as the law of the land.”
President Barack Obama will look to campaign on the new healthcare law in midterm elections, Gibbs said.
The Washington Examiner reports that House Democrats appear poised to adopt a rule that would pass the Senate health care bill without actually voting on it.
Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) is preparing to pass the health care overhaul through the House of Representatives without a vote, as was originally reported by the National Journal’s Congress Daily. Mark Tapscott observes that such a maneuver would be the penultimate refutation of the people’s will.
In the Slaughter Solution, the rule would declare that the House “deems” the Senate version of Obamacare to have been passed by the House. House members would still have to vote on whether to accept the rule, but they would then be able to say they only voted for a rule, not for the bill itself.
The White House is backing down from efforts to drop “sweetheart” deals poisoning health care legislation as House Budget Committee Democrats meet Monday to craft a “fix-it” bill that does not yet have a price tag.
In a new take on its policy, White House top strategist David Axelrod said President Obama only objects to state-specific arrangements, such as an increase in Medicaid funding for Nebraska, ridiculed as the “cornhusker kickback.”
But instead of dropping them, the concept behind those deals could be widened so that all states benefit.
The House of Representatives Budget Committee on Monday will consider a reconciliation bill that Democrats hope clears the way for final congressional approval of an overhaul of U.S. healthcare, House Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer said on Friday.
Representative Jim Clyburn, a member of the House Democratic leadership, said he hopes a vote by the full chamber could be held on the measure within the next 10 days.
From Pelosi’s remarks at the 2010 Legislative Conference for National Association of Counties,
You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. But I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket. Prevention, prevention, prevention—it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting. But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy
Rep. Sander Levin has been tapped to fill Charlie Rangel’s post as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee after Democratic lawmakers had second thoughts about elevating Rep. Pete Stark, who was technically next in line to the seat.
Levin, a Michigan Democrat, was talked about as a potential replacement Wednesday shortly after Rangel announced he would step down amid a wide-ranging ethics probe. But then Stark, of California, the next most-senior member to Rangel on the panel, emerged as the favored candidate.
This decision, however, had many Democrats fretting, since Stark was seen by some as too volatile to lead such an important committee. His racially, sexually and politically charged remarks have gotten him in trouble in the past.
President Barack Obama urged Congress Wednesday to vote “up or down” on sweeping health care legislation in the next few weeks, endorsing a plan that denies Senate Republicans the right to kill the bill by stalling with a filibuster.
“I don’t see how another year of negotiations would help. Moreover, the insurance companies aren’t starting over,” Obama said, rejecting Republican calls to begin anew on an effort to remake the health care system.
The president made his appeal as Democratic leaders in Congress surveyed their rank and file for the votes needed to pass legislation by majority vote—invoking rules that deny Senate Republicans the right to block it through endless stalling debate. Obama specifically endorsed that approach.
On the floor of the Senate, Republican Jim Bunning of Kentucky just defended the position he’s taken that has delayed an extension of jobless benefits for the nation’s unemployed and has forced the furlough of about 2,000 federal workers.
Saying that he has blocked votes on the legislation to underscore his opposition to the ongoing growth in federal debt, Bunning read a letter from “Robert in Louisville,” who told the senator that even though he hasn’t been working regularly in the past two years he supports what Bunning is doing.
“This country is sooner or later going to implode because of the massive amount of debt run up over the past 40 or 50 years,” Robert wrote, according to Bunning.
Rep. Charlie Rangel’s admonishment for violating House gift rules “is not good,” but his actions did not put the nation at risk in any material way, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday.
Pelosi said it is not her place to interfere in any investigations of the matter and said she would not get involved politically.
“But the fact is, is that what Mr. Rangel has been admonished for is not good,” she said on ABC’s “This Week.” “It was a violation of the rules of the House. It was not a–something that jeopardized our country in any way.”
