Welcome Back: Deep Divisions, Internal Strife Mark Dems' Return to DC
Deep Divisions, Internal Strife Mark Dems’ Return to DC
House Democrats Learning Not to Ignore Voters’ Concerns the Hard Way
Nancy Pelosi Unequivocally States That She Has Votes to Institute Government Takeover of Healthcare:
“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said this morning at a news conference that she has the votes to pass health care reform. Here’s what she said exactly: ‘I think that we are moving closer. We are making progress and I have no question that we have the votes on the floor of the House to pass this legislation.’”(Carolyn Lochead, “If Pelosi had the votes there would be one,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 22, 2009)
Contrary to Their Own Claims, House Dems Remain Deeply Divided After a Month of Roasting from Concerned Constituents:
“After a nearly 40-day recess that was anything but restful, House Democrats are returning to work Tuesday still unsettled over pending health-care legislation and sure only that the people have had their say.
They are in almost the exact position they were in when they left the Capitol in late July. Conservatives are still leery of supporting a government-funded, or public, insurance option. Freshman lawmakers from suburban districts remain fearful of increasing taxes for their wealthy constituents to pay for the new measure and await alternatives from moderate Senate Democrats. And progressives, who are demanding the most far-reaching reform since the Great Depression, are still threatening to bring down the legislation if it does not contain a robust version of the public option.
In the lead-up to President Obama’s critical Wednesday night address to a joint session of Congress, interviews with a cross section of about 15 House Democrats and half a dozen aides show that there is still overwhelming support for some overhaul of the health-care system. But the caucus remains deeply divided over the details of the more than 1,000-page measure and now faces a public that is more skeptical than when House committees began drafting the plan two months ago.
‘We knew a lot of work still needed to be done, so no, not a lot has changed,’ said Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (S.D.), a leader of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of 52 Democrats from moderate-to-conservative districts.
House Democrats are the canaries in the coal mine for Obama’s most important domestic policy issue. As originally planned, the House was already to have passed its health-care legislation, with a far-reaching public option for insurance, based on Democratic votes, as Republicans have lined up in almost unanimous opposition to the House version. Despite their large majority, Democrats faced internal opposition in late July and agreed to delay the vote until late September at the behest of dozens of Blue Dogs and other Democrats worried about the public’s view of the legislation.
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But House Republicans, who held hundreds of their own town hall meetings that drew more than 100,000 voters, according to preliminary estimates, viewed the break as a galvanizing moment for opposition to the Democratic legislation. “I heard people saying, ‘Look, we need health-care reform. We need to do something to lower the cost of health insurance for families and small businesses and lower the cost of health care,’ ” said Rep. Mike Pence (Ind.), the third-ranking GOP leader. “But I also heard people say that they don’t want a government-run plan that is going to lead to a government takeover of health care.”
Clearly, the recess did not go as scripted for House Democrats.
As the 5 1/2 -week break began July 31, Democrats handed out seven-inch-long pocket cards for their members to carry like political shields. The cards listed popular parts of the legislation to be emphasized at town hall meetings, including banning insurance companies from denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions and prohibiting them from dropping or declining to renew coverage for people who become sick.
Instead, according to rank-and-file members from all corners of the caucus, lawmakers spent most of August rebutting misleading claims, such as the myth that the legislation would create federal “death panels” for elderly patients.
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Many Democrats do not want the House to act until they know what will happen in the Senate. That chamber has been stalled all summer as a bipartisan group of six senators on the Finance Committee has tried to reach a compromise that does not include a public option, costs much less than the $1.2 trillion House version and does not include a surtax on the wealthy.
If the Senate bill does not include a public option, many House Democrats will not want to vote for it in their version, because it would be unlikely to survive a House-Senate conference on the two measures.
The ultimate key to the legislation’s fate in the House may rest with the roughly 80 lawmakers elected in the past three years, when the political tide was running strongly in Democrats’ favor. Some come from rural districts and have joined the Blue Dog Coalition, but many are progressive in their approach to health-care reform, believing they were elected on a promise to offer change.
If enough of them can support the final legislation, leaders think they will be able to get a bill narrowly approved this fall and onto the president’s desk before Christmas.
“I think, if anything, the mood has changed to be more favorable to health-care reform,” said Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy (D-Ohio), who won her Columbus-based seat in 2008 by less than 1 percent of the vote.
“Personally, I’m probably more confident than when recess began,” added Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper (D-Pa.), another freshman. She held 18 town hall meetings in her northwestern Pennsylvania district, which stretches from Pittsburgh’s suburbs to Erie, and found that three-quarters of her constituents support some form of health-care overhaul.
“If I had just been listening to the media, I don’t think I would have been as confident,” she said. (Kane, Pershing, and Bacon Jr., “Deeply Divided House Democrats Return to Work — and the Same Set of Problems,” Washington Post, September 8, 2009)
To read the entire article, click here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/07/AR2009090701988_pf.html
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