How to Pass the Bill--Whatever Happens Tuesday Jonathan Cohn January 17, 2010 |

[dtotire]

How to Pass the Bill--Whatever Happens Tuesday

Jonathan Cohn
January 17, 2010 | 11:01

After a weekend of interviews with Democratic staff, officials, and operatives, I've come to the conclusion that health care reform is not dead even if Martha Coakley loses on Tuesday--unless, that is, the Democrats let it die.

On Friday, my colleague Jonathan Chait outlined the options if Scott Brown wins the special election in Massachusetts, giving the Republicans enough votes to sustain a filibuster. One would be to approach Olympia Snowe, the lone Republican who voted for health care reform when it was before the Senate Finance Committee and who, at one point, seemed interested in voting for it on the floor.

On paper, this is a perfectly viable option. While full details of the House-Senate compromise are not known, it’s likely the final bill will look a lot more like the Senate’s version than the House’s. And the Senate bill, in turn, looks a lot like the bill Snowe supported in Finance. But ever since that Finance vote, Snowe has grown increasingly disenchanted with health care reform. And after her vote against it on the floor, the Democratic leadership has become increasingly disenchanted with her.

Snowe's main complaint--that the process seemed rushed--makes no more sense to me now than it did when she first raised it. But whether I or anybody else thinks it makes sense is ultimately irrelevant. Clearly Snowe does. And that would make winning her over difficult.

Option number two would be to have both houses vote on the bill quickly, before Scott took his seat in the Senate, so that the man he’d be replacing--interim Senator Paul Kirk--could cast the 60th vote to break that Republican filibuster. It would require very quick scoring by the CBO, which seems possible. And Kirk has said he’d vote “yes,” whatever the outcome of Tuesday’s election.


More:
http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-treatment/what-do-if-coakley-loses-contd?utm_source=TNR+Daily&utm_campaign=051a43284f-TNR_Daily_011810&utm_medium=email

[lapfog_1]

1. This isn't about health care reform

or any other single piece of legislation.

The Dems are going to have to figure out how to pass a centrist / progressive agenda without 60 votes... and they should have done so before now. Otherwise, we simply repeat the fall of 2009 with the likes of Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman being the most important people in our government... the "olympia option" simply adds her to the list of extortionists.

[Mistwell]

2. Pass the senate version

I say just pass the Senate version. It's better than nothing.