Greg Sargent's Plumline: Pelosi Signals Momentum for Passing Senate Bill with Fix

[flpoljunkie]

This got a bit lost in the noise yesterday, because of the excitement in the runup to Obama’s speech and also because of some inaccurate reporting, but it’s important: Yesterday Nancy Pelosi strongly suggested there’s real momentum behind passing the Senate bill in the House with a reconciliation fix.

Pelosi met with a group of columnists yesterday and talked about the bill, and initial reports wrongly said she had flatly predicted she had the votes for that approach. Then Pelosi’s office disputed that interpretation, and everybody more or less forgot about her comments.

But what she actually said is worth a look. A transcript is right here. Here’s the key bit, in which she addresses the likelihood of passing the bill if the Senate agrees to pass fixes to the bill via reconciliation, or what she calls “constitutional majority rule,” making the bill more palatable to House members:

“If there is a willingness for us to pursue with the constitutional majority rule, then I think we’ll be able to come up with something that sufficiently addresses the concerns of House Members of the policy in the Senate bill. All of this was agreed to, say a week and a half ago, and we’re pretty confident about going on a positive course there, because the changes were I think very important and we could make a case for them.

Pelosi is saying that this idea is only a week and a half old, and that leaders are now “pretty confident” that they can, in fact, get the House to pass a bill if it’s fixed. Indeed, she added that reconciliation could do “cleanup” to the Senate measure in order to “make a bill that our Members can support.”

Also note her claim that this can be done as long as “there is a willingness” to go forward with reconciliation. Translation: Over to you, Senate.

Pelosi has made positive noises like this before, but this seems like another step forward. She’s holding a presser this morning, and will hopefully offer more along these lines. More soon.

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/health-care/pelosi-signals-momentum-for-passing-senate-bill-with-fix/

[DarthDem]

1. Great Stuff

Pelosi is really working this angle well. Time to get the attention of Schumer, Durbin, Feingold, Boxer, Brown, Sanders, etc. - - not just Reid.

[WI_DEM]

2. Just get it done.

[dkf]

3. If they can't get a public option I say no go.

[Clio the Leo]

4. Only problem is that the ball's back in the Senate's court....

... to pass a recon. bill the House can live with.

(You can always tell where the ball is .... it's on the side of the Capitol that's doing the LEAST amount of talking about the matter lol)