As I predicted sunday, it appears clear that HCR will pass. Or, at least, the House leadership feels comfortable in their ability to pass the bill:
In private, the chatter surrounding health care seems much closer to Hoyer's calmness than to Weiner's concern. One top Democrat said it would be a moderately simple sell to get the House to pass the Senate's bill, provided the assurances were there to change it down the road.
"The pieces that need to be fixed -- the affordability and Cadillac tax -- are all budget issues, which you can do in reconciliation," the official said.
In a related bit of good news, it appears that the House progressives could be coddled into supporting the bill. Of course Weiner argues this could not be the case, but of course the plan would not be to pass the Senate bill alone:
Added, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), during an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Tuesday: "I think you could make a good argument that health care might be dead," said the New York Democrat. "Because, look... I think it's going to be very hard to ask us in the House to take the Senate bill when everyone acknowledges it was a worse bill."
Of course, the always quote-happy Raul Grijalva weighed in as well. However, he was surprisingly supportive of the emerging "Plan B", but only if the President made him an ironclad guarantee:
There are, of course, ways to win these lawmakers over. Grijalva himself, hinted that a direct assurance from the president that he will push for changes to health care legislation immediately after it is passed into law (through the use of reconciliation) would go a long way to alleviate his concerns.
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"It has to be from the White House and it has to be verbally and publicly from the president, saying that we will go along with the understanding that other things we want will be tackled independently and immediately," he explained.
Moreover, not every progressive lawmaker is opposed to the possibility that they might have to pass the Senate's bill.
"The speaker's been very clear and has been very determined that there actually will be a bill," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) in an interview with the Huffington Post. "I don't know where it's going to come out, but I think that we will have a bill. We weren't that far apart at the end of last week... I think there will be a bill and I think it could be a pretty good bill."
This is very good news. Of course it appears entirely possible that Coakley could pull this thing out given high turnout in Boston and other areas, but I wanted to contrast the public panic with the private confidence of many Dems that the bill would pass.