From National Journal and Huffington Post:
Offering Democrats a potential means to revive their top domestic priority, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi flatly predicted Wednesday afternoon that she could muster enough votes to pass the Senate version of health care reform if the upper chamber agreed to adjust the bill through the reconciliation process.
Speaking to columnists just hours before President Obama's first State of the Union Address, Pelosi said that if the Senate used the reconciliation process to revise elements of the legislation unacceptable to her members, the House could approve such a two-track approach. "What I'm saying to you is the Senate bill, stand-alone, I don't see any chance of it [passing the House]," she said. "Reconciliation resolving some of the issues: then we can pass this thing."
This is very good news.
There have been a few articles today that have focused on her endorsing the two-track approach, but her comments seemed little more than an endorsement.
From what I've seen, tonight is the first time she's gone on record as saying she has the votes in the House. There must've been some very good discussions in the House before the SOTU this evening.
Pelosi said it would not matter whether the House or Senate begins the reconciliation process, but maintained that both chambers would need to approve the package of adjustments before the House would consider the underlying Senate bill. "Whatever the order is, the whole thing has to be finished, reconciliation, House and Senate, before we take up the Senate bill," she said.
As I'm in the middle of a freelance deadline, I'll simply leave you with the rest of the article and humbly apologize for the briefness of my editorial on it.
The idea of a two-track approach revolving around reconciliation has drawn increasing attention in Democratic circles since Republican Scott Brown's upset victory in the Massachusetts Senate race reduced the party's majority to 59, one vote short of the number needed to break a Republican filibuster.
Under Pelosi's scenario, the House would pass the Senate-approved version of the bill and both chambers would adjust elements of the legislation through the reconciliation process, which cannot be filibustered. A coalition of liberal groups endorsed that approach at a press conference a few hours before Pelosi's comments.
Earlier this week, several moderate Senate Democrats expressed concerns about using the reconciliation process to advance the health care bill. And in the wake of her remarks this afternoon, one senior Senate Democratic aide cautioned that significant policy differences remained between the two chambers even if they can agree on a strategy for the process of completing the bill. "Did she tell you that the fixes that she wants in the reconciliation bill could cost 300 billion?" the aide said.
But Pelosi argued that moving the overhaul would be an appropriate use of the tool. "Reconciliation rules," she said, were "established for this purpose. It's the regular order for when you are doing a budget bill that has these ramifications.... Sixty votes for a Mother's Day resolution and everything else in between is not the regular order -- that's an obstruction. This is the kind of legislative event that reconciliation was established for."
Pelosi identified several key changes that she said must be made in the Senate bill through the reconciliation process to win support for the overall package in the House. These included eliminating the favored treatment in the expansion of Medicaid that Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., won for his home state during the final stages of the Senate negotiation; providing greater affordability for people who would be required to purchase insurance under the bills' individual mandate; and structuring the new insurance exchanges, or marketplaces, that would be created under the bill. (The House created a national insurance exchange, while the Senate left the exchanges to the states.)
Pelosi seemed most insistent on adjusting the so-called "Cadillac tax" on high-value insurance plans included in the Senate bill. That measure has been a priority of the White House, which views it as a cornerstone of its efforts to control the long-term growth in health care spending. Just before Brown's victory in Massachusetts, the White House reached an agreement with organized labor to narrow the tax's application, which labor leaders argue would hit too many of their members. Pelosi described that agreement as "a good start" in revisiting the tax, but added "there are those who would like to go further than that." Indeed, at another point in the interview, she declared, "The easiest thing is to just get rid of the whole excise tax."
Asked about the role of abortion in a final resolution of the two chambers' differences, Pelosi said, "Let's just say that's not the subject of our conversations at his time. Right now, we're talking about affordability for the middle class, fairness for the states and how they help people have access to health care, those kinds of issues, how this is paid for. If we hear back from the Senate that they can't get 51 votes, there's no use having all these discussions. The sequencing is, 'what can they do, and is that something that works for us?' They know what we need."
Actually, they just need 50 - plus Biden, of course, who is a given.
So on the one hand, it's wonderful news that she can get the votes. It's great news that the reconciliation idea seems as if its been, or is close to being, firmly rooted in the House as the way forward. As most of the changes she mentions (including the Nelson deal) were negotiated and all but agreed upon between the two chambers prior to losing the 60th seat, it's not as if negotiations on these changes are starting from scratch.
This won't be easy, but with Pelosi's confidence in getting the votes, I have a feeling that after the president's SOTU this evening, they're going to have a second wind and are going to get this thing done - maybe not next week - but soon.
If Reid loses more than 10 votes, none of this will matter, of course. But I'm more confident that comprehensive Health Care Reform will pass after reading this tonight and hearing the SOTU than I was before.
It's going to happen.
STAY ON YOUR SENATOR. Now is the time.
UNRELATED SIDE NOTE: From HuffPost:
A Democratic strategist quite pleased with the chilly Republican reception emailed the Huffington Post the following: "Footage of every Republican sitting when Obama talked about bank tax is going straight into every 2010 ad."