Brava, Madame Speaker. The AP just reported that Bart Stupak's 15 minutes are up: there will be no more negotiation with Stupak or any other anti-choice Democrats.
I guess it takes a woman to have some serious balls in this Congress:
House Democratic leaders abandoned a long struggle to strike a compromise on abortion in their ranks, gambling Thursday that they can secure the support for President Barack Obama's sweeping health care legislation with showdown votes looming as early as next week.
In doing so, they are all but counting out a small but potentially decisive group whose views on abortion coverage have become the principal hang-up for Democrats fighting to achieve the biggest change in American health care in generations. Congressional leaders are hoping they can find enough support from other wavering Democrats to pass legislation that only cleared the House by five votes in an earlier incarnation.
I think this is the right play. I predict that there will be few defections.
Credit should also go to Pelosi for getting Henry Waxman to talk to the Stupak folks. He promptly realized that these guys are bullshitting and so he is splitting them off from Stupak's bloc:
One of the toughest hurdles facing Pelosi involves abortion. Some anti-abortion Democrats say the Senate language is not sufficiently airtight to prevent taxpayer dollars from mingling with money that might be used to subsidize abortions.
Others disagree, and party leaders acknowledged Thursday they can't resolve the dispute using budget reconciliation rules. Instead they hope that only a few House Democrats who voted for the health care package in November will now switch to "no" because of the abortion issue. Party leaders think they can offset those defections by persuading some of the 39 House Democrats who voted "no" last year to switch to "yes."
Many House Democrats who oppose legalized abortion "are either satisfied enough with the Senate provision, or they decide that that's as much as they're going to get and they don't want to defeat health care," said Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Here we go folks...we're in the last stage. Up or down vote, here we come!
If she can pull this off, she'll be one of the greatest Speakers ever, along with Sam Rayburn.