Advice to House: Don't Take Any Obama Wooden Nickels

Is the health care vote mathematical after all? That question was a reference to a scene in the 1993 film Gettysburg and was intended to mean: is the bill doomed because it just can't get the votes in the House? But of course the vote is mathematical in any case, because it's a matter of counting.

So over at RealClearPolitics, horse race analyst Jay Cost gives an overview of the numbers, and they don't look too favorable to Obamacare. There look to be more "yes" votes that are likely to be switched to "no" than the other way around.

And the House leadership hasn't exactly been making friends and influencing people. A Democratic congressman who resigned because of illness—and because of a minor scandal that has been talked up by House leaders—has been out on talk shows taking swipes at the leadership, claiming that they pushed him out of office because he was a "no" vote on health care.

Oh yes, and if the bill does go through the House, the Senate is making plans to use "reconciliation," not just to push through some changes to the bill that are demanded by the House, but to sneak through a federal takeover of student loans. So we will be dependent on government for both our health care and our children's educations.

But we probably won't even get to reconciliation. Everyone has figured out that the big controversy over using reconciliation in the Senate—basically, bypassing the filibuster—is a ruse. It's a fake drama, because the first step toward reconciliation is for the House to pass the Senate version of the health care bill as is. But that's not a first step. It's the only step that's needed, at which point the bill can be signed into law whether or not the Senate makes any further changes.

As the Wall Street Journal's John Fund points out, this requires a leap of faith on the part of House Democrats—faith that once they've stuck their necks out by voting for a Senate bill with gaudy bribes and unpopular provisions, the Senate will be willing and able to pass the "fixes" requested by the House. But nobody has confidence that the Senate can do this, and absolutely nobody has confidence that Barack Obama will stick up for them and make sure the Senate keeps its end of the bargain.

"Advice to House: Don't Take Any Obama Wooden Nickels," John Fund, Wall Street Journal, March 5

Nancy Pelosi is trying to shoo House Democrats into voting for the Senate health care bill, but members are more worried than ever that the Senate won't then implement the necessary changes through the reconciliation process to make the final bill acceptable….

President Obama may wind up just signing the Senate bill into law no changes whatsoever—preserving some of the most egregious elements that made the Senate bill such a public lightning rod.

These include not just the "Cornhusker Kickback," "Louisiana Purchase" and other special-interest deals rolled into the Senate bill last December to buy wavering Democratic votes. Democrats also would have to explain all over again why 800,000 seniors in Florida will be spared Medicare Advantage cuts, while those elsewhere won't.

Senator Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, says Mr. Obama is asking House Democrats "to hold hands, drop off a cliff and hope [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid catches them. And Harry Reid will have no incentive to catch them because by the time he gets to the reconciliation bill, the president will have already signed the health care bill into law."



Robert Tracinski writes daily commentary at TIADaily.com. He is the editor of "The Intellectual Activist (TIA)" and contributor to "The Freedom Fighter's Journal."