The myth of inevitability

As Congressman Paul Ryan noted on Fox News a few days ago, part of the Democrats’ strategy to pass health care “reform” is to overstate the number of votes they have, trying to particularly pressure freshman and sophomore congressmen to be “on the right side of history.”

I had an interesting conversation with Human Events reporter Connie Hair — she of the endless energy and commitment to her conservative principles — in which she made a few key points:

First, she told me that the Democrats reached out to Joseph Cao (R-LA), the only Republican to vote for the first House health care bill.  Cao has switched to “no” and they’re trying to get him back.  As Connie noted, “they wouldn’t be trying to get the Republican if they had enough Democrats.”

Second, there is pressure on Democrat congressmen from their governors, including from Democrat governors (click HERE to see letter from the Democrat governor of Tennessee to no-turned-yes Congressman Bart Gordon), who know that the health care “reform” bill will bankrupt financially-teetering states because of the mandates from Medicaid expansion.  This is the particular issue which was the subject of the Cornhusker Kickback. The Democrats’ proposed solution is to get rid of that payoff and give the same payoff to every state, essentially a massive expansion of the very entitlement that is bankrupting the federal government.

Third, it is all but impossible that the House’s reconciliation package will pass the Senate unaltered.  And if it gets altered by as much as a comma, it has to go back to the House where Democrats will have to “walk the plank again.”

Keep in mind that the Senate Parliamentarian has ruled that reconciliation in any form can only proceed after the Senate bill has been signed into law.  According to Connie, that ruling means that the House cannot make their approval of the bill conditional on the Senate’s agreeing to the House’s reconciliation package.  Therefore, if the House passes the bill we are very likely to see weeks or months of limbo during which the Senate bill is technically law but the reconciliation package is sent back and forth between the Senate and the House, with Senate Republicans using every procedural tool available to them to block it.

Connie also noted that Mark Levin is planning a constitutional challenge to anything that passes the House under the Slaughter Rule and that there is a good chance the DC Circuit would put a stay on the implementation of the Senate bill until they can hear and rule on the case.  And there’s a good chance that the Supreme Court hears the case.

In the meantime, especially if Republicans take back control of either chamber of Congress, the GOP can work to make sure that the plan is essentially defunded until it can be repealed under a Republican president in 2012.

As Fred Barnes recently noted, if the House passes health care “reform”, it means we’re closer to the beginning than the end of the political chaos around the issue.

Back to the myth of inevitability, the blog Firedoglake.com is one of few on the left not buying into Pelosi’s claims that she has or will imminently have the votes.  That site still thinks the Dems are down about 7 votes.

Finally, almost nobody is reporting that while there have been some “no” votes switching to “yes”, there have also been “yes” votes switching to no. In fact, Fox’s Carl Cameron reported midday on Friday that 6 yes votes have switched to no, with only 4 no switching to yes. This is, as Connie says, “the big unreported story of the past few days.”  And that’s just how Pelosi wants it.