House Members Say Senate’s Pro-Abortion Health Care Bill Won’t Get Support
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
January 19, 2010
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — If Scott Brown wins the special Senate election in Massachusetts today, the Senate likely no longer has 60 votes to stop the filibuster against the pro-abortion health care bill. One backup plan for Obama and Democrats is to have the House approve the Senate bill, but House members say that’s unlikely.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promises a government-run health care bill will receive approval.
“Certainly the dynamic will change depending on what happens in Massachusetts,” Pelosi told reporters yesterday. “Just the question of how we would proceed. But it doesn’t mean we won’t have a health care bill.”
“Let’s remove all doubt,” she added. “We will have health care one way or another.”
But Rep. Bart Stupak, the Michigan Democrat who added an amendment to the House bill to stop abortion funding and who leads a group of 10-12 Democrats who say they will switch from yes to no if the final version funds abortions, says the Senate bill is a nonstarter.
“House members will not vote for the Senate bill. There’s no interest in that," he told the New York Times. “Why would any House member vote for the Senate bill, which is loaded with special-interest provisions for certain states? That’s not health care.”
Meanwhile, on today’s “Morning Joe" program on MSNBC, pro-abortion Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York said he and other Democrats would have a “difficult time” voting for what he sees as an inferior Senate bill.
“I think you can make a pretty good argument that health care might be dead,” Weiner said if Brown wins.
He said “it’s going to be very hard” to ask liberal members of the House to vote for the Senate bill.
Conservative writer Ed Morrissey responded to Weiner’s comments.
"His ‘difficulties’ stem from the stripping of the Trojan-horse public option in the Senate and the Cadillac tax that penalizes union benefits along with so-called ‘fat-cat’ packages," he writes. "He, along with his progressive allies, want significant changes in the ObamaCare bill that they’re no longer likely to see, or to call a halt to the whole enterprise."
"Of course, other Democrats are likely to take other lessons from the debacle in Massachusetts," Morrissey added — saying enthusiasm for passing any health care bill might wane in response to a defeat in Massachusetts.
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