Harry Reid Promises Democrats Will Push Through Pro-Abortion Health Care Bill
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
February 21, 2010
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — In a new interview, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid promised Democrats will attempt to railroad the pro-abortion health care bill through Congress. He promised Democrats will employ the controversial reconciliation process to push through the bill on a majority vote denying a filibuster.
Although Americans continue to strongly oppose the government-run health care bill that contains massive abortion funding and other pro-abortion problems, that isn’t serving as a deterrent.
Reid said during an appearance Friday evening on "Face to Face with Jon Ralston" in Nevada that the vote on the bill will come within the next two months.
"I’ve had many conversations this week with the president, his chief of staff, and Speaker Pelosi," he said. "And we’re really trying to move forward on this."
"We’ll do a relatively small bill to take care of what we’ve already done," Reid said, "We’re going to have that done in the next 60 days."
Under the reconciliation process, the House would approve the Senate bill and the House and Senate would both approve a second bill that makes changes to the Senate legislation to make it more palatable for House Democrats to support. However, those changes will not include stopping abortion funding or the promotion of abortion in other ways.
The decision essentially allows Democrats to pass the pro-abortion health care bill on their own without any Republican support.
That is especially the case after Massachusetts voters elected Scott Brown, in large part because he represented the 41st vote to support a filibuster and stop the government-run bill from moving forward.
The question now is whether both chambers will be able to get the votes they need to ram the pro-abortion health care bill through the House and Senate.
A top Democratic Senate aide told the New York Times that even getting 51 votes may be difficult.
“If we took a vote now, we would not have 51 votes for that approach,” the aide said. “The president would have to do a major sales job. He is the only person who has the political capital to do it. But his focusing on health care means that our efforts to focus on jobs are likely to be drowned out.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said today that he thinks Democrats will join Republicans in opposing the reconciliation tactic but he’s not sure if enough will abandon the pro-abortion leadership.
"There’ll be a lot of Democrats who will vote against it," McConnell said on Fox news Sunday. "Whether there will be 11 Democrats who will vote against it [in the Senate] is not clear."
"The only thing bipartisan about it would be the opposition to this, because a number of Democrats have said don’t do this, this is not the way to go," McConnell said.
Some Democratic senators have said in the past they would oppose reconciliation, but whether they will do so when the vote comes is another question.
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