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Posts Tagged ‘Dramatic Statement’

Key Democratic House Member Stupak on Obama’s Health Plan: “Unacceptable” – UPDATED 2X

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Michigan Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak today rejects the Obama Plan, calling it "unacceptable"

In a dramatic statement this morning reported exclusively by Ben Smith at Politico, Democratic House Rep. Bart Stupak rejected yesterday’s 11 page Obama Plan as “unacceptable”:

I was pleased to see that President Obama’s health care proposal did not include several of the sweetheart deals provided to select states in the Senate bill. Unfortunately, the President’s proposal encompasses the Senate language allowing public funding of abortion. The Senate language is a significant departure from current law and is unacceptable. While the President has laid out a health care proposal that brings us closer to resolving our differences, there is still work to be done before Congress can pass comprehensive health care reform.

While most of the media’s focus in the past few days has been on whether Obama and Harry Reid can find 50 Democratic Senators (with VP Biden as tiebreaking vote) to push Obamacare through the Senate using reconciliation, little ink has been spilled regarding whether Speaker Nancy Pelosi can again find 218 Democratic votes for Obamacare. It may be that the more difficult task will be finding the 218 House votes, and Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak’s “unacceptable” comment this morning brings that difficulty into focus. Dick Morris recently wrote about the coming battle to find 218 votes in the House:

We don’t believe that there is any chance of stopping Obama’s renewed push for his horrible health care changes in the Senate. Harry Reid is going to use the reconciliation procedure to jam it through with 51 votes — and he will get them. All the hype about how difficult it will be is to distract us from the real battle which will come in the House.

There, where every member faces re-election, it will be a lot harder for Pelosi to round up the vote she needs. Last time she passed health care by 220-215. This time, a lot of the Democrats who voted for health care are going to be so worried about re-election that they might be induced to jump ship.

Stupak previously led the fight to conform the prior House version of Obamacare to existing law regarding federal funding of abortion and succeeded in forcing through an amendment in the House with tough language disallowing any federal funding of abortion through Obamacare. The Senate bill has much more permissive language regarding such federal abortion funding, and Stupak’s “unacceptable” statement this morning highlights the importance of the abortion policy in Obamacare and could be a sign that the House of Representatives will not pass the Obama Plan without the insertion of Stupak’s prior restrictive language.  The key question in days and weeks to come is whether liberal Democratic House members will buckle under and support the restrictive abortion language Stupak is advocating or risk the defeat of Obamacare in the House of Representatives.

UPDATE: Hotair links to an interesting analysis by Philip Klein on the issue of House passage of Obama’s Health Plan:

Of the 39 Democrats who voted against the House health care bill [in November], 31 of them were elected in districts that went for John McCain in 2008, according to a TAS analysis. One of the Democratic “no” votes, Rep. Parker Griffith of Alabama, has subsequently switched parties. Given that a Republican who campaigned on being a vote against the health care bill was just elected to fill the Senate seat once held by Ted Kennedy in a state that went for Obama by 26 points, it’s hard to see why anybody in a McCain district who already voted “no” would decide switch their vote to “yes.”

While Obama won the districts of the remaining eight “no” votes, in six cases, he won by only single digits, making them potentially competitive races this time around. And a closer look at several members who represent these areas are not very encouraging to proponents of Obamacare…

The biggest problem she faces is that President Obama’s proposal maintains the abortion provision in the Senate bill, rejecting Rep. Bart Stupak’s more restrictive language. When the bill passed the House the first time around, 41 Democrats voted for the health care bill only after voting for the Stupak amendment. Any of them could explain switching to a “no” vote on a final bill by citing abortion funding. Stupak himself has said there are at least 10 to 12 Democrats who voted for the bill the first time who would vote against it if it didn’t include his amendment (he reiterated Tuesday morning that the Senate abortion language adopted by Obama was still “unacceptable”). One of his co-sponsors, Rep. Brad Ellsworth, said at the time that he was only able to vote for the bill after the Stupak language was adopted, and he’s now running for Senate in Indiana, where a Rasmussen poll taken last month shows voters oppose the health care legislation by a 23-point margin.

UPDATE #2: CBS News reports on Stupak’s statement calling the Obama Health Plan “unacceptable” and notes Politico’s reporting that Obama and the Democrats do not have the votes to pass Obamacare now.

Michigan Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak, who opposes abortion rights, has released a statement saying the White House health care reform plan is “unacceptable” because it “encompasses the Senate language allowing public funding of abortion.”….

The House health care bill would likely not have passed without the Stupak amendment, which attracted the support of 64 Democrats when it came up for vote.

While the Senate and White House plan bans direct funding of abortions, it allows subsidized individuals to pay for covered abortion services with personal funds.

Meanwhile, according to Politico’s Mike Allen, there are currently not enough votes in the House or Senate to pass a health care reform bill.

“Moderate and endangered lawmakers want the spotlight off comprehensive health reform,” he writes. “Instead, it’s about to take center stage.”

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