Congress: The House passes its bill
Posted: Monday, November 09, 2009 9:14 AM by Mark Murray
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Congress
The House passed its version of health reform legislation, 220-215, on Saturday night at about 11:30 pm ET, after about 13 hours of debate.
"Don't look for the Senate to quickly follow the House on health care overhaul," the AP says. "A government health insurance plan included in the House bill is unacceptable to a few Democratic moderates who hold the balance of power in the Senate. They're locked in a battle with liberals, with the fate of President Barack Obama's signature issue at stake."
Video:
A panel discusses on "Meet the Press" whether the House passage of the health care bill gives the Senate momentum to pass its helath care legislation.The
AP also looks at the differences between the House and Senate bills.
"The [House] bill nearly failed when a deal with conservative Dems collapsed and Pelosi was forced to let them bring up an amendment to restrict abortion coverage," the
New York Daily News writes. "The move enraged liberals, but most agreed to stay onboard and Obama traveled to the House Saturday to seal the deal with a personal plea."
The
New York Times: “Five states go further than the [abortion] amendment to the health care overhaul. The five — Idaho, Kentucky, Missouri, North Dakota and Oklahoma — already bar private insurance plans from covering elective abortions. The federal employees’ health insurance plan and most state Medicaid programs also ban coverage of abortion, complying with a three-decade old ban on federal abortion financing. Seventeen state Medicaid programs, however, do cover the procedure, by using only state money.”
The Los Angeles Times notes how pragmatic Pelosi had to be to pass the health bill. “Pelosi is a San Francisco liberal who launched a series of fruitless efforts to cut off funding for the Iraq war after becoming speaker nearly three years ago. But long before making her home on the Left Coast, Pelosi was the attentive daughter of an old-school East Coast politician who made whatever deals it took to win. That upbringing proved crucial in the healthcare marathon. In the fight to get the legislation through the House, Pelosi's impulse to tilt at windmills disappeared and her pragmatic heritage came to the fore. That's what enabled Pelosi to build a majority, one compromise at a time, including the pivotal deal with antiabortion Democrats.”
The New York Times profiles Rep. Cao of Louisiana, who was the lone Republican to vote for the health-care legislation. “Mr. Cao, a freshman Republican from New Orleans and a Vietnamese-American representing a predominantly black district, was elected last year in an upset victory over Representative William J. Jefferson, a Democrat who was under indictment at the time and has since been convicted of federal corruption charges. ‘I have a constitutional duty to make the right decision for my district whether or not the decision was popular,’ Mr. Cao said in an interview Sunday on CNN.”
The Boston Globe looks at Joe Lieberman's role in the debate: "Lieberman’s mercurial ideology has amused, confounded, and frustrated Democrats for years. As the health care spotlight now moves from the US House to the Senate, the shape-shifting independent Connecticut senator and former vice presidential candidate is again aggravating his former party. His vow to support a Republican filibuster of health care legislation if it contains a public health insurance option makes him a pivotal player and, he says, a spokesman for a silent minority-within-the-majority."
