The House Democrats twisted arms and still lost 39 of their members. Republicans lost a single member of their caucus, Joseph Cao from Louisiana. (One imagines that he will have a primary challenger as a result.) One of the Democrats not so savvy as to jump off the Pelosi express was Virginia Democrat Tom Perriello. Having voted for both cap-and-trade and PelosiCare, he becomes the most vulnerable member of the Virginia House delegation. (Bob McDonnell carried Perriello’s district by a 61.4 to 38.5 percent margin. How many GOP contenders do you think are lining up to take him on?)

Yes, this is “historic” in the sense that one body of Congress passed a bill for a government takeover of health care. But in another sense, this is a skin-of-the-teeth, avoid-disaster move that required Democrats to throw liberals in favor of public abortion funding under the ObamaCare bus to secure enough votes. (Still, that abortion funding may come back.) It is remarkable that with all the resources and advantages of the White House, the president and his party have been spectacularly unsuccessful in creating broad-based support for the bill. The legislation is now the sole province of the left wing of the Democratic party.

The bill stumbles onward to the Senate, where the public option seems to lack the needed votes. And once again, Red State senators will be put to the test. Will they too favor massive taxes and huge Medicare cuts?

Something else noteworthy occurred before the final vote. The Republicans put forth a motion to recommit, which would have added real tort reform at a saving of $54B to be used to fund a “Seniors Protection and Medicare Regional Payment Equity Fund.” The fund would have been used to protect seniors’ access to Medicare Advantage. In other words, the Republicans posed a choice: trial lawyers or seniors. The Democrats voted on a party line for the trial lawyers. You can already see the 2010 campaign ads.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, November 8th, 2009 at 8:12 AM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.