Call me slow on the uptake or ill-informed but I admit I am not an expert on parliamentary procedure and the passage of Obamacare than many of you at FR are, so here is my question: I read somewhere that John Boehner said that if the House of Representatives took up the Senate version of Obamacare with the intention of passing it with a majority vote and sending it directly to Obama for his signature, the House would be voting on the Senate bill, exactly as it was constructed in the Senate, without even a comma omitted or a word left out and having said that how can Speaker Pelosi bargain with Bart Stupak over the abortion language in the Senate bill if she apparently has no power or authority to change it, without sending it back to the Senate where it would have to take another vote for eventual passage?
The Stupak crowd would have to be convinced by Pelosi that “side car” “fix” bills would go to the Senate and attached to the bill through reconciliation and one would be to strike federal abortion funding.
If Stupak & Co. buy into that, they run the risk of being snookered - since both the House and Senate will have passed the Senate’s bill, Pelosi and Reid could send it immediately to Obama for signature regardless of any promises of a “fix” made to the “moderates.” The question becomes, then, do “moderate” Democrats trust their leadership enough to buy into the promised “fix?”
We are talking about ‘Rats, so how much real trust could actually exist among them? And does the Stupak crows really care that much about abortion or are they merely looking for cover?
The Byzantines would have been proud.