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Nov 7 2009, 8:30 am by Chris Good

Question Of The Weekend: The House Vote

Given that the Senate has its own dynamics on health care--and is expected to entertain more conservative options--does the House's vote on health care matter?

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Comments (6)

JohnMcC

The relative 'leftness' of the House version seems likely to be significant in the reconciliation process of the two bills, at least to me. How about an essay in "Politics" about that process--what impact varying versions of bills have in the final version?

Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle (Replying to: JohnMcC)

Leftness? You are joking, right? As always, everything gets watered down to the Republicans and Blue Dogs liking. Or did you not pay attention today?

Pineview1997

It will serve as a (marginal) counterweight to whatever even more gutless version the Senate decides to pass. By comparison, the House bill will likely cover more Americans and save more money over time than the Senate bill.

TycheSD

It will matter electorally.

Yancey Ward

I predicted a few weeks ago how this would play out. One could see it forming when the public option made its reappearance. It was hard to explain this reappearance since it pretty much guaranteed failure in the Senate (risked it in the House), but one must always be aware that what parties do in Washington isn't even mostly about passing legislation, but appearing to serve their constituents' wishes.

With this in mind, I predicted that the House was resurrecting the public option because that is what the farther left of the House and their constituents most wanted them to vote for. Pelosi had just enough margin to get at least a partial victory, while letting the most vulnerable members of her caucus vote against the bill- and note just how much she had to give up to even get the 220 votes tonight.

The problem is that there is no bill that can get through both houses, especially now that we know exactly how little margin exists in the House. The plan is to let the Senate filibuster it down in the Senate. This salvages the maximum amount of political capital for the Democrats after this debacle. All the Democrats in the House get to vote the way they think best satisfies their constituents, and the Senate Democrats don't have to make a tough vote at all, and they can all blame the Republicans (and as an added bonus, Joe Lieberman) for the defeat. The only other alternative, and one Pelosi simply wasn't going to suffer, was to have the bill withdrawn or defeated in the House.

Rhoda

Absolutely.

Tomorrow and Monday the news is going to be blared that a historic vote FOR health care reform occurred and legislation passed the house. Now, it can either die in the senate or they can man up and pass this sucker and get it to conference.

Every day of delay is a day of pain for Reid politically and electorally. This vote guarantees that it is going to get it done. And if it works as well as MA did; this is going to benefit Democrats. In their uniform opposition; the Republicans have painted themselves into a corner. I have no doubt that the Democrats are going to next focus on getting a jobs bill through and they're going to do whatever they have to in order to get the unemployment numbers under control.

The question is: if the economy starts to improve and next summer people are more comfortable, health care has passed, and the Republicans did nothing to help move the country forward the elections are going to look a lot different than they did this last Tuesday.