Posted on 12/17/2009 10:31:21 AM PST by JRochelle
The path to 60 just got a lot more difficult:
In an interview Thursday with a Nebraska radio station, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said new compromise language on abortion funding is unacceptable. “As it is right now, without further modifications, it isn’t sufficient,” Nelson told KLIN radio in Lincoln, NE.
This could be a significant blow to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s effort to line up 60 votes in the coming days for the health care bill. Nelson has said he would filibuster the bill unless the abortion language mirrored what was included in the House bill.
Even if abortion is addressed to his satisfaction, “that is not enough” for Nelson commit to voting for the bill, he said.
How bad will this get? Barack Obama hasn’t even addressed the issue of abortion with Nelson directly. That’s a pretty interesting picture of disinterest coming from the Oval Office on what is supposed to be Obama’s highest priority on his domestic agenda.
Harry Reid will have to go back to the drawing board on abortion funding, but that may not be possible. His progressive wing is already in near revolt over having to vote for a bill with no government-run plan in it. They wanted a precursor to a single-payer system; in fact, that was the entire point of the health-care reform push. Now they’re going to be asked to kill funding for abortion as well, having worked for months to build a path around the Hyde Amendment. There is no way that will get through to cloture, and no way it will pass in the House even if it did.
Nelson’s driving a stake through the heart of ObamaCare. Looks like Barack Obama has his pretext for skipping Copenhagen.
The dead fish in the paper or horse-head in his sheets will soon give Ben to pause before delaying the Mob’s wishes in DC.
Count on it.
They all want this to be a victorious, bedazzled victory - for Harry to show he’s got control of the Senate, and more so for Obama.
So much so is that THERE IS NO BILL YET AND THEY WANT TO END DEBATE ON IT!!!!!
They are psychotic. Can you imagine the press if republicans were pushing something through like this, that most Americans DON’T want, that has had millions of people march to Washington THREE TIMES (yes not all the same, I am saying cumulatively)..? The press would be screaming for a revolution. But democrat masters, the ones over 90% of the media admitted voting for, are in charge, so not a peep out of our ‘objective watchdog media’.
Why in the world does ANY of this matter? They will pass something-—it doesn’t matter what they pass-—because in the conference they will change it back to how they REALLY want it. If “public option” is in the House (and I’d love to be corrected on this), we can still get “public option” and certainly WILL get it.
No GOP senator will cave. Both Collins and Snowe have said so, in fact Snowe is totally opposed to Reid’s artificial deadlines.
Is he the ONLY democratic hold out on this issue?
>> Dems really should take out the abortion funding ...
They can’t. The feminists raised holy hell after the Stupak amendment, and a significant number of feminists in Congress said they will not vote for a bill without abortion funding, while a significant number of pro-life Democrats said they would not vote for a bill with abortion funding.
This may be the impasse we’ve been hoping for.
The really funny part is that feminists have fought for decades against government intervention in medical decisions, but they still haven’t figured out that this bill will get the government involved in ALL medical decisions. They, of all people, should be against this bill on principle.
I am pro-life — but, in this case, possible abortion regulation would be a perfect conservative case-in-point to illustrate to pro-abortion advocates why government-run healthcare is a HORRIBLE idea. When the government pays, the government makes its voice heard in decision-making.
SnakeDoc
i’m with you. i think this is just a bunch of posturing, they know who is going to vote and how from now.
uh huh
The sad thing about Nelson is that apparently he is OK with the tax increases, mandates, and budget busting new subsidies. He’s not fiscally conservative in the slightest.
“that is not enough” = Nelson’s response to the figure Obama wrote on a piece of paper and shoved across the table.
The Democrats controlled the Senate up until Jan 2003. Tom Daschle was Majority Leader. President Bush only had four years in office with a GOP House and Senate, and never with a 60-seat supermajority.
All 40 GOP senators have voted together on every amendment so far. Check the public statements of Collins and Snowe if you don’t believe me. Snowe has already told McConnell that she will not be the 60th vote.
Check out Robert Costa’s column at NRO.
Reid is bluffing with his comment an hour ago about staying through Christmas; now all we need is for Sanders or Feingold to crack from the left.
The pressure on Nelson to cave must be unbelievable.
The insane left commies are going nuts. They have become cannibals. They are like crocodiles. They eat their own sometimes. This is one of those times.
True enough. My mistake. Still Bush got tax cuts passed with an opposition Congress. Obama can’t even get his own congress to pass their own bills.
SnakeDoc
I give Nelson a lot of credit for standing his ground. Apparently he thinks more about staying in office than either Obummer’s plummeting poll numbers and Obummer’s plummeting standing with the American people as a whole. It would not even surprise me if even more moderate senators fall by the wayside as well and join Nelson. Lieberman is bouncing back and forth so who knows how he will eventually vote. The American people are obviously making their voices heard in many varities of ways to members of Congress. And for once the MSM can’t stop that from happening.
Let the left go nuts. The problem is that, thus far, they’ve been unable to deliver a single NO vote on cloture.
That's how I expect it to work. As long as they pass some kind of bill with a lot of words in it. Future politicians can "refine" it and future judges can can find penumbras to justify complete socialized medicine and eventually compete socialized government.
This is just another brick in our eventual prison.
re: tagline
All of Psalms 109 . . . . it’s a good one.... straight after the man whom God said was “after His heart” !!!
Yeah, I’m scratching my head over this. They’ve got well over a winning number of votes, yet are taking so long to finagle their way to a supermajority that they should have just faced the filibuster head-on, let the opposition talk themselves unconscious, and pass the original bill on an easy 51+ vote simple majority - would have taken a lot less time. Filibusters end.
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