Trouble Still Brewing in House Health Care Bill—Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) Threatening to Kill HR 3200 on a Floor Vote

posted at 10:28 am on October 28, 2009 by Rovin
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Bart Stupak, a pro-life democrat, and forty other like-minded democrats are threatening to send Pelosi’s health care bill (HR 3200) to an early grave. Stupak has an amendment that specifically prohibits federal funding for abortions. Nancy Pelosi has told Stupak his amendment will not see a floor vote. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer has now entered the “fray” with an appeasing, yet not assuring proposition.

(CNSNews.com) –House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said he hoped something could be worked out to address Rep. Bart Stupak’s (D-Mich.) insistence that the House vote on his amendment to explicitly prohibit any federal money from paying for any part of a health insurance plan that covers abortion when the the health care bill (H.R. 3200) comes to the House floor.

Hoyer, however, declined to say whether he would actually support a floor vote on Stupak’s amendment. Hoyer did say that Stupak’s proposal perhaps could be included in what he called “a manager’s amendment.”

Stupak, meanwhile, is standing by his vow to try to kill the health care bill entirely if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi does not allow a direct up or down vote on his amendment on the House floor.  LINK

As I wrote yesterday here in the Greenroom, Stupak claims to have forty “like-minded” democrats that would vote to kill the entire bill if the proper language is not put into the bill. Matt Cover at CNSNew.com explains this again today:

Under Stupak’s plan, the approximately 40 Democrats in his camp would join with all House Republicans in voting to defeat the special House “rule” that would set the terms for debating and amending the health-care bill on the House floor when it is brought up for a final vote. If a majority of the House does not first vote to approve this rule, the health-care bill itself cannot be brought to the floor.

“We will try to—we, there’s about 40 like-minded Democrats like myself—we’ll try to take down the rule,” Stupak told CNSNews.com. “If all 40 of us vote in a bloc against the rule—because we think the Republicans will join us—we can defeat the rule. The magic number is 218. If we can have 218 votes against the rule, we win.”

Yet, Stupak still has another hurdle to overcome. The rules chairman says Stupak’s amendment will not reach the house floor:

According to Stupak, Rules Chairman* Louise Slaughter (D.-N.Y.) told him there was “no way” her committee would approve a rule for the health-care bill that would allow a vote on his amendment by the full House.

From the “party of no”, to the party of “no way”, something’s got to give.  What a breath of fresh air when we see moderate and pro-life house democrats challenging Pelosi and Hoyer while drawing a well defined line in the sand when it comes to federally funding abortions. So far, the Hyde amendment is not in this legislation, while the Democratic leadership continues to dither.

*(just a little political correctness correction to Mr. Covers story—Louise McIntosh Slaughter, New York, Chairwoman)

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