Say Anything Blog

In the history of American law-making, bills with narrow margins of victory rarely fare well once the debate reaches the Senate.

WASHINGTON – The glow from a health care triumph faded quickly for President Barack Obama on Sunday as Democrats realized the bill they fought so hard to pass in the House has nowhere to go in the Senate.

Speaking from the Rose Garden about 14 hours after the late Saturday vote, Obama urged senators to be like runners on a relay team and “take the baton and bring this effort to the finish line on behalf of the American people.”

The problem is that the Senate won’t run with it. The government health insurance plan included in the House bill is unacceptable to a few Democratic moderates who hold the balance of power in the Senate.

If a government plan is part of the deal, “as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote,” said Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut independent whose vote Democrats need to overcome GOP filibusters.

“The House bill is dead on arrival in the Senate,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said dismissively.

Democrats did not line up to challenge him. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has yet to schedule floor debate and hinted last week that senators may not be able to finish health care this year.

That last is key for Democrats.  By design, the Senate is a much more deliberative legislative body than the House.  And with Republican opposition to this bill unlikely to crack in any meaningful way, and a number of key Democrats (many of who are facing tough re-election runs this coming year) very likely to cross the aisle, the odds of Reid getting any movement on the bill before January are slim.

And once you get past January, suddenly you’re at the beginning of an election year.  If the Senate makes any significant changes to the health care bill (like, say, sneaking funding for abortion back in) it will have to go back to the House for another vote.  Except this time it’s a straight up-or-down vote that won’t give Pelosi any opportunity for back-room deal making to ram it through.

Time is the enemy of the Democrats on this bill.  It wouldn’t be that way if this bill were something most Americans supported.  If they truly had a mandate from the public to do this it would have breezed through long ago.  But they don’t, and as Ed Morrissey pointed out earlier today, the slim victory Pelosi won in the House may well be the high water mark for Democrat efforts on government health care.