Rep. Stupak: Senate Health Care Bill Wouldn’t Get 100 Votes In The House
One work-around Democrats have floated for dealing with Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts is to get the House to just accept the Senate version of the health care bill without any changes. But Rep. Stupak, whose coalition of pro-life Democrats gave Nancy Pelosi her narrow 5-vote victory on the House version of the health care bill, says there’s no way that’s happening.
The Senate’s health bill might not even get 100 votes in the House, Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) said Wednesday.
Stupak, a centrist Democrat who voted for the first House health bill, said that there’s virtually no chance that House Democrats would pass the Senate’s healthcare package, and called for Democratic leaders to pursue a less sweeping version of healthcare reform.
“The Senate bill, and I know the leadership floated the idea over the weekend…wouldn’t even get 100 votes,” Stupak said during an appearance on the Fox Business Network. “There’s quite a bit of differences between the House and Senate bill, and there’s no appetite in the House for the Senate bill.”
So if the House won’t accept the Senate version of the bill that means the Senate version has to be changed to reconcile with a House version. That means the Senate would have to vote on health care again. And with Democrats lacking their 60 vote majority now thanks to Brown, that leaves two options:
1) Peeling a Republican away to vote for the health care bill.
2) Passing the health care bill changes through the budget reconciliation process requiring only 51 votes.
