{"id":3237,"date":"2010-01-19T10:48:43","date_gmt":"2010-01-19T15:48:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=3237"},"modified":"2010-01-19T11:58:36","modified_gmt":"2010-01-19T16:58:36","slug":"massachusetts-and-pelosis-plan-b-on-obamacare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/3237\/massachusetts-and-pelosis-plan-b-on-obamacare\/","title":{"rendered":"Massachusetts and Pelosi&#8217;s Plan B on ObamaCare"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today, all eyes are on Massachusetts as Bay State voters head to the polls to decide the fate of the U.S. Senate seat previously held by the late Senator Ted Kennedy.\u00a0 Will Republican State Senator Scott Brown pull it out against Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley?\u00a0 We will all know soon enough.<\/p>\n<p>The special election between Brown and Coakley is, in large part, a referendum on President Obama\u2019s agenda, including health care reform.\u00a0 The President himself, while avoiding the health care issue as much as possible, all but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/2010\/01\/17\/health-care-line-obama-heads-massachusetts\/\" target=\"_blank\">admitted as much<\/a>\u00a0during a campaign speech for Coakley on Sunday.\u00a0 If Brown does pull off a victory, Democrats will lose the 60th vote in the Senate needed to sustain their filibuster-proof majority to pass ObamaCare and possibly other legislation on President Obama\u2019s agenda.<\/p>\n<p>But that is not discouraging some in the Democrat leadership, most notably House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.\u00a0 According to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/politics\/war_room\/2010\/01\/18\/pelosi\/index.html?source=rss&amp;aim=\/politics\/war_room\" target=\"_blank\">Alex Koppelman at <em>Salon.com<\/em><\/a>, Pelosi commented about the situation during an event in San Francisco yesterday:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Let&#8217;s remove all doubt, we will have healthcare one way or another. \u2026 Certainly the dynamic would change depending on what happens in Massachusetts. Just the question about how we would proceed. But it doesn&#8217;t mean we won&#8217;t have a health care bill.&#8221;\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>How can the Speaker be so confident?\u00a0 According to a report in yesterday\u2019s <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/01\/19\/health\/policy\/19health.html?hp\" target=\"_blank\">New York Times<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The White House and Democratic Congressional leaders, scrambling for a backup plan to rescue their health care legislation if Republicans win the special election in Massachusetts on Tuesday, have begun laying the groundwork to ask House Democrats to approve the Senate version of the bill and send it directly to President Obama for his signature.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In other words, Plan B for Pelosi appears to be to ask her caucus just to approve the Senate-passed health care bill, avoiding another vote in the Senate altogether.\u00a0 That\u2019s a big ask considering the numerous and significant complaints many in her caucus have expressed about the Senate bill.<\/p>\n<p>If Scott Brown wins today in the most liberal state in the Union, the message to rank-and-file Democrats about health care \u201creform\u201d and President Obama\u2019s overall agenda should be clear.\u00a0 If Brown wins and they continue to follow Pelosi\u2019s lead and pass ObamaCare \u201cone way or another,\u201d they ignore that clear message at their own peril.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today, all eyes are on Massachusetts as Bay State voters head to the polls to decide the fate of the U.S. Senate seat previously held by the late Senator Ted Kennedy.\u00a0 Will Republican State Senator Scott Brown pull it out against Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley?\u00a0 We will all know soon enough. The special election [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12,753,159,111,725],"class_list":["post-3237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-health-care","tag-martha-coakley","tag-massachusetts","tag-nancy-pelosi","tag-scott-brown"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3237"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3239,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3237\/revisions\/3239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}