Democrats Abandon Plans to Skip Vote on Senate Health Bill

With the abortion issue still unresolved and House Democrats seemingly just short of votes to pass their bill, President Obama arrived at the Capitol just after 3:30 Saturday to speak to the entire membership of the House Democratic caucus and implore them to unite behind the issue that has become the signature effort of his presidency.

Earlier in the day, House Democratic leaders walked away from plans to deem the Senate's health care bill to have passed the House without ever taking an up-or-down vote on it. Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said the House would vote separately on the Senate bill. The idea had come under withering assault from Republicans and some Democrats.

House members will first vote on changes they had sought to the Senate bill and then they will vote on the bill itself, Daly told Politics Daily. A Democratic aide said leaders were confident they had the votes to pass both measures as well as the rule that will set up the procedure.

The decision came after members of the House Rules Committee clashed for hours Saturday over a procedure known as "deem and pass." It would have required a roll call vote only on a package of changes to the Senate bill -- without a vote on the underlying bill itself.

At a Saturday morning hearing of the Rules Committee, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) implored Democrats to put the Senate bill to a full roll-call vote. "This process corrupts and prostitutes the system," he said. "We are about to unleash a cultural war in this country if we use this process and don't allow the differences to be debated and hopefully moderated in compromise. Don't do this deem and pass."

The chairwoman of the committee, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) doubted Barton's promises of bipartisanship. "I appreciate that you're the blue bird of happiness and that somehow we believe we could do this all lovely and sweetness and light, but we just don't have any evidence to prove that," she said.

Slaughter agreed that a compromise bill would have been better, but insisted that Republicans, not Democrats, had refused to negotiate in good faith, so the time had come to move forward. "We feel like we've been pregnant for 17 months. Let's get on with it already," she said.

Democrats and Republicans used the rest of the hearing's morning session to advance their familiar arguments in favor and against the bill, with Democrats describing the moment as a milestone -- a chance to improve the lives of Americans -- and Republicans lashing out against the bill as a budget-busting government take-over of the American health care system.

Both sides also lined up behind their leaders on the question of the process of passing the bill -- a matter that the Rules Committee was to decide Saturday.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) asked for "clean votes" on the bill. "Deeming this into law without having the courage to have an up-or-down vote in the people's house is not democracy," he said.

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) defended the deem-and-pass process and angrily reminded Republicans that they had used the same procedure to enact the line-item veto in 1996, with the affirmative votes of Reps. Barton, Diaz-Balart and Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio).

But Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Cali.) seemed to disagree with his fellow Democrats and insisted that the majority will not avoid a vote on the Senate bill. "We're not going to deem the Senate bill passed, we're going to pass it. We either pass it or we don't pass it."

As the committee debated the future of the health bill in public, a drama on the last unresolved piece of the measure played out behind the scenes, as pro-life Democrats led by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) continued to withhold their support for the final bill. As undecided Democrats declared their intentions on the bill one-by-one this week, it has become clear that the Stupak block will make the difference between its success or failure.

The measure to be voted on in the House uses the Senate's slightly less restrictive language on abortion coverage for women who purchase health insurance with federal subsidies.

Stupak has called that language unacceptable, and holds the votes of several fellow pro-life Democrats who all say they'll switch their previous "yes" votes on the bill to "no's", unless the Senate language is modified.

Word circulated Friday night that Pelosi would try to win over Stupak's group -- and Stupak scheduled an 11 a.m. news conference Saturday to announce how the abortion issue would be dealt with. But the lawmaker canceled it minutes before it was scheduled to begin, sparking rumors that an agreement between him and Pelosi had fallen apart.

Pelosi confirmed to reporters that the House will not take a separate vote on the abortion issue, as Stupak had wanted. "The bill is the bill," she said.

The Rules Committee will continue to debate the process for health care reform throughout the day Saturday, with the House scheduled to open its debate on the final health care reform bill at 1:00 p.m. Sunday.