Historic bill on health care reform to be voted on Saturday. Does Pelosi have the votes?
November 6, 2009 at 8:55 am by Mitch Perry
Later today, President Obama is expected to visit the House to rally support for the biggest issue of his young presidency domestically, health care reform.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has told the members of the House to come to the Capitol at 9 a.m. Saturday to vote on the 10-year, $1.05 trillion health care legislation.
What a 24 hours it should be for Madame Speaker.
Pelosi needs 218 votes, which means doing whatever she can (legally) to convince the disparate members of her caucus to support the bill. If the bill goes down to defeat, you will never hear the end of it from Republicans and the Washington press corps.
The president and House Speaker scored a couple of major endorsements yesterday when both the American Medical Association and the AARP came out in support of the bill.
The AARP has received scathing criticism from some conservatives throughout the year for speaking positively about health care reform.
Count Brooksville Congresswoman Ginny Brown-Waite among those critics. After the AARP’s endorsement yesterday, she sent out a press release blasting the group by writing:
“There was a time when AARP represented the interests of retired people — this endorsement proves that those days are long gone. The Democrats’ health care bill cuts $400 billion from Medicare — the very program that AARP’s members paid for and rely on.
“AARP is running a great risk by endorsing a bill that does not clearly determine which health plans will be allowed under this legislation. This bill leaves it up to Washington bureaucrats to make that determination once the bill is passed and signed into law.
“AARP members deserve to know the true reasons behind their endorsement of this bill. If they are not standing up to the interests of seniors, then whose interests are they standing up for?”
As I reported on yesterday, despite the mocking of Speaker Pelosi for saying of Tuesday night’s election results that it had actually been a good night for Democrats, it was a good night for her in her quest to get 218 votes by Saturday.
California’s John Garamendi, elected Tuesday in a district east of San Francisco, and Bill Owens, who won the much hyped New York District 23 race over independent conservative Doug Hoffman, both have said they support the health care bill that they’ll vote on tomorrow.
That’s not to say that there aren’t Democrats, particularly those from Republican-leaning districts in the South, who will oppose the legislation. There are still negotiations going on today on delicate issues like abortion provisions and care for legal and illegal immigrants.
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