Matthew mentioned this in an update to a previous post, but I thought it needed more attention.
Rep. Bart Stupak says he will not be fooled into voting for the health-care bill on the false promise of fixing it later. He says he hasn’t gone through all this “crap” only to cave now. Yessir!
If I didn’t cave in November, why would I do it now after all the crap I’ve been through.
Everyone’s going around saying there’s a compromise—there’s no such thing,” Stupak said. What’s changed between this week and last, Stupak went on, is that he had his first real conversation with Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Congressman Henry Waxman about fixing the bill.
But Stupak made one thing very clear: While he’s optimistic, there’s a lot of confusion about how the House would structure a bill that he could vote for. Stupak says “the majority party can get it done. Where there’s a will there’s a way.” But: “No one has said here’s how you do it, here’s the legislative scheme.”
Stupak affirmed that he will not settle for an agreement to pass the bill now and fix the bill’s problems on abortion later: “If they say ‘we’ll give you a letter saying we’ll take care of this later,’ that’s not acceptable because later never comes.”
We need this man to continue to stick to his guns. The fact is that in order to pull this off, the House has to pass the Senate bill as is. It then would become law no matter what happens in the Senate. And as we know, the Senate does not care about dead babies. Further, even on the off chance that such a compromise would pass, it would have to be tied to many other changes as well but that would not really fix things. The healthcare plan doesn’t go into effect for 4 more years. Reconciliation efforts, as per my understanding, automatically expire after five years and then would require renewal or they disappear. So one year into Obamacare and the abortion restrictions go bye-bye. This is a setup from day one. So far Stupak is not falling for it. Let’s hope it stays that way.
