Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will release the contents – but not the signatories – of a letter Saturday aimed at reassuring House members that the Senate will act on the reconciliation bill.
The letter has caused some hand-wringing among Democratic senators in recent days, not so much because they don’t support the bill – although skeptical House members would disagree – but senators are notoriously reluctant to publicly commit to something before they absolutely must. Senators like to preserve their leverage.
But a binding commitment is exactly what House Democrats have sought.
Jim Manley, Reid’s spokesman, said the majority leader will release the letter after meeting with the House Democratic caucus Saturday afternoon.
“There can be no mistaking Sen. Reid’s desire to get this done,” Manley said.
Asked whether Reid has been able to round up 51 signatures, Manley was coy.
“We will have done what the house has requested,” Manley said.
I will remind of something I said the other day in a post titled "I submit the Senate does not even have 51 Democrats willing to vote Pelosi's 'fixes' into law.":
All that aside for a second though because I have a very serious question
for any and all House Democrats that believe this sleight-of-hand will protect them.
Do any of them truly believe the Senate Democrats will garner enough votes to actually pass the "fixes"?
House Democrats do not like the Senate's version of the Obamacare bill and Pelosi cannot even garner enough votes to get it passed without the "deeming" it passed trick, yet by deeming it passed, the Senate version is what would become law.
Period.
Then the House Democrats have to count on the Senate to actually pass all those changes to a version of Obamacare that took the Senate months and months to achieve in the first place, removing a number of the measures that the House is now praying the Senate will pass when they couldn't get those very same measures passed the first dozen or so times they tried.
Nancy Pelosi might think she is smart trying to bypass having vulnerable House Democrats actually having to "vote" for the Senate version of Obamacare, but she is also asking them to seriously believe that the Senate will pull their asses out of the fire afterwards.
Why would they? The Senate passed their version, cutting out everything they knew they could not pass and why on earth anyone thinks the Senate would be able to garner the votes needed for all the "fixes" is beyond me.
The reasoning here is that by "deeming" the Senate version passed, then these "fixes" can go to the Senate and by using another procedure called "reconciliation" the Senate will only need 51 votes to pass these fixes.
I submit the Senate does not even have 51 Democrats willing to vote those fixes into law.
If Reid cannot get rank and file Democrats in the Senate to vote for the House's fixes" via reconciliation, the Democrats in the House can always claim "we tried", but the nasty Senate just didn't come through for us.
Do they think the "we tried" excuse is going to save their jobs come November 2010?
.