Ed Morrissey
HotAir.com
3/21/2010
Do they have the votes? Update: Nye a nay; Update: Stupak Dozen member caves; Update: Stupak says a deal is close
It’s getting harder to tell whether Democrats themselves know what’s happening any more. CNN quotes two leading House Democrats saying two different things this morning in its report on the ObamaCare push on the Hill:
Democrats have the 216 votes needed to pass health care reform legislation in the House on Sunday, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus told CNN.
“This is a historic day and we are happy warriors,” Rep. John Larson, D- Connecticut, told CNN’s “State of the Union.” He added, “We’ve got the votes.”
But the chief deputy whip in the House, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Florida, cautioned, “We don’t have a hard 216 right now.” Schultz made the statement to “Fox News Sunday” just as Larson was speaking to CNN.
Wasserman Schultz added, “I firmly believe we will have 216.”…
…Update V: Bart Stupak says he’s still trying to cut a deal:
Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) said Sunday morning that he is close to striking a deal with the Obama administration on abortion provisions.
“We are close to getting something done,” Stupak said in an interview with MSNBC. …
The possible deal would focus on an executive order that would specify there would be no public funding for abortions in the healthcare bill.
“We’re close but we’re not there yet,” Stupak said.
Democratic leaders said Sunday they have the votes on healthcare reform, but Stupak said until there is a deal struck, they don’t have the 216 votes they need.
Stupak said “there were eight of us” in the negotiating room, all of them no votes.
Stupak said Saturday that there were “at least six” of his original dozen that were going to oppose the health bill. He said that he was “going to think about” what would need to be included in an executive order to convince him that no federal dollars would go toward funding abortion. Further, Stupak said that he had not talked to the White House about such an executive order.…
Read the whole thing at HotAir.com
