by Ed Morrissey
HotAir.com
3/12/2010
Greg Hengler clips the Pelosi press conference from earlier today, in which she acknowledges now that the parliamentary rulings yesterday on ObamaCare means that the Senate bill has to get passed by the House and signed into law before the Senate can start amending it through reconciliation. Pelosi also acknowledges that the only fixes that can get addressed in that manner are those within narrow budgetary parameters. Pelosi insists that the Senate bill will get passed by her caucus. Daniel Foster gets this key moment transcribed at The Corner:
“The bills that have passed, ours with 220 in the House, theirs with 60 in the Senate, we’ll be acting upon the Senate bill with changes that were in the House bill reflected in the reconciliation. So in order to have the Senate bill be the basis and build upon it with the reconciliation, you have to pass the Senate bill, or else you’re talking about starting from scratch. So we will pass the Senate bill. Once we pass it, the President signs it or doesn’t, it’s – people would rather he waited until the Senate acted, but the Senate Parliamentarian, as you have said, said in order for them to do a reconciliation based on the Senate bill, it must be signed by the President.”…
…It sounds as though she’s trying to convince both moderates and progressives to jump aboard the Titanic by describing the pretty deckchairs as the ship is sinking.
Pelosi’s remarks are posted in three videos at HotAir.com. Elsewhere CAJ has read that Pelosi is now lacking only four votes to pass the bill.
