Meet the 'ram-it-through caucus'
By: David Freddoso
Online Opinion Editor beltway-confidential
02/02/10 1:32 PM EST
According to the liberal group Whip Congress, 96 Democrats in the House have signed a letter demanding that a health insurance reform bill be passed through the budget reconciliation process. Such a scheme -- a fairly straightforward abuse of the congressional budget system established in the Nixon era -- would require only 51 Senate votes for ObamaCare to become law.
By my count, few of the 96 signing Democrats have any serious chance of losing an election (Paul Tonko, NY, and John Yarmuth, Ky.). The rest would suffer little from the electoral tsunami that would come in reaction to any such attempt at ramming health reform through Congress now.
The letter is the brianchild of liberal Democrat Reps. Jared Polis, Colo., and Chellie Pingree, Maine.
UPDATE: I had not noticed earlier that there were a few other potentially vulnerable Democrats who signed the letter, including Mark Schauer, Mich., Alan Grayson, Fla., Carol Shea-Porter, N.H., and Scott Murphy, N.Y. Their opponents for the fall should take note that when the voters signaled clear disgust with ObamaCare, they tried to abuse reconciliation and push it through anyway.
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