Advice to House: Don't Take Any Obama Wooden Nickels

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Nancy Pelosi is trying to shoo House Democrats into voting for the Senate health care bill, but members are more worried than ever that the Senate won't then implement the necessary changes through the reconciliation process to make the final bill acceptable. They have good reason for concern.

Now they're hearing from Senate colleagues that the GOP can be expected to make Senate reconciliation as difficult and drawn-out as possible through delaying tactics. President Obama may wind up just signing the Senate bill into law no changes whatsoever -- preserving some of the most egregious elements that made the Senate bill such a public lightning rod.

These include not just the "Cornhusker Kickback," "Louisiana Purchase" and other special-interest deals rolled into the Senate bill last December to buy wavering Democratic votes. Democrats also would have to explain all over again why 800,000 seniors in Florida will be spared Medicare Advantage cuts, while those elsewhere won't.

Senator Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, says Mr. Obama is asking House Democrats "to hold hands, drop off a cliff and hope [senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid catches them. And Harry Reid will have no incentive to catch them because by the time he gets to the reconciliation bill, the president will have already signed the health care bill into law."

Meanwhile, President Obama met with 20 undecided House Democrats yesterday in private. He urged them to put aside their political concerns and vote for the Senate bill in the interests of duty and country. "It's always a bad sign when a chief executive tells members of Congress of his own party to ignore the politics," says presidential historian Al Felzenberg. "It usually means he's got a bad product."

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