Deal breakers?
By: Manu Raju and Chris Frates
October 28, 2009 04:53 AM EST
POLITICO
Just after he announced Monday that the Senate Democrats’ health care bill would include a public option with an opt-out provision, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called Sen. Olympia Snowe to say he hoped she’d get behind the plan.
Good luck with that.
Asked Tuesday what Reid would have to change in his bill to get her vote, Snowe said: “the whole thing.”
The Maine Republican caught herself later, saying she didn’t want to address a “hypothetical” about how she’d vote at the end of a process that’s just beginning. But Snowe — the only Republican on Capitol Hill to vote for a Democratic health care bill so far this year — also hinted that the beginning may be the end, saying she would most likely vote to block the Senate from even commencing debate on Reid’s bill.
Her reason: “You’ll need 60 votes just to change anything on the floor. “That’s the problem that I raised with the leader to begin with.”
Snowe’s opposition is a problem for Reid, but it’s hardly the only one. To get the 60 votes he needs to open debate on the bill and then again to get to a floor vote, Reid will need to start reining in the moderate Democrats on his own side of the aisle.
Here’s where some of the toughest votes stand now:
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.): The senator poured cold water on Reid’s plan Tuesday by saying he’d back a GOP filibuster if the bill isn’t changed by the end of the Senate debate. While Lieberman said he will allow the debate to begin, he’s opposed to Reid’s opt-out proposal and seemed to be just as cool toward Snowe’s alternative trigger plan.
The fallout on Lieberman will be intense, given that he’s already been a pariah on the left for his hawkish posture toward the Iraq war and his support for Republican Sen. John McCain over then-Democratic Sen. Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential race.
Lieberman is either posturing, or he’s foreshadowing the likelihood that Reid will have to drop the opt-out from the bill.
“I’m sure I won’t be alone,” Lieberman said of opposition from Senate Democrats. But he also said that he’ll be “prepared” to go it alone if necessary.
Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.): Lincoln is facing a tough reelection in a red state that Obama lost by 20 percentage points last year. She told the Arkansas Farm Bureau on Tuesday that “if it’s government-run or government-funded, I’m going to have tremendous troubles with being able to support moving forward on something like that.”
When asked if Lincoln would vote to break a filibuster aimed at preventing the debate from starting, a Lincoln aide said she “has not committed her vote to anyone,” adding that she wants to see the legislative language and cost first.
MoveOn says that 93 percent of its Arkansas members won’t vote for Lincoln if she joins a GOP filibuster, and it plans to hold news conferences outside her district office — along with the district offices of Snowe, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) — to argue that the public option would help her state. But a reversal by Lincoln could turn off the business community, including the powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which praised her for voting against a public option in the Finance Committee.
Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.): How Lincoln ends up voting could very well influence Pryor, even though he just won another six-year term in 2008.
“I’ll be talking to her throughout this process,” Pryor said Tuesday. Pryor said that his “inclination” would be to vote for the procedural motions to advance the debate but that he’s told Reid that he’s “making no commitments” on final passage.
Pryor added that it’s “important for states to have the ability to not have the public option if that’s what they choose” and said that he wants to make sure that language is “workable.”
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.): Perhaps the most conservative Democrat in the Senate, Nelson said Tuesday that it’s “too soon” to say how he’ll vote, saying he wanted to see the official cost estimate and the language.
Asked if he could support Reid’s opt-out plan, Nelson said: “What is it? Have you read it? I’m not being feisty here. But nobody has read it other than the leader and some staff. That is the point.”
Nelson has come under tremendous pressure from both the left and the right and doesn’t face voters until 2012. While MoveOn pushes Nelson to back the bill, Americans for Tax Reform has launched ads arguing that if Nelson votes for health reform, he’ll be violating his pledge not to raise taxes.
Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.): Democratic leaders should be able to tell where Bayh is headed based on his vote on whether to move to a debate. The Indiana Democrat said Tuesday that he doesn’t see “much difference between process and policy at this particular juncture,” and that he’ll be “looking at those two things as one and the same.”
But Bayh said Tuesday that he’s not as concerned with the public option, saying he’s “more focused on is this fiscally responsible and what does this mean in terms of the premiums average families pay for those who currently have insurance.” Bayh said that Reid’s decision to reduce new fees on medical device makers has put his vote in play.
“Without that, they definitely would not have my support,” Bayh said.
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.): Landrieu may have just won reelection, but she consistently positions herself in the middle of her caucus — and is now “very skeptical” about the Reid plan. She refused to say whether she would even vote to begin debate, saying she was “going to continue to work on a principled compromise.”
And she already is getting pummeled by liberal activists in her state, with MoveOn’s 30,000 Louisiana members promising to give no more help to Landrieu if she withholds her support.
Carrie Budoff Brown contributed to this story.