Marathon House health reform session filled with partisan acrimony
By DENA BUNIS
2009-11-07 21:30:48

WASHINGTON - There's a frequently quoted adage around the halls of the Capitol that while everything on an issue has been said, not everyone has said it.

Maybe that's why it took the House of Representatives more than 12 hours Saturday to pass its historic vote on a massive overhaul of the nation's health care system.

It was a day that made the philosophical lines between Democrats and Republican clear. And it started in the first minutes of the debate, just after 9 a.m. Washington time.

In the Senate, lawmakers have almost unlimited debate. But in the House, the timing is very structured and usually more members want to speak than there is time available.

So when many Democratic women of the House wanted to make their voices heard about this bill, particularly as to its effect on women's health issues and abortion, they came to the chamber to make one-sentence statements. These "unanimous consent" requests don't count against the allotted time.

One by one they lined up to speak. But the Republicans continually objected, tried to hold up the proceedings and got into a battle with the longest serving member of the House, Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, who presided over the opening of this debate. Dingell has been fighting for health care for more than four decades. He presided over the debate on the creation of Medicare in 1965.

"Because I support health care reform that invests in a health care workforce dedicated to the needs of all women, I ask unanimous consent to advise and extend my remarks,'' said Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Santa Ana.

Sanchez said later while she rose with the other Democratic women to voice her support for reform, she hadn't decided how she would vote. In the end she voted yes.

Sanchez has long said she wants reform and in fact supports a public option.

But with several local issues concerning how business gets health insurance and what impact the bill might have on Orange County biomedical firms, Sanchez was wheeling and dealing with her colleagues to look out for their needs.

Sanchez is the only Democrat in the Orange County delegation so she was the only one trying to broker promises that once the bill goes into a House-Senate conference that her issues would be dealt with. It was too late Saturday to get changes in the measure.

The Republican lawmakers from O.C. speaking on the bill had harsh words for it.

This measure, said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, will "take hundreds of billions of dollars out of Medicare and give millions of dollars of health care to illegal immigrants..."

Democrats insist that the bill clearly states that no illegal immigrants can get federal subsidies for policies in the health exchange that would be created. But GOP lawmakers say there is no enforcement of that provision so it is meaningless.

Amendments that Republicans proposed to tighten those provisions were not allowed to be brought up.

"This attempt at sliding Americans into dependence on a government-controlled health care system, said Rohrabacher of Huntington Beach, "brings bait and switch to a new low.''

Rep. Ed Royce blasted the measure for what he said is its high costs and mandates.

"This trillion dollar government takeover will make matters worse,' said Royce, R-Fullerton. "Medicine will be rationed via politics under this act.''

With a 40-vote Democratic margin in the House, Democratic leaders usually wouldn't care if a member like Sanchez was thinking about straying from the party line.

But the outcome of this bill was in jeopardy until the very end.

In fact, the abortion issue also threatened to derail the bill.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi allowed only two amendments to be brought up to the nearly 2,000-page health reform bill. One was the Republican substitute to the Democrats' measure. The other was on abortion.

The reason Pelosi even allowed this divisive amendment to come to the floor is that a group of about 40 anti-abortion rights Democrats threatened to vote no on the overall health care reform bill if they didn't get this floor debate.

Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., the author of the amendment, said only federal money for abortion would be curtailed. But Rep. Dianna DeGette, D-Colo., said the amendment would turn back the clock on abortion rights. The amendment was approved 240-194 with 64 Democrats and 176 Republicans voting yes. No GOP members voted no.

Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Corona, didn't speak on the floor during the marathon debate. He issued a statement after the vote.

"America has always relied on the ingenuity of our citizens and the competitiveness of our system to provide the best health care in the world,'' Calvert said. "While I wholeheartedly agree that our system must be reformed and improved, H.R. 3962 passed by the Pelosi Congress is an abomination."

http://www.ocregister.com/news/health-2 ... -care.html