Massachusetts just sent Scott Brown to the Senate largely based on his staunch opposition to the proposed health care reform. Connecticut doesn't like it. Rasmussen shows 61% opposed. So how do Sen. Harry Reid and Speaker Nancy Pelosi propose "improving" the bill to get it passed? Make it more palatable to the left, progressives, and staunch liberal Democrats.
Struggling to salvage health reform, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have begun considering a list of changes to the Senate bill in hopes of making it acceptable to liberal House members, according to sources familiar with the situation.
The changes could be included in separate legislation that, if passed, would pave the way for House approval of the Senate bill - a move that would preserve President Barack Obama's vision of a sweeping health reform plan.
But the move comes with political risk, because it would open Democrats up to charges that they pressed ahead with roughly the same health care bill that voters appeared to reject in the Massachusetts Senate race Tuesday. Republican Scott Brown won on a pledge to try to block Obama-style health reform.
The idea is to have a second bill that moves the overall reform further left. And these ... Democrats think that move will win the day with the American public, who have already told them firmly once, in blue Mass., to stop.
As an aside, I've seen some progressives puzzled that Massachusetts, which already has its own universal care framework, rejected similar legislation nationally. Paraphrasing, "after all, it wouldn't really affect them, they already have it." Maybe that's because they've seen it, know it, and know that it's a problem they didn't want to inflict on the rest of the country.
