Protesting too much that the health care bill is alive, the lady doth show that the health care bill is dead

We will go through the gate. If the gate is closed, we will go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we will pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, we will parachute in. But we are going to get health care reform passed for the American people.
— Nancy Pelosi

On Wednesday night I said that Obama’s remarks on the health care bill in the State of the Union address amounted to a face-saving gesture to make it look as though he had not given up on it, while in fact he had given up, even though he was asking Congress to keep working on it.

So, what did Congress do about health care on the day after the SOU? The AP has a disorganized and contradictory article on that subject. I’ve extracted the parts of it that provide a more or less coherent picture:

Obama urged lawmakers in Wednesday night’s State of the Union address not to abandon the effort on what was once his top domestic priority. But his enthusiastic words provided no specific prescription for moving forward, leaving lawmakers little better off than before.

Senate Democratic leaders huddled Thursday afternoon to try to determine how to proceed, emerging to report progress, and the White House remained engaged in the negotiations. A Senate aide said lawmakers were hoping to decide on a legislative strategy by the end of next week….

In a sign of how far health care had fallen since Obama campaigned on it, Senate Democrats devoted a weekly policy lunch Thursday to discussing jobs, not health care. In a letter to supporters outlining Democrats’ 2010 agenda, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer didn’t even mention health care, although a spokeswoman said the e-mail was sent by Hoyer’s campaign team and was not meant to be an exhaustive list of priorities. House and Senate leaders insisted success on health care was still in reach.

“We’re going to move forward on health reform. We’re going to do health care reform this year,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. [Translation: Reid is face-saving, just as Obama was.]

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi acknowledged in her weekly news conference that plenty of work remained if the House was to agree to changes to the Senate bill.

“We will go through the gate. If the gate is closed, we will go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we will pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, we will parachute in,” Pelosi said. “But we are going to get health care reform passed for the American people.” … [Translation: Pelosi is face-saving. Of course, she would dearly like to “pole vault over the fence,” i.e., she would love to act outside proper legislative procedures and against the wishes of the American people and force the Thing on them; but she doesn’t have the political support to do it, so the bill is effectively dead, though she doesn’t want to admit that.]

An analysis distributed by UBS Investment Bank after the State of the Union speech stated: “Investors should proceed as if the health care effort is dead.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 29, 2010 08:29 AM | Send