I had been thinking about writing something about the idea that the House would just acquiesce in voting for the Senate version of the health care bill, thereby avoiding a conference (and avoiding the chance that the House-Senate conference could produce a bill that would cause the defection of at least one Senator in the coalition). That worked for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and it could work on health care too. I had not seen any mention of avoiding a conference until this, from Paul Starr, who writes: “If things go as well as may be realistically expected, the Senate will pass a bill no later than January. Under normal circumstances, a House-Senate conference would then write a final bill, which would have to be approved by each house. But because of the difficulty in keeping all 60 votes in the Senate, congressional leaders may have to weigh another option: just putting the Senate bill up for a vote in the House.”
Calling a vote on the Senate bill (with presumably improved abortion language from her perspective) could be appealing to Speaker Pelosi as well. I don’t know enough about the details of the two bills to know if there are any potential dealbreakers in the Senate bill from the perspective of the House leadership.
Meanwhile, in a typically provocative and thoughtful post, Jack Balkin sees this as the moment that President Obama must confront the filibuster directly and potentially go for the nuclear option. Jack concludes; “The question is whether this will be Obama’s greatest victory or his political Waterloo. American politics is getting very interesting indeed.”