Nelson Goes Down

By Daniel Foster

Update: 8:57 P.M.: Breaking: The AP and the New York Times are reporting that Senate Democrats have come to a tentative deal to drop the public option. The Times had this update at 8:48 P.M.:

The Senate majority leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, said Senate leaders “have a broad agreement” on dropping a government-run plan from the health care bill, and that the Congressional Budget Office would review the implications of such a move on the budget.
“I told head of C.B.O. we would send him something he would have to score,” Mr. Reid said. He added that he had asked Senators Charles E. Schumer and Mark Pryor to work together with a group of liberals and moderates on making sure the health care bill has a vehicle to expand coverage to achieve the aims of the so-called public option.

Update: 8:49 P.M.: The National Right to Life Commitee (NRLC) has come out against the Reid bill as it now stands, and warns that "a number of pro-life Democrats in the House, who supported passage of health care legislation on November 7, will not vote for the Senate bill in its current form.  So, this is a long way from over."
Update: 8:38 P.M.: Evan Bayh, Bob Casey, Kent Conrad, Byron Dorgan, Ted Kaufman, and Mark Pryor were the Democrats who joined Nelson and voted to preserve the amendment. Republicans Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe joined the majority. The roll call is here.
Senator Ben Nelson’s battle to prevent federal funding for abortions is fought and lost. The Senate voted 54-45 to table the pro-life Democrat’s amendment, which would have prevented health care plans purchased with government subsidies from covering abortions.

By all accounts, Democratic Leader Harry Reid’s strategy was to let the amendment, co-sponsored by Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Bob Casey (D-Penn), come to the floor—as the successful Stupak Amendment did in the House—and die there, hoping that the gesture would allow the pro-lifers in his caucus to satisfy their consciences and ultimately vote for the Democrat bill.

But during debate Nelson and other pro-life Democrats threatened that, should the amendment fail, they would join with Republicans in opposing cloture. It remains to be seen whether they will follow through on that threat.

Opponents of the Nelson amendment argued that existing language in Reid’s bill maintained the status quo banning federal funding for abortions. In fact, the Reid language would bar only the direct funding of abortions through federal tax credits, but would still allow women who receive health care subsidies to use them to purchase abortion coverage from private insurers.

During his remarks on the floor, Nelson said the claim that federal funds would be segregated from abortion funding under the Reid language was “an accounting trick”

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) agreed, and pointed to President Obama’s claim, during a September 9 address to a joint session of Congress, that “under [the Democrats’] plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place. Said Senator Brownback, “under the Reid bill, this is not true.”

For his part, Stupak has said he will continue to fight for the inclusion of his amendment’s language should health care reform pass the Senate and reach a conference committee. This is not an inevitably, as there are reports that both chambers are discussing bypassing the conference process and “ping-ponging” the Senate bill directly to the House before sending it to the president’s desk. This would leave Reid’s catch-all “manager’s amendment” as the only place to resolve outstanding objections to the bill.