According to one Blue Dog Democrat, the “go it alone” strategy will make it less likely that a “public option” plan will make it through Congress:
Democrats will not be able to “go it alone” on healthcare legislation and force through a bill with a public option on a party-lines vote, Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) said Wednesday.
“It’s numerically not possible,” Cooper, a centrist Blue Dog Democrat who has long focused on healthcare issues, said in an interview on MSNBC. “We don’t have enough votes.”
The New York Times reported Wednesday that Democratic leaders in Congress, along with the White House, had less faith in continuing to work with Republicans to craft a bipartisan health bill containing a public (or “government-run”) option.
Cooper said that just as a matter of procedure, there is no way that Democrats would be able to accomplish such a thing.
“It’s really not an ideological question; it’s a question of how you pass a bill,” he explained. “We don’t have 60 Democratic votes in the Senate.”
Technically, they do, of course, but Cooper correctly points out the fact that both Robert Byrd and Ted Kennedy are essentially absent from the Senate thanks to prolonged illness. Somehow, though, I suspect they’d drag both men in on stretchers to cast their votes if it became necessary.
