Below The Beltway

The Speaker of the House says she doesn’t have the votes to pass the Senate health care bill:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that the Senate will have to amend its version of a health-care reform bill before her chamber can pass it.

“I don’t think it’s possible to pass the Senate bill in the House,” Pelosi told reporters after a morning meeting with her caucus. “I don’t see the votes for it at this time.”

Pelosi has been struggling for days to sell the Senate legislation to reluctant Democrats in order to get a health-care bill to the president’s desk quickly. But moderates in her caucus have raised doubts about forging ahead without bipartisan support — a challenge as the midterm election approaches — while liberals rejected the Senate bill as not going far enough.

Pelosi described House Democrats as vehemently opposed to several provisions in the Senate legislation, including one that benefits only Nebraska’s Medicaid system — a deal to win the support of Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) — and a tax plan on expensive health-care benefits.

“There are certain things the members simply cannot support,” she said.

Aides said afterward that the best option would be for the Senate to pass a bill that fixes those and other issues under fast-track rules that require a simple majority. But the Senate has not agreed to do so.

And, of course, Scott Brown’s victory on Tuesday makes it pretty unlikely that they’ll be able to do so.

While I’m sure many will try to spin Pelosi’s words, and that it will still be some time before the Obama White House gives up the ghost on this debacle, as Josh Marshall points out the meaning of Pelosi’s words are clear:

In other words, plug pulled. Health care reform over.

Pelosi followed with a bunch of muddying caveats that seemed to make the statement more ambiguous. So I strongly recommend reading her whole statement word for word so you can interpret it yourself. But the other ‘options’ she mentions seem to be clearly impossible. So I don’t think there’s any way to read her comments other than to say she’s ready to sweep health care reform into the dustbin for good.

Ed Morrisey’s summation hits the nail on the head:

[I]t’s an ignominious defeat for Obama and Pelosi, whose radical approach and “I won” attitude finally caught up with them. Even with massive majorities and a filibuster-proof caucus, they could not jam down a massive government intrusion into the private sector through Congress. They overreached, and now they have been exposed as radicals in the middle of an election year.

If Obama and the Democrats are smart, they’ll get this behind them fast and try to minimize the damage that will inevitably occur on Election Day.

Given their actions over the past year, though, I fully expect to see them continuing to beat this dead horse until they’ve managed to do the impossible and rehabilitate the Congressional Republicans.