House health care reform bill passes

Today the house passed an historic health care reform bill.

The roll-call vote is right here.

The debate was fluid during the day. At one point Bart Stupak (D-MI) pushed through an amendment that will ban a public option from paying for abortions. This is clearly an anti-choice amendment (after all private insurance companies routinely cover abortion) but it also had the effect of forcing Stupak and several other anti-choice Democrats to support the bill once the amendment was included and counting the votes at that moment Pelosi pounced and pushed for a vote on the whole bill.

The vote was 220-215 in favor of the bill. However, as Lyndon Johnson once said he liked winning with small margins because then he knew he'd gotten everything out of it that he could. Pelosi got the votes of 219 Democrats, one more than she needed, and an unexpected gift-- one Republican who braved the wrath of John Boehner and voted for the bill (Anh Cao, R-LA, who represents an overwhelmingly Democratic district and got elected at all last year mainly because his opponent was corrupt congressman Willie 'cold cash' Jefferson.) After voting with the party line on the stimulus as Boehner tried to prevent any display at all of bipartisanship, apparently being asked to go against the wishes of his constituents again was too much for Cao.

I'm not thrilled with the Stupak amendment, but strategically it makes sense-- given the closeness of the vote it is entirely possible that the whole vote could have failed without Stupak and his compatriots. And as the debate moves forward to the much tougher Senate phase at least the Stupak amendment cuts off one line of attack for the right.

However, all in all, this is a good day.

About the only time I'm congratulating a Republican for beating a Democrat

Very, very rarely would you ever see me express any satisfaction about a Republican beating a Democrat, especially a Democratic incumbent.

But I am happy about a huge upset win in a runoff in New Orleans tonight, in which Republican Anh "Joseph" Cao upset Democratic incument congressman William Jefferson.

Jefferson, of course, is facing a trial after being indicted on federal corruption charges after FBI agents found, among other evidence, $90,000 in cash in his refrigerator. Just as a lot of Republicans were not so secretly happy when the Alaska vote count finally resulted in the departure of convicted felon Ted Stevens from the Senate, a lot of Democrats (and I count myself as one of those) are happy to see Jefferson go. In fact, I don't think I've ever said anything nice about my own indicted congressman, Rick Renzi but I will say that I congratulate Renzi on at least being smart enough to not run for re-election this year. Ann Kirkpatrick (yes, I finally have a REPRESENTATIVE who actually does REPRESENT me!) beat someone else instead, sparing Renzi the final bit of humiliation that were the lot of Stevens and Jefferson this year.

I strongly suspect that in this overwelmingly Democratic and African-American district in New Orleans, Cao will be a one-term congressman and will be beaten in two years by a Democrat (just by one who thinks that refrigerators are for storing groceries.)

But in the meantime, Ted Stevens will be able to appeal his conviction, and Rick Renzi, William Jefferson and retiring California Republican John DooLittle will be able to focus on their upcoming corruption trials all without the distraction of carrying out congressional business.

And it's about time.