The Rats are Already Jumping Ship

People often ask me why I started this blog. And why I stick with it. I do it because there are days, like yesterday, that I know, even if only a cog in the machine, that I'm making a difference. That we're making a difference.

Democratic leaders and the White House insisted ahead of the vote they aren’t preparing to desert health care. They admit they’ll have to come up with a new strategy to win passage, but said they didn’t want to allow one Senate race to take them off-course on the president’s top legislative item for the year.

But several House members said Tuesday night that they had no interest in pursuing the most likely scenario for moving ahead with a bill — approving the already-passed Senate version of health reform in the House – and some said President Barack Obama should step back and start over.

In fact, early signs of split emerged as the polls closed in Massachusetts – between leaders like House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer who said “the Senate bill is better than nothing,” and individual members who didn’t want to swallow the Senate’s version of health reform whole. And with the winning majority for a health reform bill in the House so thin, almost any defections at this point would be fatal to reform’s prospects. "I've maintained for months now that incremental reform in the health care package would make much more sense from my perspective," said California Rep. Jim Costa, one of the last Democrats to vote "yes" on the House bill.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31693.html#ixzz0d7b7Kgkq