That Didn’t Take Long! Barney Frank Does a 180 on Health Care

Just the other night Barney Frank was ready to kill ObamaCare. Shocking, I know. Well, it turns out he was just kidding or something.

In an interview with TPMDC this evening, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) reversed course–apologizing for a harsh statement he released last night in the wake of the Massachusetts special election, and saying, explicitly, that if he’s assured the bill will be fixed down the line, he’d vote for the Senate health care bill.

“I’m easy. I’m strongly inclined to vote for the thing, even though I don’t like the health care tax thing,” Frank told me. “But you know, I was ready to vote for the bill when I had people on the left yelling at me not to vote for it. So you know I’ll vote for any of it… to try and move the process along.”

Frank was quick to qualify his remarks, though, noting that a vote from him would require promises from leadership and the White House that at least one controversial element of the legislation would be fixed in subsequent legislation. “I take it back…I would want assurances that we were going to amend the health care tax piece,” Frank said. ….

Frank went on to explain that he put the statement out at night when he was upset, and he shouldn’t have released a statement so quickly. He then outlined his plan to destroy health care in America.

Frank is talking, roughly, about Plan B, which Democrats have been discussing since the electoral situation in Massachusetts began looking dire. How exactly would that work? Frank explained:

“You have to pass the Senate bill as is and the President signs it. Then people have to be assured that you can get the amendments through the House and the Senate,” Frank said. “Because then the argument would be, ‘Look, the bills already passed so now the question is whether you’re willing to amend it or not.’”

One way to do that would be through the filibuster proof budget reconciliation process. “The alternative would be, people are talking about using reconciliation: 51 votes to get the agreed on amendments in the Senate.”

The problem, Frank noted, is that reconciliation can only be used for some measures–revenue and spending measures, with implications for the federal budget–and not others. Some elements of the fix, then, could be passed through reconciliation, requiring only a simple majority in the Senate. The trick would be to get the other contentious measures–abortion, immigration–fixed through the regular order.

“Those would need 60 [in the Senate]–and the question is can you get the House votes without the assurance that you’re going to get those.”

So what if it fails? What if, despite these hypothetical assurances, the House can’t muster the votes for the bill? Frank says, look to Maine.

“I just had somebody in Maine tell me this–I wonder whether Olympia Snowe wants to be the person who says nothing happens,” Frank told me. “It’s one thing for her to vote no when she thought it was going to pass.” ….

Related: Dick Morris believes ObamaCare will pass, but that Obama will never pass another significant piece of legislation again. He also talks about the “myth of the moderate democrat” and that now any Republican can beat any Democrat anywhere. That’s small consolation if this health care bill passes.

Scott Brown’s win means that any Republican can win at any time in any place. Such are the fortunes to which the Democratic Party has fallen under the ministrations of President Barack Obama. Will this latest defeat, coming on top of the loss of New Jersey and Virginia, reduce the conceit of this man? Will it cause him to second guess the course he has staked out for his party and our nation? Not bloody likely.

Stay tuned until the end when Morris says he’s glad Obama won the Nobel for peace because he certainly won’t win it for economics. Isn’t that the truth?

Via Breitbart

Via memeorandum