Stupak: There's No Deal, And I Won't Agree to a Promise to Fix the Bill in the Future

The Weekly Standard

Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak said yesterday at a town hall meeting in his home state, "I'm more optimistic than I was a week ago" that a deal could be reached to pass a health care bill that bans public funding of abortion. Some speculated that this meant Stupak was ready to cave. "Obviously they don’t know me," Stupak said in an interview this afternoon with THE WEEKLY STANDARD. "If I didn’t" cave in November, "why would I do it now after all the crap I’ve been through?"

"Everyone’s going around saying there’s a compromise—there’s no such thing," Stupak said. What's changed between this week and last, Stupak went on, is that he had his first real conversation with Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Congressman Henry Waxman about fixing the bill.

But Stupak made one thing very clear: While he's optimistic, there's a lot of confusion about how the House would structure a bill that he could vote for. Stupak says "the majority party can get it done. Where there’s a will there’s a way." But: "No one has said here's how you do it, here's the legislative scheme."

Stupak affirmed that he will not settle for an agreement to pass the bill now and fix the bill's problems on abortion later: "If they say 'we’ll give you a letter saying we'll take care of this later,' that’s not acceptable because later never comes."

Stupak highlighted other problems with the bill: The president's proposal has not been translated into legislative language and it still leaves some special deals in place. "If you look at the President’s proposal," Stupak said, "it says that the Cornhusker agreement is out, but the Louisiana Purchase is in."

"Members don’t have a whole lot of appetite to vote for the Senate bill as a stand alone bill--that’s for sure," Stupak said. "If you're going to correct these inequities in the Senate bill, you better tie bar it to something. No one wants to vote for a freestanding bill so they can be accused of voting for a special deal for Nebraska on Medicaid."

Stupak added:

The president still hasn’t put forth his proposal. I mean, other than the 11 pages [of changes], we’ve seen nothing in writing. It’s different than what the Senate did. So do they take three [measures] and merge it into one and stick it in a bill called reconciliation, or just do the Senate bill as a stand alone?

“You have to tie-bar it or substitute it or something," Stupak said of the legislation. By "tie-bar," Stupak means that all the fixes, including his amendment on abortion, would pass or fail all at the same time. Stupak says that congressional leaders are "going back and forth in different ways" to find a compromise. But again, "it is so confusing," he said, "on what the parliamentary procedures are going to be" to make the fixes.