Without the Senate’s 60-vote supermajority, health care reform is simply dead this time around. From The Washington Examiner:
Congressional Democrats are abandoning their massive health care package in the face of strong public resistance manifested in the election of Republican Scott Brown of Massachusetts to the
Senate.Brown’s victory Tuesday halted the intense backroom negotiations aimed at merging competing House and Senate versions of President Obama’s health plan.
The bills, developed over more than a year of legislative work, would have expanded coverage for the poor, created a national health insurance plan and paid for it with increased taxes and Medicare
cuts.“Both of those bills, as they stand now, are dead,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., after a caucus meeting with panicked House Democrats, who characterized Brown’s win and the message it sent as their party’s Hurricane Katrina. “I got the sense that people want to move on and not look back at the House or Senate bill.”
