WASHINGTON — At 10:20 p.m. Sunday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was imploring House members to vote yes for a landmark health care bill that a little more than an hour later would pass, after a long day of final wrangling.<\/p>\n
Rep. Debbie Halvorson (D-Ill.) and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) sat in the front row on the Democratic side as Pelosi spoke. Across the aisle where Republicans sit — almost as far away from Pelosi as a lawmaker could get — I spotted GOP Illinois Senate nominee Rep. Mark Steven Kirk in the last row, ducking out after a few minutes.<\/p>\n
Rep. Debbie Halvorson (D-Ill.) and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) sat in the front row on the Democratic side as Pelosi spoke. Across the aisle where Republicans sit — almost as far away from Pelosi as a lawmaker could get — I spotted GOP Illinois Senate nominee Rep. Mark Steven Kirk in the last row, ducking out after a few minutes.<\/p>\n
Then, as Pelosi was wrapping up her remarks, I saw Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.) entering the chamber — as it happened through a door on the Republican side — and he headed toward the Democratic seats. But Lipinski paused in the middle aisle, glanced up at the packed House galleries and never crossed over to stand with the other Democrats, leaving right away. The scene that unfolded seemed apt.\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Then, as Pelosi was wrapping up her remarks, I saw Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.) entering the chamber — as it happened through a door on the Republican side — and he headed toward the Democratic seats. But Lipinski paused in the middle aisle, glanced up at the packed House galleries and never crossed over to stand with the other Democrats, leaving right away. The scene that unfolded seemed apt.<\/p>\n
The health care bill — President Obama’s top legislative priority — passed on a 219-212 roll call, with three votes to spare, in essentially a party line vote. Kirk and all Republicans voted no. Lipinski was the only Illinois Democrat to vote no, one of 34 Democrats siding with the GOP.<\/p>\n
The anti-abortion Lipinski had a slew of objections to the bill’s provisions and was not convinced that the executive order Obama signed Sunday provided enough safeguards against federal money being channeled to clinics providing abortions or to insurance plans offering abortions.<\/p>\n
The Obama executive order helped win the vote of other anti-abortion lawmakers. Lipinski said in a statement, “I do not believe the last-minute effort to address these concerns through an Executive Order is sufficient because there is every indication that federal courts would strike down this order, and the order could be repealed at any time in the future.”<\/p>\n
I’m told that Democratic leaders in Washington and Illinois were “confounded” by Lipinski’s opposition to the bill because he is a diabetic who would find it tough –maybe impossible — to find insurance coverage if he were not in Congress. The bill — which still faces votes in the Senate before it can be sent to Obama to be signed, bans insurance companies from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions.<\/p>\n
But Lipinski’s vote was his vote. Democratic leaders were furious with him earlier Sunday, when it was not yet clear they had enough votes. Lipinski told me last week he did not think he would hurt his career within the House — where relations with leaders and the White House can matter — by voting no.<\/p>\n
“Dan has a tremendous amount of resolve,” Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.) told me when we talked in the Capitol. “And great desire to vote what he considers to be in his district’s interests. He often does not waver in his convictions.”<\/p>\n
Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) was a holdout for a while — he wanted a better deal for drug coverage — but he said he never “would stand in the way of this historic and much-needed reform bill.” Rush said about Lipinski, “It’s like we live in two different cities. Maybe we do.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON — At 10:20 p.m. Sunday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was imploring House members to vote yes for a landmark health care bill that a little more than an hour later would pass, after a long day of final wrangling. Rep. Debbie Halvorson (D-Ill.) and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) sat in the front row on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4220,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-458708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4220"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458708\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}