House Lawmakers Take Positions In The Health Overhaul Debate
News reports examine House lawmakers and their roles in health reform.
The Hill: [B]eginning in June, when other House leaders were still focused on passing a climate change bill, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) was beginning his quest to ensure that a very ideologically diverse caucus and a definitively liberal leadership met somewhere in the middle on a bill to reform healthcare. ... In the end, 39 Democrats voted against the House bill, 24 of them members of the Blue Dog Coalition. Just three more defections would have sunk the bill" (Allen, 11/20).
The Hill: "The Rev. Jesse Jackson's public rebuke of Rep. Artur Davis has injected race into a healthcare debate marked by disputes on immigration, abortion and euthanasia." Davis is the only member of the Congressional Black Caucus to vote against the Democratic health-overhaul bill. "We even have blacks voting against the healthcare bill from Alabama. You can't vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man," Jackson said. Davis is more conservative than other Congressional Black Caucus members, and most Democrats. He is now running for governor of a conservative state, and subsequently "drifted further to the right" (Soraghan, 11/19).
