On the Campaign Trail with Ed Tibbetts

Earlier this week, I posted a video that showed U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley being jeered on the floor of the House last Saturday when he argued against a Republican maneuver to block a vote on the health care bill.

I didn’t get a chance to ask Braley’s reaction, but Aimee Steffen at the Waterloo Courier talked to him about it Tuesday.

Braley said he felt “abused,” according to the Courier article, which was posted last night.

More from the article:

“It’s very uncommon, because there’s supposed to be decorum on the House floor,” Braley said during a stop at Waterloo’s Alpha Express Inc. on his Health Care Reality Tour. “But it made me very proud to be speaking up for patient safety, and to talk about what is not being talked about on the other side of the aisle.”

An abortion amendment added to the House’s health care bill has roiled the debate, but U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, expects changes to be made in the Senate. He added he doesn’t think the highly charged issue will stop passage of the measure, which faced an uncertain future even before the abortion language was added.

Harkin told reporters on a conference call today the House provision, which backers say is aimed at preventing federal funding from being used for abortions, goes farther than that and actually rolls back existing law.

Democrats in the House allowed the amendment in an effort to woo moderates to vote for the bill.

Since then, pro-choice groups and lawmakers have objected. Some Democrats have even said they won’t vote for a bill with the provision.

Harkin, who chairs the Senate’s health committee, said he didn’t think the party would have to go as far as the House did in getting moderate Senate Democrats to sign on.

“People will jockey for position and they’ll try to get things done, but in the end we’ll have the votes,” he said.

Harkin said the House’s abortion provision could be construed to prohibit people who receive any federal money, including a housing subsidy, from getting an abortion.

He didn’t go so far as to say he’d vote against any bill that included the provision, however. In fact, he said legislators shouldn’t draw lines in the sand. “I’m not drawing lines,” he said.

Really interesting video of U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Iowa, being targeted by Republican catcalls late into the health care reform debate Saturday night.

Braley was chosen to respond to a Republican parliamentary maneuver that would have blocked a vote on the health care reform bill.

Republicans were arguing for caps on lawsuit awards, and Braley, a Waterloo lawyer, was the Democrats’ choice to respond.

Shortly into this remarks, Republicans began catcalling him, chanting “trial lawyer.” For a time, he had to stop and wait for order to be restored.

The parliamentary maneuver, called a motion to recommit, was defeated 247-187.

Sen. Tom Harkin, never one to mince words, seems to be warning Sen. Joe Lieberman that if he joins a Republican effort to block a vote on a health reform bill his chairmanship of the Senate’s Homeland Security Committee might be at risk.

According to the Iowa Independent, Harkin predicted Lieberman would come around, but also noted what might be the consequences if he doesn’t.

“As I said before, when it comes down to getting the 60 votes necessary to pass this bill, I do not believe that Joe Lieberman would want to be the one person who caucuses with the Democrats … to bring this bill down. I don’t think he wants to go down in history like that,” Harkin said.

“He still wants to be a part of the Democratic Party although he is a registered independent. He wants to caucus with us and, of course, he enjoys his chairmanship of the [Homeland Security] committee because of the indulgence of the Democratic Caucus. So, I’m sure all of those things will cross his mind before the final vote.”

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley is complaining the Obama administration may be breaking the law with a web site that has a button asking visitors to “state your support” for passing heath insurance reform this year.

The button leads to a form letter expressing support for a series of reform principles and lets them leave their names and contact information.

Grassley sent a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, saying, “the use of the official HHS.gov Web site for activities that seem to be nothing more than government propaganda raises many serious questions,” according to a story posted last night on Roll Call’s web site.

An HHS spokesman, Nick Papas responed: “Healthreform.gov is a valuable resource for the American people and we look forward to discussing this resource with the Senator,” Roll Call says.

A lot is being made of U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe’s vote in favor of the health care bill this week, but Sen. Tom Harkin said this morning her vote isn’t needed to shut off debate, which he considers the key test.

“I’m confident we’ll have it with or without Sen. Snowe,” the Iowa Democrat said.

Interesting take, given all the praise and solicitation that’s being given her, including by President Barack Obama.

Harkin is the new chair of the Senate’s health committee, which passed a health care bill earlier this year. As such, he’s taken a more prominent role in the negotiations that will send a merged bill to the floor, perhaps next week. (It should be noted that Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd is still the panel’s lead guy on the issue).

Harkin took questions from reporters this morning on a conference call and didn’t seem to feel compelled to stick to the Senate Finance Committee’s bill, which was approved earlier this week.

Some of the speculation is that a final bill will have to stick close to the less expensive Finance bill, which also has no public option.

Harkin takes a different view. “I think we have quite a bit of room to maneuver,” he said.

He added it would be “almost unconscionable” to mandate that all individuals get insurance and not give them the option of bypassing private insurance companies so they could buy from a government-run plan.

As for bi-partisanship, Harkin said it’s not as important as passing an effective piece of legislation.

“It seems to me we have to do what we believe is right and the correct course of action,” he said. Republicans, he says, have been given a chance to weigh in but still are opposing reform.

As expected, U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley voted against the health care reform bill that went before the Senate Finance Committee today.

Grassley’s reasons are stated elsewhere on our web site. But I found this little tidbit interesting.

Before the vote, Grassley, the ranking Republican on the committee, told reporters on a conference call, “It’ll pass on a — probably a party-line vote of 13-10.”

Of course, it mostly was. But apparently, Grassley figured Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, would vote with the rest of the GOP, too.

She didn’t, which of course has Democrats hoping she does the same thing on the floor.

The conservative Club for Growth says it will begin airing a new television ad in Iowa targeting Sen. Chuck Grassley. The ad, slated to begin Thursday, urges Grassley not to “cave in” to Democrats on health care reform.

Similar ads are running in Wyoming and Maine, the home states of two other Republican senators involved in bipartisan health care reform talk.

Here’s a story from the Associated Press that’s bound to turn the head of some Iowa Democrats who’ve been laboring for a public health insurance option.

The AP says a bi-partisan group of senators is “edging closer to a compromise that excludes a requirement many congressional Democrats seek for large businesses to offer coverage to their workers. Nor would there be a provision for a government insurance option, despite Obama’s support for such a plan.”

The AP quotes unnamed sources in its article.

Can’t help but think back to the caucuses when the only real argument about a health overhaul on the Democratic side was whether there would be a requirement that individuals purchase health insurance.

Now, they’re talking about not only dropping the public option but also the large business mandate.

Of course, this is just the Senate Finance Committee, of which Iowa’s Chuck Grassley is the top Republican, but it’s a sign of the way things seem to be drifting.