Deadline will be missed......again.

The White house has hinted that there will not be an up or down vote by their deadline of March 18th.  What a shocker!  The amount of deadlines that have come and gone for reform has to be in the teens by now, so I don't think anyone is truly surprised by this.

One surprising note however, is that democratic leadership will not be changing the language in the bill to disallow the use of public funds to pay for abortions.  Rep. Stupak is said to have anywhere from 8 to 12 pro-life democrats that will not vote for the bill unless the abortion language is changed.  This is a very interesting change of events. Most believed they would have to change the language to have any shot in passing this bill, even though most thought it would be very hard if not impossible to do so in reconciliation.

Perhaps, Pelosi believes these pro-life democrats will sign on last minute because they see health reform slipping away.  Perhaps she believes she can pick up votes somewhere else? However, these would have to be representatives that voted "no" originally.  There would have to be some pretty heavy bargaining and promising going on in order for that to seem plausible. I believe it will come down to one thing; do democrats believe something is better than nothing?

One thing is for sure, you can never count Nancy Pelosi out, should be an interesting next couple of weeks.