It's Friday, and Henry Waxman's Tired of Debating

This week's winner of our Jo Moore award, given every Friday to an official who hopes to bury a story, comes from that bastion of patient deliberation: the House of Representatives. This week, Rep. Henry Waxman decides he's tired of debating in committee and takes his health bill straight to the House floor.

At 9:55 am (EST) on September 11th, just after the second World Trade Center was struck, Jo Moore, former British press officer sent an email to her colleagues which read “It’s now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury. Councillors’ expenses?.”  It is in her honor that I identify one story every Friday afternoon that our wonderful government tried (and failed) to bury. This week’s story that the White House really hopes you don’t see comes from that bastion of patient deliberation that is the United States House of Representatives.  This afternoon, Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark), who heads the Blue Dog Democrats health care task force, announced that following a week of negotiations with fellow Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee, negotiations have collapsed between the conservative/moderate Democrats and the committee’s Democratic leadership.  This development leaves the Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Ca) without the votes needed to move the bill out of committee. The collapse is yet another sign of the lack of agreement amongst Democrats about how to proceed with regard to health care reform, which the president has put squarely atop his political agenda. But if this sign were not enough, Chairman Waxman, in a move that reeks of desperation told reporters that there is “no alternative” but to have the health care legislation bypass the committee process entirely and instead head straight to the House floor for a vote. Waxman suggested that he has no other choice since allowing the bill to stay in committee could see the Blue Dogs join the moderate Republicans in opposition.  This, Waxman suggested to reporters, was completely unacceptable:

I won't allow them to hand over control of our committee to Republicans…. I don’t see what other alternative we have [to bypassing a committee vote], because we're not going to let them empower Republicans on the committee.

So much for letting the democratic process play out…