Talking Points Memo is reporting that John Podesta has a message for the Senate on how to build momentum for Plan B (Senate bill plus improvements):
"My own view...is that you have to insure that the Senate goes first," John Podesta told me after an event with leading union figures at the Center for American Progress this morning. "You have to have the fix before the package can pass the House. I just didn't see any way, if you will, that the House was going to bet" on the Senate acting later.
This seems exactly right to me. If the fixes are standing at the ready, it becomes much, much more difficult for any Democrat in the House to stand in the way of passing the Senate bill as the core.
As Podesta further says,
"It seems me that asking the House to take a flier on what the Senate can do--we've kind of watched that move all along the past year, it hasn't worked out that good. So it's incumbent upon the Senate to really go first," Podesta added.
His views are echoed by SEIU president Andy Stern:
His view is echoed by SEIU President Andy Stern, who said all the other options on the table--a scaled down reform effort, or a multiple bill strategy--ought to be taken off the table.
"It seems to me to be the easiest path--the only path--forward. To do something comprehensive both for jobs, the deficit, and health care is to take the Senate bill as it is as a foundation, to find ways, whether through reconciliation or other legislative processes to fix the things that I think a lot of people agree need to be fixed, both now in the House and the Senate."
It’s also instructive that Stern thinks Plan B is the only option. Anything else would be too watered down -- it would appear Democrats opted to punt on first down. And that potentially creates a bloodbath in November.