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Will Waxman's Deal with the Blue Dogs Survive?

3:02 PM, Jul 30, 2009 • By JOHN MCCORMACK
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After liberal Democrats forced the Energy and Commerce Committee to delay its health-care bill mark-up last night over objections to the deal that Chairman Henry Waxman had cut with four Blue Dogs on the committee, mark-up started back up again this morning and will continue until midnight, Capitol Hill aides say. Mark-up will resume tomorrow, and the bill is expected to pass the committee. "Mr. Waxman says he has a deal. We don't know if he has a deal," a Republican source on Capitol Hill tells me. "We don't think he would continue the mark-up without a deal."

Again, Waxman has reportedly cut a deal simply with enough Blue Dogs on the committee, and the expectation right now is that liberals will cave during tomorrow's committee vote. Whether or not this deal will satisfy enough moderate Democrats to win passage on a floor vote is unclear. Per ABC's Rick Klein:

[Democratic Congressman Jim Clyburn] said he could not guarantee that the concessions negotiated into that bill by conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats would survive in a final product. "We have absolutely no idea," Clyburn, D-S.C., told me and ABC's Jonathan Karl. "Remember this bill has to be squared with the product of two other committees. The Ways and Means Committee finished their markup a couple of weeks ago. Then the Education and Labor Committee has finished its markup. We have three different tracks running in the House. Now, when the Energy and Commerce Committee finishes, we'll try to meld these three documents into one, and what that final document will be is certainly not going to be exactly what comes out of the Energy Commerce. People understand that."

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