A senior Democrat House aide in a position to know tells me they are still short on GOP votes on the bailout, er, rescue plan. Unless more names of Republicans committed to switching their votes are produced by tomorrow the vote will be postponed till the weekend to give Bush and the GOP more time to convince their members to vote for the deal. Fearful of a Monday repeat, Dems are refusing to bring the bill to the floor unless the have the actual GOP whip counts – including names – showing they have enough votes, the aide said. This is what Pelosi said earlier today:
We want to see if we still have the 141 votes we had before. And that seems to be coming in pretty well. But we haven’t — you know, what you have to remember is members like to see the bill before they give you an answer. And they saw what happened in the Senate last night. But now they’re getting a closer look. And as they review it, then we can go forward to see what the vote will be. And we’re not going to take a bill to the floor that doesn’t have the votes. I’m optimistic that we will take a bill to the floor.
The question is: when?
Update: Another senior Democratic House aide tells me that they are still pushing like mad to get this thing done tomorrow. At a 6pm caucus meeting tonight, Pelosi underlined to House Democrats the importantance of voting on this bill tomorrow. “The concensus of the caucus is to move tomorrow,” the aide said. “Many Dem supporters spoke in favor of bill.” So, now question is: does this mean the Dems would be willing to make up any GOP shortfall with votes of their own?
Update2: Majority Leader Steny Hoyer puts out this below statement. Seems the show will go on.
“The House will consider the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act tomorrow morning.
“I am hopeful that there will be bipartisan, majority support for this bill that is critical to stabilizing our nation’s economy for all working Americans.”