Rapid Denouement Expected on Stem-Cell Bill
Roll Call Staff
If one could MapQuest this week’s embryonic stem-cell debate, a very short and speedy set of directions would pop up. Senate debates bill; Senate passes bill; House enrolls bill; President Bush issues his first-ever presidential veto. All within three days.
Barring any startling changes of heart, the Senate this afternoon will approve the House-passed legislation to expand federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research with more than 60 votes. The bill, H.R. 810, will move within a matter of hours to the House for a procedural clearance and then on to the Oval Office where, after a year of waiting, it essentially will die with a presidential stroke of the pen.
That veto, assured on Monday by a White House Statement of Administration Policy, is expected by Wednesday. It should stick since House Members lack the 290 votes needed to override the executive rejection. (And if the House can’t override the veto, the support level in the Senate won’t matter.)
Getting from here to there will be an all-too-quick trip, and that’s exactly how Republican leaders and the White House have designed it. They want to bring the bill up and push it out, and in doing so, put to rest a controversial issue that divides Republicans, puts the president at odds with many in his party and even pits some conservative Senators against each other.
It remains unclear exactly how many Senators will vote for H.R. 810 today, although many suspect the tally will end up in the mid- to upper 60s. Most of those favorable votes will come from Democrats, with perhaps one-third of the Republican Conference joining them.
Senior Senate aides said Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), who supports H.R. 810, knew his best and only move was to bring the bill up now, even though it is an election year, and hold the vote quickly to try to minimize the political fallout as far from Nov. 7 as possible. Republicans know a majority of Americans support embryonic stem-cell research, and they expect Democrats to exploit the issue at every turn.
They also knew Democrats were going to try to draw out the debate by attaching the stem-cell legislation to countless other measures throughout the remainder of the year if a debate wasn’t granted. The House approved the stem-cell bill in May 2005, and supporters have been ramping up the pressure for Senate consideration since then.
“Once the House sent us the bill, the die was pretty much cast because the supporters have had enough to get it through regardless,” said a Senate Republican aide. “Frist tried to get it up last year and has been trying for most of this year. This was the earliest he could get it up and out of the way before the election.”
Republican leaders crafted an agreement under which three stem-cell-related measures will get a vote this afternoon. In addition to H.R. 810, Senators are also set today to approve two Senate-written measures, widely supported and largely uncontroversial, to ban the development of human embryos for research purposes, and another to expand federal funding for stem cells not derived from human embryos.
Many believe the latter two bills will at least give Bush and other Republicans who don’t favor the more contentious H.R. 810 two positive votes — and the ability to tell constituents that they have initiatives of their own in play.
Others, however, argue that the two other bills also will provide conservative GOP Senators yet another opportunity to make the case against embryonic research, which many call both unethical and amoral.
Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), one of the leading opponents of H.R. 810, keyed in on an emotional argument on Monday leading into the beginning of the floor debate, rolling out parents of children who were born through frozen embryos. Against a backdrop of tearful mothers and fathers, Brownback expressed confidence that Bush will keep up his longstanding opposition to embryonic stem-cell research.
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