I’m having as much fun as the next guy with the nuclear option debate underway in the Senate, but on the other side of the Hill, the chance for a real breakthrough on federally-funded stem-cell research is at hand.
Emboldened advocates of lifting current limits on embryonic stem cell research appear within reach of a breakthrough victory in the House as early as next week, a vote that would put fresh pressure on the Senate and White House to funnel significant federal money into the emerging field.
House backers of legislation that would loosen restrictions imposed by President Bush in 2001 say they have 201 co-sponsors and enough private commitments to put them at or over the 218 votes needed to pass — a prospect that has so bitterly divided the GOP that two Republicans nearly came to blows on the House floor Monday night.
Rep. Michael N. Castle (R-Del.), a co-sponsor of the measure, said that if the vote on the bill were held today, it would pass.
The Republicans’ intra-party squabbles seem to center around a centrist-sponsored poll done in some members’ districts without their knowledge. It led Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) to almost literally attack Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) on the floor this week, before Renzi’s colleagues pulled him away.
But the polling dispute is secondary to the realization that this fight is slipping away from conservative opponents of stem-cell research. And there’s not much they can do about it.
In the House, proponents not only have the votes, but Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) has promised to attach the language to appropriations bills or legislation reauthorizing the National Institutes of Health, where it will be tough to stop it
In the Senate, the far-right can’t even count on a GOP filibuster.
In the Senate, where Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) is under pressure to schedule a floor vote on an identical bill, proponents have warned that they may have the 60 votes needed to kill a filibuster. “Whether he brings it to the floor or not, I think we’re going to get it to the floor,” said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah).
Yes, that’s Orrin Hatch taking on Bill Frist.
Apparently, it’s helped to have opponents of abortion rights lobbying on behalf of the bill, noting that one can be both anti-abortion and pro-stem-cell research.
Advocates are winning support from some antiabortion leaders with the argument that “cells in a Petri dish” that would otherwise be discarded are not comparable to a fetus that “would become a person in the normal course of events,” said John C. Danforth, an ordained minister and former Republican senator who served as Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations.
“There is only one argument against stem cell research, and that is meeting the demands of the religious right,” he said in an interview.
And speaking of the religious right, Tom DeLay and far-right opponents of the Castle-DeGette stem-cell bill have come up with a last-ditch effort to derail the legislation by crafting a competing bill that would offer less promise to those who would benefit from the medical research by limiting the research to umbilical-cord blood. It doesn’t appear to matter; the real bill already has too much support.
By the way, in case you hear him saying it, DeLay is running around telling people that “every doctor” in the Republican caucus opposes the Castle-DeGette legislation, proof that medical experts reject the need for stem-cell research. That’s not true — Rep. Joe Schwarz (R-Mich.), a doctor, is one of the bill’s most vocal proponents.