Hoyer to Pelosi: Man Up!

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer apparently believes it's better to provoke a fight and lose than win most of what he wants because he's barking at Nancy Pelosi about the pork that was cut out of the Porkulus Bill. He wanted to force a filibuster in the Senate:

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) is pushing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to take a harder line with the Senate after a trio of Republican senators forced Congress to trim billions from the $787 billion economic stimulus package.

It’s not clear how far Pelosi is willing to go in standing up to the Senate — or, realistically, what effect Hoyer and Pelosi combined could have in the face of the 60-vote hurdle Senate Democrats face.

But after last week’s stimulus votes, Hoyer called on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to force Senate Republicans to mount actual filibusters if they want to stand in the way of bills “so that the American people can see who’s undermining action.”

And in a private conversation with Pelosi, aides say Hoyer reminded the speaker that they’d talked previously about tolerating Senate strong-arming on the stimulus and on children’s health insurance — two Democratic priorities — but then holding their own on future legislation.

Pelosi promised a bipartisan Congress. Obama promised a bipartisan, or even post-partisan, administration.

Both lied.

The article also points out a rather disturbing item that was stricken from the Children's Health Care bill in order to win GOP support:

Democrats in the House allowed the Senate to strip language from the children’s health care bill that would have banned any new construction of specialty hospitals — the smaller, physician-owned facilities that typically cater to a more upscale clientele than do the larger community hospitals.

So, a bill that purportedly promoted children's health would actually deny better, specialized health care to those children whose parents could afford it. By stopping these specialized hospitals the bill would have actually provided less health care to both children and adults.

It's never been about providing health care, it's about spreading misery equally.