It's official.  The Senate parliamentarian has ruled that if the House of Representatives passes the health care bill approved by the Senate last December, President Obama will have to sign it into law before any amendments can be made. 

That puts House Democrats in a real bind.  Many of them hate the Senate bill -- for what some consider pro-abortion provisions, for sweetheart deals for individual states, for taxes on high-end health care plans -- but they will have to vote for it and then hope the Senate will fulfill an unwritten promise to fix the worst problems in the "reconciliation" process, which only requires a bare majority of Senators voting aye. 

House Democrats unhappy with the Senate version are demanding assurances that the White House won't just sign the Senate bill and abandon the controversial reconciliation gambit -- leaving House Democrats to defend a very flawed product in a tough political environment this fall.  Republicans are gleefully distributing a list of the special-interest deals that benefited individual states and were stuffed into the Senate bill -- including not only the infamous "Cornhusker Kickback" for Nebraska, but the "U Conn" for Connecticut, the "Handout Montana," the "Louisiana Purchase," and the "Gator Aid" deal that singles out 800,000 Florida seniors as exempt from key Medicare cuts in the bill. 

Speaker Nancy Pelosi's hunt for votes was further complicated yesterday after she decided to abandon an attempt to find compromise language on abortion to satisfy about a dozen pro-life Democrats led by Michigan Rep. Bart Stupak, who only voted for the bill last year because it explicitly banned taxpayer funding of abortions.  She is now gambling she can win over enough of the 37 House Democrats who voted "no" last year to make up for the loss of several Stupak Democrats.