Speaker Nancy Pelosi just flip-flopped on her insistence about having Congress stay in to work on health care reform before the August recess. Here’s what she said below:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that the House can go home for its August recess without passing a massive overhaul. Pelosi dismissed concerns expressed by many Democrats that a month-long delay could give opponents more chances to rally opposition to the bill.

"I’m not afraid of August," Pelosi said. "It’s a month."

That is different from what she said Wednesday and contradicts one of her fellow Democratic House leaders. On Wednesday, Pelosi had indicated that she supported staying into August, saying, "70 percent of the American people would want that.

It seems that Majority Whip Clyburn didn’t agree with Speaker Pelosi before the news conference. Is he going to stick with what he said below?

But shortly before Pelosi’s news conference House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.), the No. 3 Democrat in the House, said the House should "postpone, if not cancel, our August recess" until the healthcare bill is passed.

"If we leave here without doing this, nobody is going to interpret that we’re going home to listen," Clyburn said. "They’ll say we’re going on vacation without having done it."

 He’s right. We’ll see Congress as abdicating their duty to deal with the passage of health care reform by going home in August. You know what happens when they go home? These Members go home, they get hit by hundreds of TV ads from the murder-by-spreadsheet industry, and they get phone calls from angry voters about "socialized health care." Then they come back, scared to pass real health care reform, so they end up passing health care reform that may not include a public option or a national insurance exchange.  

Shame on Speaker Pelosi and other Democratic members of Congress for abdicating their duty on the passage of health care reform.  Please sign the petition to let them know they shouldn’t go on vacation and keep up with the phone calls as well!