The TPMDC headline reads for Brian Beutler‘s story reads: “House to Senate: We’re Ready On Health Care If You Are“.

There are two angles to Beutler’s story. One, when it comes to Plan B — which involves the House passing the Senate bill as is, followed by the Senate making key changes via the budget reconciliation process — House members don’t exactly trust the Senate to keep its end of the bargain. So they are not willing to commit to move forward on Plan B unless Senate Democrats can provide credible assurances that they will indeed pass a bill to make the agreed-upon changes.

Two, Beutler suggests that all that’s holding up heathcare reform now is the Senate providing the necessary assurances, that House Democratic leaders are optimistic about passing Plan B once the assurances are provided. This seems to be quite a stretch. When Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Whip James Clyburn last did a head count, they weren’t close to having the votes for Plan B. That doesn’t seem to have changed. There is no indication — in the TPMDC story or otherwise — that they now have the votes.

All we have is four leading House Democrats — James Clyburn, Jan Schakowsky, who heads the House progressives’ health care task force, Henry Waxman and Anthony Weiner — offering statements of conditional support for Plan B. But some of the statements are pretty tepid. And none of these people comes close to suggesting that there’s any real indication that a majority of House members is anywhere near ready to buy into Plan B (even with assurances from the Senate).

Here’s what the four leading House Democrats actually said.

Schakowsky:

That (i.e. Plan B) would be a good option as far as I’m concerned. I could support it. Reconciliation. Majority rule.

Anyone who calls that statement grounds for believing that the House is ready for healthcare reform if the Senate is, is not being terribly honest. Anyone who is being honest will concede that it’s just a statement of personal support, and a tepid one at that. Schakowsky doesn’t suggest that she’s speaking on behalf of House progressives, and she certainly doesn’t suggest that she’s confident there will be enough votes for Plan B in the House even if Senate assurances are forthcoming.

Waxman:

I think reconciliation’s an appropriate way to proceed on reconciling the budget requirements. It’s available to us. That was very specifically handled that way when we passed the budget.

Once again, all he’s saying is there’s nothing wrong with trying to use the budget reconciliation process. Not a word about whether he thinks House members are ready to support Plan B.

Weiner:

We have to wait to see what they think they can pass (the Senate, that is). The sense they give us is that Reid doesn’t know from issue to issue what they can get votes for.

Clyburn is the only one who actually speaks to the number of votes in the House:

I thought we could get the votes in the House to pass the [Senate] bill if fixes to the Senate bill can be done.

“I thought we could get” is a long way from expressing confidence that something has now changed, and the votes are now there.