A crucial first Senate vote on President Barack Obama's health care overhaul in a rare Saturday night session looms as a test of Democratic unity and the president's prestige.Landrieu's already been bought off, so she's not going to be the one to stop this thing. Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas is the last hope. She knows her re-election chances will drop to near zero if she votes for this thing, but there are plenty of rich Democrats out there who could promise her something better in exchange for her vote. I don't think we can count on any Democrat to oppose this thing.
Democratic leaders are optimistic of success, but they need every Democrat and both independents to vote "yes," and two moderates remained uncommitted ahead of the roll call, which is expected around 8 p.m. The vote will determine whether debate can go forward on Majority Leader Harry Reid's 2,074-page bill to dramatically remake the U.S. health care system over the next decade.
Most everyone would be required to purchase insurance under Reid's legislation, and billions in new taxes would be levied on insurers and high-income Americans to help extend coverage to 30 million uninsured. Insurance companies would no longer be allowed to deny coverage to people with medical conditions or drop coverage when someone gets sick.
The two holdouts are Sens. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. A third centrist, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, announced Friday that he'd be supporting his party on the test vote, while cautioning that it didn't mean he'd be with them on the final vote.
"It is not for or against the new Senate health care bill," Nelson said. "It is only to begin debate and an opportunity to make improvements. If you don't like a bill, why block your own opportunity to amend it?"
If that same reasoning holds with Lincoln and Landrieu, Reid, D-Nev., will have the 60 votes he needs to prevail in the 100-seat Senate. The 40 Republicans are unanimously opposed.
Landrieu has made comments suggesting she'll support the move to debate, but Lincoln, who faces a difficult re-election next year, carefully avoided taking any public position Friday.
As I said in the previous post, elections matter.
The argument tonight from the Democrats will be that this vote isn't about the merits of the bill, but just about opening debate, and after all, who is against debate? In reality, according to a recently released report, 97% of the bills that pass this first test vote in the Senate go on to be approved by the entire Senate, so this vote is more than just a vote about whether or not to open debate.
I was hoping that perhaps Joe Lieberman would be the one to oppose this since he has come out strongly against the public option that's included in this bill, but he has only promised not to let the merits of the bill come up for a vote, not to block initial debate. He won't be the one to stop it.
And Republican Tom Coburn, who at one time promised to force the Senate to read the bill aloud, a process estimated to take 34 hours, has backed down. That's just sad.
So, what happens after tonight's vote? If it passes, as I expect it will, the fight starts in earnest as Democrats will be crafting all sorts of amendments designed to buy votes of scared candidates facing 2010 elections, and the Republicans will need to do everything they can to shine a light on the insidious nature of this legislation and turn the public against it more than they already are. Public support for Obamacare is tumbling, but listening to the public is something Democrats aren't interested in.
But what if the bill fails? There are many that think that Harry Reid will pull out all the procedural stops and will take the bill down the reconciliation road which requires only 51 votes, and we'll have open warfare in the Senate. Reid probably realizes now that his re-election is in such serious trouble that nothing he can do at this point will change it. Like the kamikaze's of old he's going to go out with a bang.
Stay tuned. Oh, and don't miss the photo of Harry Reid expressing his true thoughts about the taxpayers of this country.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment