Senate healthcare debate shifts into first gear
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The Senate debate over healthcare overhaul has become a debate over what there is to debate.
While everyone is in a holding pattern, awaiting the Congressional Budget Office scoring of the latest compromise among Democrats, the debate on the floor has turned as sour as milk left on the radiator.
“It has been a frustrating process,” Sen. Jim DeMint, (R-S.C.) said today. “While the majority has us here on the floor debating one bill, they’re behind the closed door over here creating a whole new bill with periodic announcements on what might be in it. It’s kind of like a magician, you know, who gets you looking at one hand and the sleight of hand is doing the magic with the other hand.”
The Senate is in day 12 of its healthcare debate and may vote later today on some amendments. It is also debating a $447-billion spending measure that needs to be voted on to fund the government. It includes six spending bills in one Christmas-wrapped package to pay for about a dozen government departments and agencies for fiscal 2010.
The spending bill will certainly be acted on first.
Many Republicans echoed DeMint’s complaint that they haven’t been told what’s in the Democratic compromise, but Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the chamber, said his colleagues have only been briefed in broad outline. They too don’t know the details, which depend on the CBO report.
Absent real information, senators have been complaining about which side is slowing down the process more; Democrats have pledged to work extra hard to make their goal of passing a bill by Christmas.
“We are not going to quit,” Durbin said today. “We can’t go home for Christmas until it is done. We have got to stay and do our job.”
Amid the debate over the debate, there was a moment between Durbin and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) when they did exchange views. “We are coming perilously close to a debate, and that rarely happens,” Durbin noted.
The subject was how much the Republicans have been allowed to be involved in preparing healthcare legislation.
McCain embraced Durbin’s comment about the process, saying he hoped there would be more debating moments, but perhaps about the substance of the bill as well.
-- Michael Muskal
