Senate braces for weekend voting on healthcare overhaul
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The Senate began its day with much fury over healthcare reform, but Democrats were hoping to build momentum for serious votes this weekend.
“We’re going to finish this healthcare bill before we leave for the holidays,” Majority Leader Harry Reid said this morning on the floor of the Senate.
He then slammed the GOP – again – for being obstructionist, for example by using parliamentary procedures to have an amendment read aloud Wednesday, using up time.
”We’re going to finish healthcare whether the other side likes it or not,” he insisted.
The delay of several hours caused by the reading isn’t really important for the lost time but does indicate the hardening of political lines as the Senate moves to the healthcare endgame. It is politics, not policy, that is the background music to the current cacophony.
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky acknowledged as much in his opening remarks.
“There is no justification for this blind rush except the political one,” McConnell said. Democrats plan “to close debate this weekend,” he continued. “No American who hasn’t been in the majority leader’s conference room has seen the bill.”
The real battle going on is still the struggle to find 60 votes on the Democratic side while Republicans seek to find a way to slow things down in the hope that the legislative process runs out of time because of the holidays.
It is unclear whether the Democrats can hold their caucus together. McConnell this morning quoted Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) as questioning the need to act before Christmas, the Democrats’ goal. She is one of two Republicans the Democrats are wooing.
The Senate resumed discussion about the healthcare bill this morning, but today’s expected votes will deal with the defense appropriations bill.
--Michael Muskal
