Healthcare Legislation Passes Procedural Vote

By Scott Dahlman

National healthcare legislation took another step forward on Saturday night, clearing a procedural hurdle with the needed 60 votes. The vote on the motion allows the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” to be debated on the Senate floor.  This is the Senate’s version of healthcare reform, and is the result of Senator Harry Reid (D-Nevada) combining 2 separate bills passed by the Senate HELP and Finance Committees. The legislation still has a long way to go, but this vote is not insignificant.

When the Senate has finished debating the bill, it will take 60 votes to end debate and prevent a filibuster. Without 60 votes the bill would not be available for final passage without using gimmicks that are politically unpopular. For this reason, the vote to start debate, requiring 60 votes, was a big test to see if it would even be possible to get the number of people needed to move reform forward. Since Republicans are opposed to current reforms, it meant the motion would need every Democrat, and both Independents to vote in favor to reach the magic number of 60. This was no simple task, and although 60 votes were secured, at least 5 senators have stressed that their vote was to begin the debate on reforms, not to support the current bill.

The Senate is scheduled to begin debate on Nov. 30 after the Thanksgiving break, and optimists would like to see passage of a bill before the end of the year. It is important to note that even if the Senate passes a bill by then, there is still the reconciliation process to go through. Since the Senate bill will end up being at least slightly different than the House passed legislation, there will need to be a conference committee to iron out the differences. This can often be a long and arduous process, and with an issue as sweeping as healthcare reform, it would likely take weeks, and possibly months to finish.

So, while continuing to move forward, there is no guarantee that anything will end up coming out of the Senate. Currently some moderate Democrats, and Independent Joe Lieberman, have said they will not vote for a bill that contains a “public option” which current legislation does. The problem Senator Reid will run into is that by eliminating the “public option” he will gain the moderates, but lose some of his most liberal members’ votes. In shepherding through this bill, Reid will need to keep all of his caucus on board, and that is not an easy task.

The next few weeks will be crucial in Obama’s push for healthcare reform, and things are looking more difficult every day. Recent polling shows that only 38% of voters now support the healthcare plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats, and the longer this process takes, the more opposition it will likely face.