Health Bill Passes Key Test in the Senate With 60 Votes

[Linnea]

New York Times - Dec 21st, 2009

WASHINGTON — After a long day of acid, partisan debate, Senate Democrats held ranks early Monday in a dead-of-night procedural vote that proved they had locked in the decisive margin needed to pass a far-reaching overhaul of the nation’s health care system.

The roll was called shortly after 1 a.m., with Washington still snowbound after a weekend blizzard, and the Senate voted on party lines to cut off a Republican filibuster of a package of changes to the health care bill by the majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada.

The vote was 60 to 40 — a tally that is expected to be repeated four times as further procedural hurdles are cleared in the days ahead, and then once more in a dramatic, if predictable, finale tentatively scheduled for 7 p.m. on Christmas Eve.

Both parties hailed the vote as seismic.

Democrats said it showed them poised to reshape the health system after decades of failed attempts.

“Health care in America ought to be a right, not a privilege,” said Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut. “Since the time of Harry Truman, every Congress, Republican and Democrat, every president, Democrat and Republican, have at least thought about doing this. Some actually tried.”

Republicans said that the bill was fatally flawed and that voters would retaliate against Democrats at the polls in November.

“It’s obvious why the majority has cooked up this amendment in secret, has introduced it in the middle of a snowstorm, has scheduled the Senate to come in session at midnight, has scheduled a vote for 1 a.m., is insisting that it be passed before Christmas — because they don’t want the American people to know what’s in it,” said Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee.

Mr. Alexander added, “Our friends on the Democratic side seem determined to pursue a political kamikaze mission toward a historic mistake, which will be bad for the Democrats, I am convinced, but unfortunately even much worse for our country.”

Each side blamed the other for the extraordinary series of votes — at dawn Saturday, after midnight Monday, at dawn again on Tuesday, at 1 p.m. on Wednesday and finally on Christmas Eve, when most Americans will be sequestered for the holiday.

The Democrats charged the Republicans with obstinately throwing every procedural obstacle in their way, including filibusters and the full 30 hours of debate allowed under the rules after each filibuster is broken by a vote of 60 senators.

The Republicans charged the Democrats with recklessly rushing to adopt a dizzyingly complex 2,700-page bill that would affect virtually every American, and would reshape one-sixth of the nation’s economy at a cost of $871 billion over 10 years.

“If the Republicans want to exercise every single right they have under the rules, they can keep us here until Christmas Eve, no doubt about it,” said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa. “But to what end, I ask? To what end? We’re going to have the vote at 1 a.m. that requires 60 votes, and then why stay here until Christmas Eve to do what they know we’re going to do?”

Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said he and his colleagues had a duty to fight until the last minute.

“There is nothing inevitable about this,” Mr. Cornyn said. “The only thing I think inevitable about it is in the light of the unpopularity of what is being jammed down the throats of the American people, there will be a day of accounting. We don’t know when that day of accounting will be. Perhaps the first day of accounting will be Election Day 2010.”

Adoption of the legislation is not a certainty.

The Senate bill, once completed, must be reconciled with a bill adopted last month by the House, and there are substantial differences between the two. The House measure, for instance, includes a government-run health insurance plan, or public option, that was dropped from the Senate bill.

The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has said the House would not just accept the Senate bill. And some Senate Democrats have warned that they could turn against the bill if changes made during negotiations with the House are not to their liking.

Given the late hour, the White House did not issue a statement after the Senate vote.

The health care legislation, which President Obama has called his top domestic priority, seeks to extend health benefits to more than 30 million people who are currently uninsured. The bill would require nearly all Americans to obtain health insurance, or pay financial penalties for failing to do so, and it would provide federal subsidies to help moderate-income Americans buy private coverage.

About half of the people who would gain coverage, some 15 million, would do so through a broad expansion of Medicaid, the federal-state insurance program for low-income Americans, and growth in the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

To pay for the new coverage, the bill would impose an array of fees and taxes, including an increase in the payroll tax for individuals earning more than $200,000 and couples earning more than $250,000 and a new excise tax on high-cost insurance polices. The bill also calls for major reductions in government spending, by slowing the growth of Medicare.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said that the $871 billion cost of the bill would be more than offset by the new revenues and cuts in spending, so that it would reduce future federal budget deficits by $132 billion between 2010 and 2019.

The outcome of the Monday morning vote was effectively decided on Saturday, when Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, the last holdout, announced that he would support the bill and Mr. Reid unveiled his final “manager’s” package of changes. Mr. Reid’s amendment included provisions aimed at winning over Mr. Nelson and others. Republicans derided the changes as akin to bribery.

On Sunday, any lingering doubts were put to rest. Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia, who voted in favor of several Republican amendments to the health care bill, issued a statement saying he would support the measure. And Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, who had been in intense talks with the White House, issued a statement saying she would vote no.

But the late-night session was not without drama, thanks to the tremendous snowstorm on Saturday that buried much of the Northeast, and caught some senators away from Washington with limited travel options. Because Amtrak was experiencing severe delays, a government plane had to be sent to retrieve Senators Frank R. Lautenberg and Robert Menendez, the New Jersey Democrats.

Because the Democrats nominally control the votes of 60 senators — 58 Democrats and two independents aligned with them — which is the precise number needed to overcome filibusters, the absence of even one lawmaker would have changed the outcome of the vote and would probably have forced Democrats to miss their deadline of adopting the health care legislation by Christmas.

The most senior senator, Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, who turned 92 years old last month and uses a wheelchair, was invoked by both sides as a victim of the parliamentary warfare that has the Senate convening at all hours of the day and night.

The 1 a.m. Monday vote was on a motion to cut off debate on Mr. Reid’s manager’s package. A simple majority vote to approve the package is scheduled for roughly 7 a.m. on Tuesday.

The middle-of-the night session had a surreal quality to it. The chaplain, Barry C. Black, who opened the contentious Sunday session of the Senate with a prayer, did so again at 12:01 a.m. to officially begin a new legislative day.

For many Democrats, the landmark vote summoned the memory of the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a champion of universal health care for his entire career, but who died in August before achieving that goal.

Mr. Kennedy’s widow, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, sat in the front row of the spectator gallery to watch the vote. Seated behind her was the secretary of health and human services, Kathleen Sebelius, and the director of the White House Office of Health Care Reform, Nancy-Ann DeParle.

“The historic moment before us is the easiest choice and perhaps the most historic vote we may ever cast as United States senators,” said Senator Paul G. Kirk, Democrat of Massachusetts, who was named to fill Mr. Kennedy’s seat. “Is this a bill of real reform that Ted Kennedy would champion and vote for? Absolutely, yes. Ted Kennedy knew real reform when he saw it, and so do I.”

But Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, who was one of Mr. Kennedy’s closest friends in the Senate and who worked with him on many bipartisan health care bills over the years, said Democrats had failed to live up to Mr. Kennedy’s spirit of cooperation.

“The historic blizzard in Washington yesterday was a perfect symbol of the anger and frustration brewing,” Mr. Hatch said. “I don’t know of one Republican who is going to vote for this. If you can’t get 75 to 80 votes on something that is this important for this much reform, we should start over and do it on a step-by-step basis.”

The Sunday session was one of the most bitter in memory, as the pre-determined outcome of the impending vote seemed only to frustrate lawmakers on both sides as they clashed in speeches on the Senate floor.

More at link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/us/21vote.html

[Linnea]

Washington Post - Dec 21, 2009 1:40 AM

Senate Democrats won a milestone victory early Monday in the health-care debate, approving a procedural motion to move the reform legislation to final passage later this week, and without a single vote to spare.

The 60-40 tally, taken shortly after 1 a.m., followed 12 hours of acrimonious debate and required senators to trek to the Capitol in the aftermath of a snowstorm. The vote was the first of three procedural hurdles that Democrats must cross before a final vote on passage of the measure, now scheduled for Christmas Eve.

A challenging closing round of negotiations, culminating in a series of compromises with moderates, threatened to overshadow the significance of what Democrats believed they were close to achieving: the most significant health-care legislation since Medicare and Medicaid were created in 1965.

"This bill is the product of years of hard work, study and deliberation," said Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), one of the principal sponsors of the package, in remarks on the Senate floor before the vote. "These are the reforms for which Americans have been waiting."

Not a single Republican voted to advance the measure, including Sen. Olympia J. Snowe, the one GOP lawmaker who had backed an earlier version. The Maine moderate was lobbied heavily by President Obama, but announced Sunday night in a statement that she remained "concerned" about the measure, while objecting to "the artificial and arbitrary deadline of completing the bill before Christmas."

Though admittedly outflanked, Republicans declined to relent. In the hours before the cloture vote, GOP lawmakers took turns condemning the bill in impassioned speeches on the Senate floor. Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) called it a "historic mistake." Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) accused Democrats of producing "a mess" that represented "a blind call to make history.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who ran against Obama for president last year, vowed to "fight until the last vote," a threat that could keep senators at their desks until well into the night on Dec. 24.

Senators voted from their desks, a formality observed only for the most important bills. And despite the late hour, the Senate visitors gallery included numerous guests, including Victoria Reggie Kennedy, widow of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.); Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius; and senior White House aides Jim Messina and Nancy-Ann DeParle.

Obama and Democratic leaders, meanwhile, struggled to contain an uprising on the left. Responding to liberals, who have criticized Senate leaders as caving in on such issues as abortion coverage and the idea to create a government-run insurance plan, the White House and its allies acknowledged in newspaper op-ed pieces and on television talk shows that the $871 billion Senate legislation is not ideal.

But they argued that the measure would transform the health-care system, both for people who have insurance and for 31 million Americans who otherwise would go without.

"This is major reform," White House senior political adviser David Axelrod said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." "It's not perfect. And over time, it may improve," he said.

Senate Democrats prepared for a final round of votes on Majority Leader Harry M. Reid's revised package before sending the measure to a House-Senate conference committee. After a grueling stretch of dealmaking, Reid (D-Nev.) announced this weekend that he had won the support of Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), giving him the 60th vote needed to overcome a Republican filibuster.

Continues at link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... id=topnews

[HB3]

"This is major reform," White House senior political adviser David Axelrod said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." "It's not perfect. And over time, it may improve," he said.

See? There you go. The whole point of the bill is chaos.

[rumike]

New York Times - Dec 21st, 2009
WASHINGTON — After a long day of acid,

Wow, so that's what's slowing things down in Congress.

[Linnea]

Originally posted by rumike
Wow, so that's what's slowing things down in Congress.

heh heh

Good one, Rumike.

[Linnea]

Originally posted by HB3
See? There you go. The whole point of the bill is chaos.

Do not let chaos be the enemy of the possible, or as Teddy Roosevelt said:

'Do what you can, with what you have, where you are'.

[Joolz]

Wow, so that's what's slowing things down in Congress.

Ha! We just watched Taking Woodstock (a really fun film, BTW) tonight, so your comment was particularly funny to me!

[SETIsLady]

Wow, so that's what's slowing things down in Congress.

[Psychicwolf]

This is such a bad bill in so many ways. And I am afraid they are going to pass it. I doubt the House will be able to get much in the way of "fixes" during reconciliation.

This bill will impact every single American in some way. And it is not middle class friendly. I don't have any objection to raising my taxes for the benefit of others, but how many middle class workers can afford the tax hit they are going to take with this? Consumers will have less discretionary income to support America’s economy which depends on consumer spending, no matter how right or wrong that dependance is. And some of the fiscal chicanery involved here is appalling.

The 5% increase in the Medicare Payroll Tax for single earners over $200,000 and joint earners over $250,000 will generate $53.8 billion in new taxes over the next ten years. That would be great if it went into the Medicare Trust Fund, but that money is allocated to the General Fund and can be spent on anything.


A 40% Excise tax on high value healthcare insurance plans such as $8,500 for Individual and $23,000 for a couple. This tax is projected to generate $149.1 billion in new revenue over the next ten years. The government will not collect this excise tax because companies will not buy these healthcare plans. Check with your employer and see what they are paying for your healthcare plan. Expect them to either lower your plan to provide fewer benefits or expect to pay the excise tax.

A more complicated and less transparent tax increase is the change of the Medical Expenses Deduction from 7.5% of Adjusted Gross Income to 10%. The floor for seniors will be maintained at 7.5%. It is a tax on having an expensive illness. Patients will not be able to deduct medical expenses to the degree they could in the past. And with greater restrictions on HSAs and FSAs in the bill, expect to pay medical expenses with AFTER tax dollars.

The bill will eliminate the income tax deduction of Medicare Part D (prescription drug plan) and generates $5.4 billion dollars in new taxes over the next ten years. Penalizes seniors.

The cry right now is, let's get this passed and they can "fix it later". Hogwash, it will never be fixed.

[racehorse]

This is such a bad bill in so many ways. And I am afraid they are going to pass it. I doubt the House will be able to get much in the way of "fixes" during reconciliation.

This bill will impact every single American in some way. And it is not middle class friendly. I don't have any objection to raising my taxes for the benefit of others, but how many middle class workers can afford the tax hit they are going to take with this? Consumers will have less discretionary income to support America’s economy which depends on consumer spending, no matter how right or wrong that dependance is. And some of the fiscal chicanery involved here is appalling.

The 5% increase in the Medicare Payroll Tax for single earners over 0,000 and joint earners over 0,000 will generate .8 billion in new taxes over the next ten years. That would be great if it went into the Medicare Trust Fund, but that money is allocated to the General Fund and can be spent on anything.


A 40% Excise tax on high value healthcare insurance plans such as ,500 for Individual and ,000 for a couple. This tax is projected to generate 9.1 billion in new revenue over the next ten years. The government will not collect this excise tax because companies will not buy these healthcare plans. Check with your employer and see what they are paying for your healthcare plan. Expect them to either lower your plan to provide fewer benefits or expect to pay the excise tax.

A more complicated and less transparent tax increase is the change of the Medical Expenses Deduction from 7.5% of Adjusted Gross Income to 10%. The floor for seniors will be maintained at 7.5%. It is a tax on having an expensive illness. Patients will not be able to deduct medical expenses to the degree they could in the past. And with greater restrictions on HSAs and FSAs in the bill, expect to pay medical expenses with AFTER tax dollars.

The bill will eliminate the income tax deduction of Medicare Part D (prescription drug plan) and generates .4 billion dollars in new taxes over the next ten years. Penalizes seniors.

The cry right now is, let's get this passed and they can "fix it later". Hogwash, it will never be fixed.

Excellent post, Psychicwolf.

[Linnea]

Yes. The Health Care Reform Bill is a bad bill. Not the bill the majority of Americans, or the Democrats wanted. The legislation the Democrats originally crafted (with almost zero sincere co-operation by Republicans) was taken apart. The public option was defeated, and even the compromise Medicare Buy-in at age 55 which seemed a reasonable and beneficial compromise, was stripped out.

Why is this a bad bill? The answer lies with the Republicans who refused to even consider a reasonable health care bill, and whose focus has been only on defeating health care reform.

Without bi-partisan support, of even moderate Republicans, as would be expected with such a sweeping reform, the Democrats were held hostage to the opportunistic demands of the few callous 'Democrats', any one of whom, due to this political landscape, had the power to kill the legislation.

Harry Reid and the democrats had one option, pass a health reform bill. Reid's skillful manuvering has brought the health reform bill through the partisan shoals, with as much of the intended reform as could be acheived.

If you want to know why this is a bad bill, ask Senator McConnell.

[Cynthia Lynn]

Yes. The Health Care Reform Bill is a bad bill. Not the bill the majority of Americans, or the Democrats wanted. The legislation the Democrats originally crafted (with almost zero sincere co-operation by Republicans) was taken apart. The public option was defeated, and even the compromise Medicare Buy-in at age 55 which seemed a reasonable and beneficial compromise, was stripped out.

Why is this a bad bill? The answer lies with the Republicans who refused to even consider a reasonable health care bill, and whose focus has been only on defeating health care reform.

Without bi-partisan support, of even moderate Republicans, as would be expected with such a sweeping reform, the Democrats were held hostage to the opportunistic demands of the few callous 'Democrats', any one of whom, due to this political landscape, had the power to kill the legislation.

Harry Reid and the democrats had one option, pass a health reform bill. Reid's skillful manuvering has brought the health reform bill through the partisan shoals, with as much of the intended reform as could be acheived.

If you want to know why this is a bad bill, ask Senator McConnell.

Yep.

These Republicans are behaving very badly. They've even turned off some of my Republican relatives back home.

Hopefully, the Democrats can improve it over time.

[megman]

Time to buy stock in insurance companies.

[racehorse]

If you want to know why this is a bad bill, ask Senator McConnell.

Senator McConnell could certainly answer that and has many times.

The American people will not blame Republicans because Democrats with an overwhelming majority in both the Senate and House pass an atrocious health care bill without any GOP support.

As John McCain , Mitch McConnell, and others have noted Democrats now "own" this "horrible" (in McCain's words) legislation and the American people know it.

[Linnea]

Originally posted by racehorse
Senator McConnell could certainly answer that and has many times.

The American people will not blame Republicans because Democrats with an overwhelming majority in both the Senate and House pass an atrocious health care bill without any GOP support.

As John McCain , Mitch McConnell, and others have noted Democrats now "own" this "horrible" (in McCain's words) legislation and the American people know it.

You more than advance my point here, racehorse.