Final vote on Senate health-care reform bill set for Thursday morning

Final vote on Senate health-care reform bill set for Thursday morning
By Paul Kane and Lori Montgomery
copyright by The Washington Post
Tuesday, December 22, 2009; 4:24 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/22/AR2009122200864.html?hpid=topnews

Senate leaders reached a deal Tuesday to move up a final vote on President Obama's health-care legislation and a vote on a temporary increase in the national debt ceiling, allowing a brief Christmas Eve session to settle the last issues on the 2009 congressional calendar.

With snow and ice storms threatening the Midwest, Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) agreed to hold a vote on final passage of the Senate health bill at 8 a.m. Thursday. Without the deal, senators had faced the possibility of the the health-care debate stretching out until almost 10 p.m. Thursday -- what would be the first Christmas Eve session of the Senate since 1963.

Such a time line would have made traveling home all but impossible until Christmas morning, and the threat of bad winter weather over airports in Chicago, Detroit and Minneapolis -- which serve as destinations or connection points for roughly half the Senate -- created an extra sense of urgency to close the chamber early.

In exchange for an earlier departure time, Democrats agreed to allow the Republicans to offer up to four amendments to the debt limit legislation when it comes up for a longer-term extension in February.

The agreement came hours after the Senate cleared a set of key procedural hurdles on the health-care bill with more party-line votes.

In three votes Tuesday, senators voted 60 to 39 to move forward with the legislation, setting up a third and final 60-vote hurdle for Wednesday. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) was absent. His opposition to the legislation is widely known, and his vote would not have affected the outcome.

Senators have been handling a packed schedule of debate and votes over the last five days, with tempers simmering Tuesday morning on the Senate floor. Reid pleaded for cooler heads to prevail in the holiday season. "I would hope that everyone would go back to their gentlemanly ways," Reid said, invoking the plea of Los Angeles resident Rodney King following the 1992 riots in that city: "Let's just all try to get along."

It was the second time in five days that the Senate -- now in its 23rd straight day of legislative action, all of which has included debate on health care -- has convened in the wee morning hours to hold votes. In addition to the votes Tuesday, which began at 7:30, and a 6:45 a.m. vote Saturday, there were two votes that began shortly after 1 a.m. -- on a defense bill Friday, and on the health-care package Monday.

Lacking the votes to block the health-care bill, Republicans continued to heap scorn on the many concessions made to wavering Democrats in the quest to advance the package.

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) took to the floor to lambaste Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) for securing better payments from the federal government for their state's Medicaid program, which could add up to $300 million. Some have called that side deal the "Louisiana Purchase," but Vitter's speech was titled the "Louisiana Sellout," a particularly sharp critique of his home-state colleague.

On Monday, Republican Party Chairman Michael S. Steele accused Democrats of "thumbing their nose and flipping the bird to the American people." Conceding that the Senate bill is virtually unstoppable, Steele said in a conference call with reporters: "I intend to have my foot on the throats of the Democrats on this issue and hold them accountable." Democrats seeking reelection in 2010, he warned, "can look for their pink slips."

Reid responded by telling reporters he was "disappointed" by Steele's remarks, calling them "crass and such a terrible example for the youth of this country."

But Reid defended the long list of revisions to the bill, which were needed to secure the backing of moderate Democrats such as Sen. Ben Nelson (Neb.). Those changes contained additional Medicaid funding for specific states including Nebraska, exemptions for certain insurance companies and tighter restrictions on abortion coverage. "There are 100 senators here, and I don't know that there's a senator that doesn't have something in this bill that isn't important to them," Reid told reporters. "If they don't have something in it important to them, then it doesn't speak well of them."

The majority leader compared the legislation to a defense bill, typically thick with earmarks, many benefiting specific companies. "That's what legislation's all about," said Reid. "It's the art of the compromise."

The raise in the debt ceiling has become a political football for Democrats. Republicans have turned what is normally a rote annual exercise into a tough legislative maneuver this year, criticizing Democrats and the White House for spending "like drunken sailors" on Obama's domestic agenda without making any formal commitment to reining in the federal deficits.

Democratic deficit hawks have demanded either a bipartisan commission that would have power to make spending cuts or the implementation of pay-as-you-go rules that would require Congress to fund any new spending or tax cuts by increasing revenues, through cutting spending in other programs or hiking other taxes.

With those Democrats refusing to back a larger expansion of the debt limit, those talks dragged on throughout the fall and early winter without any resolve, so Democratic leaders decided to pass a temporary extension worth almost $300 billion. That will allow the Treasury to continue to manage the national debt through February, when Congress hopes to act on a longer-term fix.

Staff writers Shailagh Murray and Perry Bacon Jr. contributed to this report.