Mr. President, One More Thing Before You Go

Filed in National by on March 13, 2010

Well, it looks like we finally might be getting down to it. After all this time, there might soon be an actual health care reform bill for the President to sign. According to Karen Tumulty at Swampland, the House is looking to schedule a vote on the Senate’s health care bill for next Friday or Saturday. The main hold-up at the moment is the CBO score on the reconciliation package. Assuming that comes back in the next few days, and with favorable numbers, the vote can be scheduled.

The original most recent deadline of St. atrick’s Day (in honor of O’Bama’s heritage?) was set primarily because the President was scheduled to fly to Indonesia and Australia on Wednesday. Due to the historic and imminent nature of the House vote, Obama has decided to delay his departure to the land of the vegemite sandwich until Sunday.

How exactly the House will pass the legislation is still up in the air. They may just simply vote on the Senate bill, send the reconciliation package to the Senate, and trust that the upper house will promptly pass it. But, since the two houses don’t much trust each other and sound like two teenagers hanging up the phone (“You pass it first….No, you pass it first…No, you pass it first…OK, we’ll pass it together — one, two, three….”) there are a couple little maneuvers the House could try. Either way, it looks like maybe next Saturday we’ll all be glued to C-SPAN to watch the vote. We will all be glued to C-SPAN, right?

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A lifelong Delawarean who has left-of-center views -- and he's not afraid to use them.

Comments (4)

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  1. just kiddin' says:
    March 13, 2010 at 3:25 pm

    Hill reports: These are the a**holes in Stupaks camp.
    Marion Berry (Ark), Joe Donnelly (TX),Steve Drihaus (oh), Dan Lupinski (Il), Dale Kildee (MI), Marcy Kaptur (oh), Brad Ellsworth (Ind), Jerry Costello (Il), Kathy Dalhlkemper, Charlie Wilson (oh) and Oberstar. Dems feel Oberstar will defect.

  2. cassandra_m says:
    March 13, 2010 at 3:26 pm

    Glued to CSPAN, huh? Guess that is the reason I need to work on installing a new hard drive to my computer this weekend, I guess.

    There’s alot of energy focused on passing this right now — this is from Kevin Drum:

    So unions are spending heavily in support of the bill, MoveOn’s members support it 83%-17%, Nancy Pelosi is putting the screws on her caucus members, Harry Reid is doing the same in the Senate, and President Obama is finally pulling out all the stops too — both in front of the cameras and behind the scenes. Among the netroots, Markos Moulitsas says it’s time to stop screwing around and pass the bill, and virtually every liberal member of the wonkosphere favors it as well. Ditto for church groups and civil rights groups. That’s an enormous amount of firepower, and that’s why, despite all the last-minute posturing and kvetching and preening, I think this bill is going to pass. In the end, that’s just too much pressure to bear. Nancy Pelosi is going to get her 218 votes.

    Guess we’ll know soon.

  3. Scott P says:
    March 13, 2010 at 4:02 pm

    I’ve also seen where unions like SEIU are starting to crack down and threaten to primary Dems who say they’ll vote No.

  4. Phuny says:
    March 15, 2010 at 12:09 am

    gotta love the Slaughter Solution, “We’ll pretend we passed it and just have the president sign the law”

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