Healthcare Reform Passes Major Milestone in Senate

Rob Stengel
NYU Local
Nov 23, 2009

Healthcare reform overcame another major barrier Saturday, as the Senate voted to open debate on their own healthcare bill. You may remember that just two weeks before, the House passed a final healthcare bill. However, unlike the House vote two weeks ago, the Senate has just voted to open debate on the bill. That means weeks of amendments and Republican stalling could, and likely will, await us before the Senate passes the bill.

Senate Majority Leader, Democrat Harry Reid, now faces the difficult task of corralling the necessary 60 votes to pass a final bill. Why is this so difficult, considering the Senate managed to pull together 60 votes to open debate? The answer lies with Maine’s two Republican Senators and Connecticut independent Joe Lieberman. Lieberman has pledged to oppose any bill which contains a public option. The NY Times reports that Maine Senator Susan Collins has received visits from high-level Obama administration officials. Since the vote to open debate passed with exactly 60 votes, the minimum number to invoke cloture, Harry Reid will need to keep EVERY single vote he had on Saturday. Since it seems likely that Lieberman will vote against a final bill, that means Reid must find a vote to take his place.

Of course, the Democrats could move to pass healthcare reform through an obscure Senate procedural rule called reconciliation, which provides for the passing of bills which affect the budget with a simple majority vote. If Reid were to move for reconciliation, he could afford to lose up to 9 votes. With that kind of margin, he could easily ignore the blathering of Joe Lieberman, and would not need to compromise on essential parts of the bill to win the support of Maine Republicans. With moderate Democrats like Ben Nelson of Nebraska expressing dissatisfaction with the “liberal-ness” of the current bill, reconciliation could prove very handy.

Yet despite all the problems ahead, this vote is reason to celebrate. Healthcare reform bills have finally been presented to both houses of Congress. A bill has already passed the House, and passage of some kind seems likely in the Senate. Before the summer of next year, it looks like President Obama will have serious healthcare reform on his desk in the form of a final bill. It looks like it is, significantly, up to Harry Reid to decide what the bill looks like.