Republicans tried to introduce amendments to the reconciliation bill that were designed to be hard for Democrats to vote against, reasoning that ANY change in the bill would force it to be returned for another vote in the House.
All those blatant political maneuvers seem to have failed, because the Democrats stuck together and voted against them, no matter how 'mom and apple pie' they were. However, they also identified a couple of minor technical flaws in the bill that have to be changed. They don't affect the substance at all, but do technically change the bill, so it will have to go back to the House.
As Ryan Grim points out on Huffington Post, this opens the possibility of now adding in a public plan option. Since it has to go back anyway, why not put in the pubic option, which would now need only 50 senate votes instead of 60? If the senate passes it -- and they might have the 50 votes necessary -- then it could sneak back in and be passed by the House, as well.
This would be an ironic outcome of the Republicans' attempt to kill the bill -- only to open the door to including the public plan.
This could be a golden opportunity. Will Obama push for it? Or will he play it safe? Will the senate do it anyway?
Ralph
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No dice, apparently. The reconciliation bill was passed by the Senate this afternoon by a vote of 56-43 -- without the public option plan. Now it goes back to the House for a quick vote to fix the minor flaws as ruled on by the senate parliamentarian.
ReplyDeleteMy guess is that the White House didn't want to take any chances of jeopardizing the bill in hand, which might have led to some defections in the House vote.
Three Democratic senators voted against the legislation, Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Ben Nelson of Nebraska.
OK. It's done. For better or worse.