Reid Expects Saturday Test Vote On Health Care Reform Bill...Does He Have The Numbers?

Reid announces Saturday test vote



Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the first key test vote on his $848 billion health care bill will be taken Saturday, but he declined to say whether he has 60 senators lined up to vote yes.

"We will find out when the votes are taken," he told reporters at a midday event.

Reid also said he would not use a procedural maneuver known as reconciliation to pass the bill - a shift from previous statements when he would say all options are on the table.

"I'm not using reconciliation," he said flatly. The manuever would have allowed him to pass major parts of health reform with a simple majority of 51 votes.

The Senate Democratic leadership gathered Thursday to celebrate the introduction of its health care reform bill, vowing repeatedly to deliver it to the president's desk.

"We will succeed," said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). "There will be a bill signed into law that all of you, of America can be proud of."

Reid’s plan would expand coverage to 94 percent of Americans through a government-run health insurance option — allowing states to opt out — and other features, all while reducing future federal deficits by $130 billion over the next 10 years, according to a Congressional Budget Office report.

But Republicans have threatened to try to stall debate, and one Republican senator, Orrin Hatch, said the American people should “rebel.”

"If you can't get 70 or 80 votes on a bill that affects one-sixth of the American economy, you know it is a lousy bill,'' Hatch said on Fox News Channel Thursday morning. "This is a lousy bill that is going to cost American tax payers like mad for the rest of our lives, if they happen to pass it. I hope the American people rebel."

Reid now needs just 60 votes, and all eyes were fixed on three centrists who still have not formally committed to allowing the floor debate to begin in the vote on Saturday – Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu and Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln.

Landrieu originally said she would declare her intentions Thursday but now says she’ll decide by Friday. Nelson has signaled a willingness to let debate proceed. And Lincoln remained a holdout.

Other centrists, like Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, are on board for Saturday’s vote. On Thursday, Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), a moderate who had not committed his support, said he will vote with Democrats to move the health care bill to the floor.

"I will vote for the procedural motions to get it to the floor," he said Thursday. "We need to have this debate."

Pryor said he has been concerned about the cost of the bill, but the majority leader did a good job of addressing it.

Abortion also threatened to flare up as a last-minute issue complicating Reid’s efforts, particularly after abortion rights activists cheered Reid’s efforts to dial back the strict abortion restrictions added to the House bill.

Pryor, like other moderate Democrats, have raised concerns about how health reform deals with abortion. On the abortion language, Pryor said: "My sense is Harry Reid has taken the best course and that is to keep the status quo language."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi even praised Reid’s bill over her own in one regard, the section regarding abortion.

Pelosi, a backer of abortion rights, said Thursday that the controversial Stupak Amendment she added to her bill in a last-minute bid to pick up votes "goes beyond maintaining the status quo."

Instead, she favors the prohibitions included in a Senate bill that was unveiled on Wednesday night. That bill allows the secretary of Health and Human Services to determine whether the public plan can offer abortion coverage and seeks to impose a wall to make sure insurance companies are separating federal money from private premiums.

"I'm pleased at the language that's in the Senate bill, and I think it's pretty clear that no federal funds will be spent on abortions," Pelosi told reporters.

The Stupak amendment would prohibit the public plan from offering abortion coverage and prevent people who receive federal subsidies through the exchange from using that government assistance to buy plans that cover the procedure.

But in the end, the speaker believes negotiators will get beyond these differences to assure "we would have no federal funding of abortions and that we would pass health care reform."

Reid’s hopes of calling a vote to proceed with debate as early as Friday disappeared, leading to the Saturday vote. But he has no margin for error, needing all 58 Democrats and two independents to block any move toward a filibuster and bring the bill to the floor.

Reid’s plan contains considerable differences from House legislation passed earlier this month — with a more limited public option and different ways to pay for the bill. Reid included an excise tax on insurers who offer “Cadillac” health plans, not the “millionaire’s tax” that’s in the House bill.

Democrats on Wednesday were clearly hoping that the deficit figures — the biggest deficit reduction of any health bill to date, Reid’s office noted — would knock down one of the last remaining obstacles to winning the votes of key centrists, at least to go ahead with debate on the bill as early as this weekend. Reid’s office said the bill could reduce the deficit by $650 billion in its second 10 years.

Nelson told reporters Wednesday he still had problems with the public option plan — he prefers a plan that would allow states to opt in instead — but signaled he’d wage that fight on the floor. He also made clear the vote to allow debate wouldn’t be the final fight on the bill.

“There will be opportunities to amend the legislation, and if it is amended to the satisfaction of several people, then it will have enough votes to pass on the back end,” Nelson said. “If not, it won’t. That is the risk.”

The Senate bill pushes back implementation of major parts of reform to 2014 — a shift from both the House and the Senate Finance Committee bill, which created 2013 effective dates.

This is bad news for lawmakers who will need to explain to constituents why the elements that have attracted the most attention -- the public plan, the Medicaid expansion and the insurance exchanges -- won't be available for four years. Some reforms would kick in earlier, Senate aides explained, but the big pieces would still be a ways off.

Reid sought to sidestep hot-button issues that could cause trouble for the bill. Illegal immigrants will not get health benefits under the bill, and it would restrict taxpayer funding of abortion — an issue that almost derailed the House bill.

Abortion rights supporters were quick to praise the language Reid included in the bill, which was an early warning sign that it doesn’t go far enough for some in the anti-abortion community who led the effort to amend the House bill.

The National Right to Life Committee slammed the language as “unacceptable.”

“Reid seeks to cover elective abortions in two big new federal health programs, but tries to conceal that unpopular reality with layers of contrived definitions and hollow bookkeeping requirements,” NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson said in a statement.

Other Democrats praised Reid’s efforts.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass), who was concerned about the tax on Cadillac benefits, praised Reid for raising the limits to policies costing $23,000 for a family and $8,500 for an individual. “They moved, and I like the new numbers. It is closer to where I first began. ... I think we are going pass this legislation.”

Kerry also praised Reid’s efforts to reduce the tax on medical device manufacturers to $20 billion, down from $40 billion, over 10 years.

The Reid bill would increase the Medicare payroll tax on couples who earn more than $250,000 and individuals that earn $200,000 from 1.45 percent to 1.95 percent.

The bill levies a 5 percent tax on elective cosmetic surgery. The provision raises $5 billion and was needed to make the numbers work, a Democratic Senate aide said. The Finance Committee considered the tax but dismissed it, in part because it was a public relations battle that senators were not willing to wage.

The Senate bill includes a public insurance option that allows states to choose not to participate. In order to opt-out, states would have to pass a law, the aide said.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated only a fraction of the uninsured -- 3 million to 4 million people -- would enroll in the public plan, in part because some states would decide against offering it. The figure is lower than the 6 million who were estimated to enroll in the public plan under the House bill, which does not provide an escape hatch for states.

“Overall, CBO’s assessment was that about two-thirds of the population would be expected to have a public plan available in their state,” the CBO report stated.

The Reid bill only slightly toughens the requirement that people carry insurance. It levies a $95 fine in 2014 and scales up to $750 by 2016. The Senate Finance bill had no penalty in the first year.

Critics worry that people will choose to pay the cheaper penalty rather than buying the more expensive insurance plans because the bill also requires insurers to offer coverage to people who are sick. That combination could lead to an older, sicker and more expensive risk pool.

In what can be viewed as an election-year sweetener for senior citizens, the coverage gap in the Medicare prescription drug program would shrink by $500 in 2010 only under the Senate bill. The Senate aide described it as a "down-payment" that would move the Senate closer to the House bill, which eliminates the donut hole over the next decade.

Sources: Politico, AP