Senate Democrats are under extreme pressure to pass Health Care Reform Bill.
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Landrieu leans yes in Sat. cliffhanger
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) said Friday night that she’s “leaning towards” voting to start debate on the health care bill – which would leave Democrats just a single vote shy of clearing a critical test for the reform package on Saturday.
Asked outside the Capitol if she’s made up her mind on starting the debate, Landrieu said she planned to announce her intentions Saturday but told POLITICO, “I’m leaning towards it.”
That would mean Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s hopes for a successful vote hinge on one senator: Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), who remained mum about her intentions as the clock ticked down to the critical vote.
Lincoln told POLITICO Friday afternoon that she has no timetable to make her decision ahead of the vote, scheduled for 8 p.m. "I was told I have time to make my decision," Lincoln said.
And Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) announced he would vote yes on going ahead with debate, even though he is calling for significant amendments to the bill on the floor.
Democrats from the White House to Capitol Hill projected confidence that Reid would have the 60 votes needed to start debate on health reform, despite the reservations expressed by senators on various details in the bill.
But with barely 24 hours left before the Saturday vote, no issue had emerged to immediately derail the $848 billion package, and Reid’s No. 2, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, told reporters, “We will proceed with this bill."
The White House issued a statement of support for Reid’s bill, calling it “a critical milestone in the effort to reform our health care system.”
Other, less noticeable factors broke Reid’s way. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who has long pushed to expand consumers' health care choices, scored a big win today when Reid and Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus agreed to open the insurance exchanges to more consumers.
The change would allow roughly a million Americans who have employer-provided insurance to choose between keeping their employer coverage and buying coverage in the newly created health insurance exchanges. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce criticized Wyden’s plan, saying it would undermine the current employer-based health insurance system, but Wyden maintains that it doesn't impact businesses.
Landrieu, a co-sponsor on Wyden's Healthy Americans Act, said she was "very happy" to hear Wyden had struck the deal.
In recent days, Landrieu has sounded more and more open to voting for Reid’s measure. She told reporters earlier in the week that she was leaning against the vote, but shifted to neutral on Thursday and earlier Friday. By Friday night, with a stack of health care briefing papers under her arm, Landrieu said was leaning in favor of supporting the procedural motion.
She acknowledged that she had fought for changes to the bill to help people in her state. Reid included an extra $100 million in Medicaid funding for states hit by Hurricane Katrina, which includes Louisiana.
“I’m using as much leverage as I have for the issues that I think are important not just to Louisiana but to broad constituencies throughout this country... In some ways, you can’t fix anything unless you keep the debate moving forward but in the other ways, you’ve got to use the leverage when you’ve got it to get some things that are important,” Landrieu said.
It was Lincoln who remained the biggest question mark about the vote. Durbin told reporters that Lincoln had revealed her vote to Reid but Lincoln later said that wasn’t true, and Durbin had to pull back his remarks..
On the eve of the vote, Reid’s plan came under fire from Republicans and the Catholic Church, as one official from the U.S. Conference Catholic of Catholic Bishops told the Associated Press it “the worst bill we’ve seen so far on the life issues.”
It was the influence of the Catholic bishops that made abortion an last-minute issue that almost derailed the House vote on health reform two week ago. The issue seemed to have less resonance in the Senate, and two senators who have in the past voted to restrict abortion, Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania – didn’t seem inclined this week to inject the abortion issue into the Saturday debate.
Republicans tried to step up pressure on Nelson and the other moderates to keep them from voting yes. Republican Sen. John McCain emailed his supporters this morning urging them to call Nelson's office to urge him to vote no tomorrow on moving health reform forward.
But the 11:30 a.m. email probably came too late to make much impact. Shortly after noon, Nelson announced his yes vote.
Senate Republicans also stepped up their attacks on the bill, with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) saying it relied on budget gimmicks to keep its price-tag under $1 trillion – like pushing off the start date of major reform until 2014.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) also tried to knock down the argument of Nelson and others that a vote Saturday is merely a vote to proceed to debate. “No Senator who votes for cloture on the motion to proceed tomorrow I think can with a straight face can contend they have somehow not embraced the bad policy contained in this bill,” he said.
If Reid still had his eye on Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), she dashed any hopes of giving Democrats a surprise "yes."
"How does this bill help small businesses? On balance, it doesn't," Collins said in a floor speech. "America would be better served by a bipartisan deal that brings together ideas on both sides of the aisle."
Health Care's Public Option Would Cover Little of Population
A proposed government-run health insurance program, among the most divisive issues in the health care debate, would cover less than 1.5 percent of the population, new estimates show.
The latest version of the "public option," included in the 10-year, $848 billion health care bill headed toward an initial Senate vote Saturday, would cover up to four million people, according to the Congressional Budget Office report released late Wednesday night.
The issue remains among those that have prevented Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid from securing the 60 votes he needs to pass the bill.
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Sources: Politico, ABC News, Google Maps
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