Last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid filed a motion to introduce the health care reform bill to the Senate floor. That motion was supposed to be for today, November 16th, which would have forced the cloture vote on the motion to proceed with the bill tomorrow. If that vote succeeded, it would have started the debate and amendment process on the health care bill on the floor of the Senate tomorrow:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) late Tuesday laid the groundwork for the Senate's healthcare reform debate to start next Tuesday.
Reid filed a motion to introduce the bill on Monday, Nov. 16. Anticipating a Republican objection, the bill would be pushed onto the Senate calendar.
"A motion to proceed to the bill would be in order the next legislative day," said Reid spokesman Jim Manley.
However, it is November 16th, and there isn't going to be a vote on the motion to proceed tomorrow. What's taking so long?
Neither the vote on the motion to proceed--nor the 60 votes needed to pass cloture on that vote--will materialize until Reid finalizes the bill, and introduces it to the public with a full CBO report. That process, unfortunately, is ongoing and taking longer than expected. Reid's office is still in talks with the CBO, tweaking the bill to meet President Obama's targets and rounding up the 60 votes needed on the cloture vote on the motion to proceed:
The complex legislation, which Reid is taking a free hand in writing based on two committee-passed bills, must not exceed Obama's specified price tag of $900 billion over 10 years, and it must not add to the deficit. Ultimately it must be able to get the 60 votes needed to advance in the 100-member Senate.
"We've sent them a list of options; they raise questions. We answer them, we raise other questions, they answer them. The goal is to put together the best bill possible," Reid spokesman Jim Manley said Friday. "Senator Reid made a decision a while ago that he wants to get this right before taking it to the floor."
This process has been going on for a month now. The end doesn't seem particularly close, either:
The process is complicated. About 11 p.m. last Tuesday, the budget office sent Mr. Reid 11 pages of questions about his legislation. On Wednesday afternoon Mr. Reid's staff met with budget office officials. And the back-and-forth continues.
Clearly, if Reid has not yet introduced the bill with a full CBO report, they have yet to meet all of their goals in the legislation. They might still not have satisfied the four remaining problem Senators: Mary Landrieu, Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson (Evan Bayh no longer appears to be a member of this group). They might not have met President Obama's goals of cost or deficit reduction. Unions might still be pissed as a tax on high-value health insurance plans. Senate progressives might be upset with the lack of subsidies in the bill. Whatever it is, they have still not met all of the goals, and thus are not ready for the motion to proceed vote.
Still, today Senator Tom Harkin predicted that the cloture vote on the motion to proceed will take place by the end of the week:
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, predicted during an interview on the liberal "Bill Press Radio Show" that the Senate will have the 60 votes needed to call up the healthcare bill this week. But Harkin said senators will not begin amending the legislation until after the Thanksgiving break.
Harkin offers up the best case scenario---a vote on the motion to proceed before Thanksgiving. This means that floor debate and amendments will not start until, at the earliest, Monday, November 30th.
To compensate for this latest delay, the Senate is going to stay in session during Saturday's in December. It remains to be seen whether or not the Senate can still pass a health care bill early enough in December to leave a conference committee enough time to reconcile the House and Senate bills before Christmas. If they fail to do so, then President Obama will not sign health care reform into law by the end of the year.
It is a pretty narrow window, raising the possibility that the health care fight will drag on into January.
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