Yesterday, I wrote that if Sen. Harry Reid proceeds to the floor
with a health care bill that includes a government plan, he risks
derailing the whole health care effort. And I thought that was
worth fleshing out a bit more.
The key thing to keep in mind about yesterday's Joe Lieberman
news is that there are actually several filibuster threats that
Reid will have to overcome. The first major one will be on
whether he can bring the health care bill to the floor for
debate, and the last major hurdle will be on whether he can cut
off debate and bring a final bill to a vote. Lieberman has said
that he's inclined to vote with Reid on the first one, and thus
allow the bill to be debated and amended, but that at the end of
the process, if the bill still includes a government plan, he
would join with Republicans to block a vote.
The reason why this is so tricky for Reid is that once a bill
gets to the floor, it's very difficult to change it. For
instance, if the bill includes a government plan, it would
require 60 votes to strip that measure from the bill. So if
Lieberman is serious about his threat to filibuster a
government-run plan, what that means is there's a risk a bill
could get trapped on the Senate floor. In other words, liberals
won't provide Reid with the 60 votes needed to ditch the
government plan, but if the government plan isn't ditched, Reid
won't have the votes to cut off debate and proceed to a simple
majority vote on the final bill.
With that said, a Senate GOP source cautions that once Reid gets
the bill to the floor, he has the ability to spread around all
sorts of goodies to bribe reluctant moderate Democrats into at
least supporting the vote to cut off debate and proceed with a
vote, even if they ultimately vote against the final bill. That's
why Republicans argue that it's important to make sure that the
bill doesn't even get to the floor in the first place. Senate
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has emphasized that moderate
Democrats shouldn't be allowed to get away with drawing a
distinction between a vote to consider the bill and a final vote
on the bill itself.
On that point, McConnell seems to have agreement from Indiana
Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh. As Politico reported:
Sen. Evan
Bayh (D-Ind.): Democratic leaders should be able to tell
where Bayh is headed based on his vote on whether to move to a
debate. The Indiana Democrat said Tuesday that he doesn’t see
“much difference between process and policy at this particular
juncture,” and that he’ll be “looking at those two things as
one and the same.”
The bottom line, says the Senate GOP source, is: "If people
oppose the bill, they have to let Democrats know they consider
that first cloture vote as the vote on the bill."
