The American Spectator : The Spectacle Blog : Reid Must Get 60 Votes By Midnight Tomorrow

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The Spectacle Blog

Reid Must Get 60 Votes By Midnight Tomorrow

By Philip Klein on 12.18.09 @ 1:37PM

If Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid hasn't secured 60 votes by midnight Saturday, he won't be able to meet the ambitious deadline of passing a health care bill on Christmas Eve.

The reason is that in order to trigger the chain of events leading to a Christmas Eve vote, Reid would have to file cloture on his "manager's amendment" -- containing all of his final negotiated changes to the bill -- by the end of tomorrow.

Once Reid files that amendment, it will set up the key cloture vote on Monday at 1 a.m., requiring the support of 60 Senators to pass. While that would technically give him all of Sunday to win over Sen. Ben Nelson or any remaining holdouts, Reid would not be able to make any further changes to the bill in order to accommodate any Senator.

While a lot of people are focusing on Christmas Eve, the key vote will be that first cloture vote on Monday. If he gets 60 votes on that, the rest of the process will be a mere technicality.

So, while it sounds dramatic, the future of the nation's health care system may be decided in the next 34 hours.

View all comments (8) | Leave a comment

GB| 12.18.09 @ 2:59PM

Reid will get his 60 votes because Dems care more about their party than they do about the USA. Reid and Obama will bribe enough crooked Senators to get what they want. Get ready to be a slave to the Feds.

DINORight| 12.18.09 @ 3:46PM

Can a Senator call for the Manager's Amendment to be read aloud before a cloture vote is called? Sounds like a time to "obstruct" and use all the Parliamentary rules or "tools" to stop this debacle.

MarkJ| 12.18.09 @ 4:37PM

GB,

"Get ready to be a slave to the Feds."

Not me, pal. I'm armed and ready for the unpleasantness that may well ensue in coming days. My advice to you is to do the same.

"We are all Spartacus."

Mike T| 12.18.09 @ 4:46PM

At the same time CNN’s latest poll shows that 61% of Americans oppose Obamacare, the President – whose approval rating is now at 44% according to Gallup - is telling Senate Democrats, don’t read the bill; just pass it. This is representative government?

Abraham Lincoln, in 1863, eloquently captured the essence of American government as being of the People, for the People and by the People. President Obama and the Democrat Congress would change that to “government despite the People.”

Since the town hall meetings of mid-summer, Americans have been telling their representatives they want nothing to do with Obamacare. It is too expensive; it will reduce the quality of healthcare; it will lead to rationing; and it will still leave millions without healthcare coverage. The president’s response: “… just pass it.”

This is wrong. This is not American representative government. It is state-ism. It is the primacy of the government over the governed and it cannot be reconciled with Lincoln’s vision.

Our elected representatives need to stop, step back and start over with reform that the People can understand, evaluate and decide whether to accept or reject. That is how it works in America.

sudmuf| 12.19.09 @ 4:33AM

The marxists are absolutely clueless about what the unintended consequences of this health care bill are.....rovolt.....and possibly open civil war.

racking| 1.5.10 @ 9:58AM

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Vehicle trackers| 2.8.10 @ 8:25PM

Not many for him I think, good luck to him.

louis vuitton| 4.26.10 @ 10:35PM

we election in this sprawling upstate district represents a political "revolution." canada goose another ACORN revelation (presumably from the O'Keefe/Giles video duo) is coming tomorrow, and he characterized it as "devastating.