Reid Needs 60 Votes By Tomorrow And Lieberman’s Left Town!
Dec 18, 2009 22 Comments ›› Erik Wong
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.
As if Democrats didn’t have enough to worry about. Overnight and into tomorrow, Washington, D.C. is preparing for a major snow storm, complete with thunder and high winds. A winter snowpocalypse.
On any other weekend, that would be no biggy for Senate Democrats, but tomorrow, they need all hands on deck if they hope to keep on track to pass their health care bill by Christmas. And remember, they can’t afford a single slip-up.
So here’s another wrinkle: Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) has skipped town.
Already, they’ve wheeled in the cots for members and staff who choose to slumber party the night away in the Capitol, or Senate offices. But tomorrow, bright and early, all of them could need to be on hand for procedural reasons. For instance, Democrats expect to have to waive a budget point of order they expect Republicans to raise against the defense appropriations bill.
Potentially complicating matters, though is that Lieberman, who’s caused Democratic leadership no shortage of political heartburn on health care, isn’t even in town!
“After being assured by Democratic and Republican leaders that his vote was not needed to pass the Defense Appropriations bill, Senator Lieberman went to Connecticut to spend the Sabbath and the last night of Hanukkah with his wife, Hadassah, and their children and grandchildren,” reads a statement to TPMDC from Lieberman’s spokesman Marshall Wittmann.
That means Democrats will be relying on at least one Republican to help them get the defense bill over a procedural bump in order to push them back on to health care. They’re crossing their fingers.
But assuming they can get one vote, what happens if the snow keeps other members away? It could be a big problem. Leadership seemed confident earlier today that everybody would be present and accounted for tomorrow, and a bit surprised to learn that Lieberman had flown the coop. With all these added complications, don’t be surprised to hear a new Republican talking point: Even Mother Nature hates health care reform.
