Today in Washington D. C. - Dec 14, 2009

The Senate will reconvenes at 2 PM today and will resume consideration of the Reid substitute amendment to H.R. 3590, the vehicle for Democrats’ health care reform bill.   After spending a week avoiding votes on the Crapo motion on taxes and the Dorgan amendment on drug re-importation, Democrat still have not been able to agree to consider amendments to their health care bill.

Yesterday, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell filed cloture on the Crapo motion, which will set up a vote on that on Tuesday, unless an agreement on amendments is reached prior to that. The Crapo motion would send the health bill back to the Finance Committee to make sure it keeps the president’s pledge to not raise taxes on anyone making less that $250,000/year.

Also, as reported yesterday, the Senate voted 57-35 to pass the conference report for H.R. 3288, the fiscal year 2010 omnibus appropriations bill. The bill now goes to the president for his signature. The omnibus includes 6 appropriations bills that were not previously completed: Transportation-Housing and Urban Development, Commerce-Justice-Science, Financial Services, Labor-Health and Human Services-Education, Military Construction-Veterans Affairs, and State-Foreign Operations. The bill includes $450 billion in discretionary spending and the total comes to $1.1 trillion when mandatory spending such as Medicare and Medicaid is included.

Not included is the Defense appropriations bill, which Democrats are holding as a potential vehicle to attach a debt limit increase to.

At the beginning of last week, Democrats boasted that momentum was on their side in the health care reform debate, but this week the aura of inevitability around Democrats’ 2,000 page health care bill passing has drifted away.

On Friday, the Obama administration’s actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released an analysis of the Senate bill introduced in November. CMS wrote, “[W]e estimate that total national health expenditures under this bill would increase by an estimated total of $234 billion (0.7%) during calendar years 2010-2019 . . . .” Democrats who previously declared, “If we pass health reform legislation without addressing the issue of health care spending, we will have failed” may need to rethink their positions on this bill.

Throughout the week last week, Democrats repeatedly expressed skepticism of a compromise plan touted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) went so far as to say of the Medicare buy-in proposed by Reid, “I think it’s going to be a non-starter.”

Then yesterday, any illusions of Democrat unity crumbled as Sens. Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) both told CBS’ Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation” why they couldn’t vote for these proposals. Nelson told the CBS host, “I said I can’t support the bill with the abortion language that’s there.” And according to The New York Times, Lieberman “said on Sunday that he would vote against the health care legislation in its current form.” The Times notes, “Mr. Lieberman told the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, to scrap the idea of expanding Medicare and abandon any new government insurance plan or lose his vote.” Lieberman said on Face the Nation, “You’ve got to take out the Medicare buy-in. You’ve got to forget about the public option. You probably have to take out the CLASS Act, which was a whole new entitlement program that will, in future years, put us further into deficit.”

And other Democrats are clearly uncomfortable with some of the core provisions of the Reid bill. writes today, “Senate Republicans say they want to “smoke out” Democratic senators who could help them bring down the health care bill, and so far, they think they’ve found one in Sen. Jim Webb. With all the attention focused on four other fence-sitting moderates, Webb has voted with Republicans six times on the first series of amendments on the Senate floor — giving GOP leaders some hope that the unpredictable Virginian could buck his party in the end and block the bill.” Webb told Politico that he’s “rather skeptical that those cuts [to Medicare] are sustainable . . . .” Webb also said, “I have a lot of concerns about Medicare. I think it’s important to express those views on these votes.” “But,” Politico points out, “the amendments to restore the proposed cuts failed on the floor — meaning that whatever bill emerges in the end may very well include the Medicare cuts that worry Webb. Asked if that meant he might oppose the underlying bill, Webb said: ‘I’ll see what the bill looks like when we get to the end of it.’”

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell explained the situation to Schieffer yesterday: “The American people are saying, please don’t pass this. . . . The CNN poll said 61% were opposed and only 36% in favor.  The government’s actuary down at the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services said that it will drive up health care costs by a quarter of a trillion dollars. Republicans uniformly, without exception, believe that cutting a half a trillion dollars out of Medicare, raising $400 billion in new taxes, and providing the increase, the actual increase in health insurance premiums for everybody else is not reform. So you can see why, Bob, the Democrats are deeply divided. I doubt if those adjustments that were suggested by my three [Democrat] colleagues representing three different points of view about this bill right before me would get there, I think they’re in serious trouble on this, and the core problem is the American people do not want us to pass it.”

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