BernieHund tuned into cspan this morning to see if the Senate was still going strong. There are reports that the Democrats now have Senator Ben Nelson on board and with his vote have the 60 votes necessary to pass the Senate version of the health care reform bill.
With such “good news” it would seem that a vote would be coming up soon. Instead, the Republicans in an effort to suppress any progress refused to waive the reading of amendments. At last viewing poor Senate readers were monotonously reading each line of an amendment that could have a thousand pages or more.
Those of us on “the left” are less than enthusiastic about the health care reform bill. However, it must be voted up or down before the Capitol Clowns will move on to other issues. They did take time last night to vote for a $686 Billion Department of Defense allocation. The vote tally was 88-10. In fact, it seems as if both sides of the isle come about as close to agreeing on defense as on any issue they will face.
With all the talk of waste in Washington the true waste is time. With both the Republicans and Democrats pulling out all stops and digging up every arcane rule of Parliamentary Procedure health care may or may not make it to the White House in 2010. Remember, after the Senate passes its version of the bill their version must be reconciled with the bill from the House before it can be sent to the White House to be signed into law. For those of us watching from afar we are yet to see the light at the end of the Capitol hallway.
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