The Senate has just agreed to cloture -- that is, to limit debate and end a virtual filibuster -- on its healthcare reform bill.
As expected, Democrats got the 60 votes they needed, but no more. 39 Republicans voted against, with Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., not voting.
For now, the final up-or-down vote on the legislation is scheduled to take place at 7 a.m. EST Thursday morning. But Democrats are still on the floor trying to get their Republican counterparts to allow it to be held earlier; after the cloture motion was successful, a frustrated-looking Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, attempted several times to do so, but failed. In part, Harkin and others are attempting to paint Republicans as obstructionists -- at the same time, though, they surely also would like to be able to head home for Christmas sooner rather than later.
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin just can't let go of her "death panels" myth. After getting back on the subject -- which Politifact recently named "Lie of the Year" -- on Twitter, on Wednesday Palin's Facebook page played host to yet another missive about it. This time, she sought to rewrite her own history, rather incredibly asserting that what she was referring to when she first mentioned "death panels" was an advisory board she claims would lead to healthcare rationing.
"Democrats are protecting this rationing 'death panel' from future change with a procedural hurdle. You have to ask why they’re so concerned about protecting this particular provision. Could it be because bureaucratic rationing is one important way Democrats want to 'bend the cost curve' and keep health care spending down?" Palin's post reads.
"Though Nancy Pelosi and friends have tried to call 'death panels' the 'lie of the year,' this type of rationing – what the CBO calls 'reduc[ed] access to care' and 'diminish[ed] quality of care' – is precisely what I meant when I used that metaphor."
Even for Palin, this is pretty brazen. It wasn't "Nancy Pelosi and friends" who gave that title to the "death panels" myth; it was an independent, non-partisan organization devoted to fact-checking. And her claim that she was referring to rationing when she first used that term is easily proven false, just with a cursory examination of the record.
In the post in which she coined the term, Palin wrote:
The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.
That's a whole lot different than a panel making broader judgments about care in the country at large -- even if it were engaged in "rationing," as Palin claims, it would still be different. Moreover, after that original post Palin and her people made it clear that she was referring to a provision (since stricken from the legislation) that would have ensured coverage for seniors who wanted advice on end-of-life planning.
In fact, Palin's statement on Facebook isn't even consistent with what she said on Twitter Tuesday, "[M]erged bill may b unrecognizable from what assumed was a done deal:R death panels back in?" The board referred to in her Facebook post couldn't be put "back in" the bill, because -- as she herself noted Wednesday -- it's in there now.
For now, it looks as though enough House liberals will concede to the harsh reality of the Senate breakdown and pass the upper chamber's version of healthcare reform, albeit perhaps in some slightly modified version. But one senior House Democrat, New York Rep. Louise Slaughter, isn't likely to be one of them.
"The Senate health care bill is not worthy of the historic vote that the House took a month ago," Slaughter, who chairs the House Rules Committee, writes in an Op-Ed published by CNN.com. (Hat-tip to the Hill's Blog Briefing Room.)
Among the reasons she cites for her thinking are the individual mandate that would force Americans to purchase coverage and the lack of a public option — "I believe the Senate went off the rails when it agreed with the Obama Administration to water down the reform bill and no longer include the public option," Slaughter says.
The congresswoman concludes her Op-Ed by writing:
Supporters of the weak Senate bill say "just pass it — any bill is better than no bill."
I strongly disagree — a conference report is unlikely to sufficiently bridge the gap between these two very different bills.
It's time that we draw the line on this weak bill and ask the Senate to go back to the drawing board. The American people deserve at least that.
Plenty of people are annoyed by the antics of Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn. But what he does is limited to the Senate -- imagine if he were going around blocking everything anyone ever tried to do in real life? Well, the same folks who brought you a look at Michael Steele's outreach to "urban-suburban hip-hop settings" have come up with a video showing what that might be like. You can watch it below. (My favorite part: "We could try to reason with him, but, uh, that usually makes things worse.")
With liberals getting progressively more upset with President Obama, it was only a matter of time before someone started running ads about it. One group, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, is doing just that, hitting him for earlier statements he'd made about healthcare reform: Specifically, promising a public option and opposing a mandate that would force people to buy insurance.
The ad's going to be running in Washington, D.C., as well as in Wisconsin -- the latter is an attempt to change liberal Sen. Russ Feingold's vote, Sam Stein reports. Notably, it goes right at the heart of Obama's appeal during the presidential campaign, saying at the end, "A bill without a public option is not change we can believe in."
The Senate will, as Majority Leader Harry Reid wanted it to, vote to pass a healthcare reform bill before leaving for Christmas. But that doesn't mean the whole drawn-out process is over; we may still have a couple months left to go.
Politico's Mike Allen reported Wednesday that the House and Senate may not be done working out the differences between their versions of the legislation in time for President Obama to give the State of the Union. They are trying to speed that along, however.
"Everyone seems committed to getting a bill to the president’s desk as soon as possible, but there are huge issues -- notably abortion language -- that have to be worked out between the House and the Senate. Officials at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue hope to avoid a FORMAL CONFERENCE -- appointing conferees requires a series of votes," Allen wrote. "Some House members want the formal process, but the differences are more likely to be hashed out among Speaker Pelosi, Leader Reid and the White House, with some personal involvement by the president."
War Room is written and edited by Alex Koppelman, with contributions from Salon reporters around the country.
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