Monday, December 21, 2009

Obamacare Passes Senate 60-40

After wheeling and dealing, bribing and buying Senators, Harry Reid got his 60th vote and the Senate has passed their version of Obamacare, with a vote of 60-40, all the Democrats and the two Democratic leaning Independents, with all 40 Republicans voting against Cloture.

Malkin live blogged the whole process.

She also provides the complete bribe list of recipients.

Next stop is Senate and Congressional negotiators having to meld the House Obamacare proposal with the one the Senate just passed.

Then back to the votes.

The good news is that House far left progressive liberals have stated they will not vote for a bill that does not include the public option, calling the Senate's version "Irreconcilable" with the House, while the Senate cannot obtain the votes needed if the public option is in the bill, in any form.

It isn't only the public option, or lack thereof, that has certain House members balking now, but also the issue of abortion and the compromise Ben Nelson negotiating with Senate Democrats.

Representative Bart Stupak (D-MI) initially was responsible for the ban on federal funding for abortions, in the House bill, and finds the negotiated wording in the Senate bill, unacceptable and is already coordinating with House Republicans.

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) is not finished making trouble for his Democratic colleagues, as the Senate’s health reform bill makes its way to the House to be reconciled with the House bill. Stupak pulled a power play in the House, threatening to torpedo the health reform bill, unless it had extreme language banning indirect subsidies to be used for abortion procedures, even if women used their own funds. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) allowed Stupak to bring the Stupak-Pitts Amendment to the floor for a vote and it was passed with Republican votes and a group of pro-life Democrats. The Stupak amendment was not included in the Senate bill, but Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) held out for Stupak-like language.

Now, Stupak is promising to lead an opposition effort to kill the Nelson compromise language, declaring it “unacceptable.” And according to Politico, soon after the deal with Nelson was announced on Saturday, Stupak’s aide sent out emails to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) office to coordinate opposition to the Nelson compromise language.


Stupak is claiming the emails went out without his knowledge.

Considering the public opposition is still continue to grow with the plurality and in many cases the majority opposed to Obamacare, many hurdles still have to be jumped to get a bill to Obama's desk.

Reminder from yesterday:

RCP shows the averages from all the latest polls, NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl, Associated Press/GfK, Rasmussen Reports, Gallup, ABC News/Wash Post, Pew Research, FOX News, CNN/Opinion Research and Quinnipiac.


Each and every battle must be fought and there are many more ahead while the Democrats try to socialize American healthcare.

Groups, such as Tea Party Express, will continue to rally and fight against final passage of any bill that takes us closer to socialized medicine, and they are directly targeting Harry Reid in the 2010 elections, to which he already trails his Republican challengers by double digits in the polls.

More to come.

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