Senate Wades, Slowly, Into Health Care Debate

The Senate has been "debating" health care reform legislation for days now, but so far it's basically amounted to a series of boring speeches. Today, after breaking through the GOP's first obstructive hurdle, Democrats will hold votes on a handful of amendments, including two authored by Republicans.

One of those Republican amendments--authored by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)--is actually a motion to send the bill back to the Finance Committee, and strip it of billions in Medicare savings. If it passed, it would likely kill the bill. As such, it's expected to fail, but receive overwhelming support from the Republican side of the aisle. In fact, it's probably fair to use the vote on the McCain motion as a proxy for the GOP's role in the entire debate, so keep an eye on which Republicans vote against it.

But just because Democrats will make some headway today, it's not at all guaranteed that the Republicans will allow the legislative process to move smoothly from this point forward. Today's votes are being held on the basis of an agreement between parties that only applies to these amendments. Other senators could introduce their own, separate amendments today--Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) has said he may unveil his Stupak-like abortion amendment this afternoon--but that doesn't mean they'll be brought up for a vote in short order.

Republicans are armed with myriad procedural tricks to slow things down again--and if they continue to drag the debate out, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could take steps to hasten things. After a caucus meeting yesterday Democrats made the case that Republicans have been obstructing progress, and will soon take bolder steps to move the bill forward. However, Reid doesn't have enough votes to pass his bill just yet, and sees political value in letting Republicans try to kill reform, so the Kabuki theater could continue for a few more days.

Soon, though--if Democrats want to pass the bill by Christmas--Reid will have to begin winding down the debate--a process that takes several days in and of itself. That means he has a lot of work to do over the next week or week and a half.