Critical Vote On Health Care Passes Senate

Officially, the Senate has not passed health care reform. Unofficially, the fight is over for this round. Senate Democrats overcame a filibuster by a party-line vote of 60-40, including the two independent senators who caucus with the Democrats.

As I said, it’s not officially over; the above vote merely provided official “cloture.” However, it is merely window dressing to get the bill passed by Christmas Eve, which seems very likely now.

The Heritage Foundation outlines what this bill will do to America’s budget, the unborn and taxes. In short, it’s a bad bill, which we already knew. However, there is still hope. The Senate and House bills must be compromised in conference- where the two chambers make two bills into one- and then voted on again in each chamber separately. The two biggest issues, as far as I see, that could shut down this reform effort are abortion and the public option. The House bill includes the latter, the Senate one does not. The Senate bill, however, allows public funds to be used for abortion and the House one does not. I hope Representative Bart Stupak (D-MI) holds strong on his abortion language and kills the bill. A pro-life amendment would help the health care bill that finally passes (if one does) not fund the murder of the unborn.

Fox News has a very revealing analysis about where various monies went to various senators in order to bribe them votes for the cloture vote. As Fox notes in the article, uncertain votes were brought in line as a direct result of how the Senate leadership decided to use our money.