After months of buildup, the “historic debate on health care reform opens on the Senate floor Monday — but the C-SPAN cameras won’t see the real action,” POLITICO reports.
The next phase in the Democrats’ health care push will be waged in the privacy of the Senate leadership office, where Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will attempt to do something that has eluded him all year: negotiate a compromise on the public insurance option that can garner 60 votes and win over a public still leery of reform.
The debate “starts at 3 p.m. Monday with each side offering one amendment — a sign of how difficult the debate will be, since the two sides couldn’t agree to terms of the debate beyond the first two amendments.”
Republicans want “six weeks of debate — which would be enough to push the final vote past Christmas — and have an arsenal of stalling tactics.”
But Democrats can short-circuit the debate all at once, simply by reaching a deal on the public option and filing cloture on the bill, which would set up the final crucial test vote before final passage.
One possible public option compromise to keep an eye on:
There is one idea that supporters hope could rally the centrists: Call it the nonpublic “public option.” It’s an idea from Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) for a national insurance program that is neither run nor financed by the government. It could win over moderates because it wouldn’t be a direct government expansion, but it would also satisfy liberals because it would be a national health insurance program designed to compete with private insurers from Day One.
One wild card “in the debate is the expected release this week of a Congressional Budget Office study of the bill’s impact on premiums for all Americans.”
The CBO notified Senate offices last week that a report was expected “early" this week.
(credit image – getty)
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