Assuming that the House passes the health care bill tomorrow, the bill will go to the president to be signed, but the reconciliation part of it will have to go back to the Senate. And then the debate will be on just those reconciliation parts of the bill. In other words, the question before the Senate will be whether or not to strip out things like the Cornhusker Kickback, as the question of whether or not pass health care reform will have been already decided.
This puts the Senate Republicans in an awkward position. They want to run ads saying that both House and Senate Democrats voted for these sordid backroom deals, but they’ll be unable to make that argument if they all vote against stripping those deals from the final legislation. No wonder they’re so mad.
