David Waldman discusses the business currently on the Senate floor.
Now pending on the floor, though, is the much-anticipated Ben Nelson (D-NE) amendment to insert the Stupak language into the Senate bill. Will Nelson agree to a 60-vote threshold? If so, he’s pretty much guaranteed to lose, which would be a pretty interesting position to put yourself in if you were also saying you were determined to filibuster if it didn’t pass.
But the failure of the amendment might not be the end of things. If Nelson’s vote turns out to still be critical to passage of the entire bill, he’d have one more shot at sneaking his provisions or something like them into the manager’s amendment, if the leadership thought it couldn’t pass the bill over his threat to join Republicans in voting no. And as Open Congress points out, that’d not only slip that language in, but give pro-choice Senators cover by allowing them to point to their no votes on the amendment itself, even as they insist they had to throw up their hands and support the manager’s amendment in order to save the bill.
That manager’s amendment is really a whole new bill. Rather than withdraw the bill he introduced, Harry Reid will incorporate a dozen or more amendments into one sweeping amendment that can win the support of 60 senators. This manager’s amendment will render pointless the rest of the amendment process and much of the work of the committees. It looks like the bill will bear little resemblance to what the HELP and Finance committees produced, or what the House committees produced. The Nelson-Hatch amendment to introduce Stupak language into the Senate bill will probably fail, but that means nothing because Reid can put it back in the manager’s amendment and the pro-choice Democrats will be able to say that they voted against Nelson-Hatch but had to cave to the reintroduction of the language to get 60 votes. Yet, the procedural moves could have short-term consequences.
Indeed, Senators Boxer and Mikulski seem to be feeling so confident that they are prepared to take the risky step of moving to table Mr. Nelson’s proposal, which would require only a simple majority of 51 senators. Tabling the motion would kill it, but it is more of a gamble than allowing Mr. Nelson to move forward and seek approval of his amendment, which would require a larger majority of 60 votes.
If the liberals fail in their bid to table the amendment, Senate rules would not allow the amendment to be withdrawn without the unanimous consent of all senators – and opponents of abortion rights could potentially hold it on the Senate floor for days.
The liberals believe that as many as nine senators in the 60-member Democratic caucus, including Mr. Nelson, will support the amendment, leaving exactly 51 Democrats in favor of tabling the proposal. And some Republican supporters of abortion rights, including Senators Olympia J. Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, are expected to join in defeating it.
Meanwhile, we wait to hear what kind of deal has been struck on the overall bill. Will the progressives settle for an expansion of Medicaid and Medicare eligibility, combined with stricter regulations? What will happen with the abortion language. Will progressives in the House go along with these compromises?
I can’t even tell you whether I’d vote for this bill. I have no idea what will be in it.
