After a long, drawn out, highly partisan debate that has gone on for months, the Senate this morning passed a necessary step toward cloture to overcome a filibuster, and move toward later this week agreeing to a landmark health care reform bill.
Of course, even after a final vote expected to be held on Christmas Eve, the hardest job of all will be early next year to promote a conference committee report of both houses of Congress, reconciling different aspects of the bill that will be very difficult to gain compromise on, including the issue of abortion, the public option in the House bill, and funding and taxing health care in a way that will not add to the burgeoning national debt.
In many ways, the concept of victory seems elusive, as one has to wonder how the two houses will come up with a common bill. It will require statesmanship and moderation to accomplish what has been an elusive goal for nearly a century: health care reform, which even if this resolves itself, is still only a beginning step toward total reform at some point down the road in future time.
While this issue has become highly partisan, it seems to me that even this imperfect bill passed in both houses of Congress will ultimately be a plus for the Democrats, as much as Social Security and Medicare were in previous generations. The unwillingness of Republicans to work on a common goal for health care will not make them look good in the future and in historical perspective!
Paul Krugman had an interesting article in the NY Times this morning about how the Senate’s rule on 60 votes has basically made the country come to a standstill. He provides some specific data as to the number of times a filibuster or threat of one has been invoked over the years and how frequently it has become a tool of the Republican minority since the Obama presidency.
I also suspect the House will pretty much go along with the Senate version of the bill and there will be less conflict in resolution than imagined.