Health care reform update: The politicking has only just begun

By Money Matters Editors

Health care reform update: Assuming a health care reform bill makes it out of the Senate Finance Committee - and one will - two, major hurdles remain: the Senate and the likely conference committee reconciling differences with the House’s health care reform legislation. Neither of these hurdles will be easy to mount.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, has the difficult task of trying to maintain liberal Democratic Senators’ support for the bill without angering Moderate Democrats. It’s critical that Reid retain at least 60 votes for the bill – in any combination – because a Republican-dominated coalition is set to filibuster any bill that falls below 60 votes, the level needed to invoke cloture and end a filibuster. In the United States, due to the filibuster’s unlimited debate provision, having a simple majority doe not mean you can govern: ‘in the Senate, it takes 60 to govern,’ as they say on Capitol Hill.

(Decades ago, a filibuster was rare. Today, in Washington’s highly partisan environment featuring two polarized parties, the filibuster is used routinely. The great former Senate Majority Leader, and President Lyndon B. Johnson is turning over in his grave!)