Quote:
Originally Posted by agzg
Hehe.
I don't understand how the health care bill would fail if a Republican won the seat though...
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Basically -- if they follow "normal" procedure on the health care bill, members of both the House and Senate will get together in conference committee to hash out the differences between the chambers and come up with a single conference report. The conference report would then need to be adopted in both chambers to send the bill to the president.
The problem with this is that the Senate needs a 3/5 vote (60 votes) to move forward on anything. A single senator can put a hold on anything they want, and the chamber can't move forward on it until a motion to close debate (cloture) is adopted, which requires 60 votes. The Senate Dems now only have 59 seats due to Brown, so they would have to flip a Republican (not happening), or rush through a conference report and vote on it before Brown is seated (also unlikely).
I would be extremely surprised if the health care bill went down, though. I've suspected all along that the House will simply concur in the Senate version of the bill and send that version to Obama to sign -- it's a relatively simple motion and House leadership should be able to rustle up enough votes for it. House members won't like doing it, but it's my best guess for how it will go down. There's also the possibility of reconciliation, but Reid has already said he wouldn't use it on health care, so I don't think he'll go there unless he has to.
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