Today the Senate defeated an amendment to prohibit funding of abortion with tax dollars. The vote was 45 – 54. Seven Democrats voted for the amendment: Bayh, Casey, Conrad, Dorgan, Kaufman, Nelson (Ben Nelson of Nebraska, not Florida’s Bill Nelson!), and Pryor. The only two Republican to vote against it were predictably the two senators from Maine.
Now it seems like the only hope Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has of getting to 60 votes is to eliminate the public option and make a few deals with senators that are against abortion funding. The price for a senator’s vote was $300 million the last time it was exercised. The Associated Press already reports on such a deal:
Democratic senators say they have a tentative deal to drop a government-run insurance option from health care legislation. No further details were immediately available.
But liberals and moderates have been discussing an alternative, including a private insurance arrangement to be supervised by the federal agency that oversees the system through which lawmakers purchase coverage. Additionally, talks centered on opening up Medicare to uninsured Americans beginning at age 55, a significant expansion of the large government health care program that currently serves the over-65 population.
Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa told reporters he didn’t like the agreement but would support it to the hilt in an attempt to pass health care legislation.
The latest news is contradicting this report: “Reid said reports the government-run ‘public option’ had been dropped were ‘not true.’”
Today, in an email, Obama is calling his troops to action:
Friend –
As we head into the final stretch on health reform, big insurance company lobbyists and their partisan allies hope that their relentless attacks and millions of dollars can intimidate us into accepting the status quo.
So I have a message for them, from all of us: Not this time. We have come too far. We will not turn back. We will not back down.
But do not doubt — the opponents of reform will not rest. So I need you, the members of Organizing for America, to fight alongside me.
We must continue to build out our campaign — to spread the facts on the air and on the ground, and to bring in more volunteers and train them to join the fight. I urgently need your help to keep Organizing for America’s 50-state movement for reform going strong.
Please donate $5 or whatever you can afford today:
https://donate.barackobama.com/FinalStretch
Let’s win this together,
President Barack Obama
If you disagree with Obama’s radical legislation, you can donate to the effort to stop Obamacare at reversethevote.org.
