Labor & Employment Law

Senate OK?s Health Care Fixes Bill, One More Hurdle in House

By Mike Hall

The health care reconciliation bill that corrects flaws in the overall health care bill passed Sunday by the U.S. House and signed by President Obama on Tuesday, won Senate approval (56-43) this afternoon and is awaiting a House vote as soon as this evening.

Before the final vote was taken, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called for a moment of silence in honor of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) who made enacting comprehensive quality health care reform the centerpiece of his 47 years in the Senate.

Senate Democrats, yesterday and today, easily defeated amendment after amendment in the Republican vote-o-rama designed to stall or kill the health care reconciliation bill. But because two minor provisions that were found not to conform to the complicated budget reconciliation rules had to be removed from the bill, it must now go back to the House for another vote.

During the vote-o-rama, one of the Republican amendments would have stripped a provision from the bill that requires the wealthy to pay their fair share and another would have eliminated employer responsibility requirements.

In a column on Huffington Post, AFSCME President Gerald McEntee writes:

Republicans are playing political games as the U.S. Senate considers legislation that would make important fixes in the historic health care reform legislation. They are introducing amendments that serve no purpose except to derail the fix.

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans continued to shut down Senate hearings as part of their work slowdown strategy of obstruction in protest of the health care bill.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee was due to hold a hearing yesterday with a top general who had flown in from Korea for the hearing. But using a seldom-employed rule to halt all hearings at 2 p.m., Republicans forced its cancellation. Says Levin:

It’s unconscionable. Our national security cannot be held hostage to disagreements over a health care policy….It seems to me this is an example of how the obstructionism around here has gotten mindless.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on March 25, 2010 (boomark / email).