Making legislation, like making sausages, is not a pretty process to watch.
That has become clear in Washington in the past few days as Democrats have hustled to push a sweeping healthcare reform bill through the Senate before Christmas, and Republicans have vowed to do everything they can to stop it.
With middle-of-the-night votes in snowstorms and a schedule that will see some senators and many staffers miss holiday flights home, tempers are running high on Capitol Hill this week.
“This [Senate] is about as polarised as I can remember,” Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon, who has served since 1996, told the Politico website.
Democrats are on the brink of passing healthcare reform after clearing a key hurdle in the early hours of Monday morning, when they voted 60-40 along party lines to close debate on a bill that will extend coverage to 31m uninsured Americans.
“The United States Senate knocked down a filibuster aimed at blocking a final vote on healthcare reform, and scored a big victory for the American people,” Barack Obama, the president who had vowed to bring a more bipartisan spirit to Washington, said after the vote.
He added: “By standing up to the special interests – who’ve prevented reform for decades and who are furiously lobbying against it now – the Senate has moved us closer to reform that makes a tremendous difference for families, for seniors, for businesses, and for the country as a whole.”
The Senate is essentially playing a waiting game. Procedural votes will take place on Tuesday morning, when a simple majority will vote to approve the healthcare package, and then at 1pm on Wednesday, according to rules that stipulate there must be 30 hours available for debating between votes.
The final vote on whether to pass the bill will take place on Thursday at 7pm, when Democrats will need all of their 58 and the two independent votes to reach the 60 required to pass the 100-seat Senate.
This requires almost military discipline from Democratic leaders, who even had to wheel out Robert Byrd, the ailing 92-year-old senator from West Virginia in a blizzard on Saturday.
Republicans, incensed at what they call a government takeover of healthcare have criticised these “dead of night” manoeuvres, but the debate became nastier when Tom Coburn of Oklahoma on Sunday said: “What the American people should pray is that somebody can’t make the vote.”
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