Historic Health Care Vote

By Dave

And so it begins...Health care reform has entered its final descent. At 1:18 am EST, the Senate made the first in a series of votes that will mark the passage of significant historic health care reform in this country. It is the largest social expansion since the Great Society programs. I've got to hand it to Harry Reid. He is on the cusp of achieving something pretty monumental. I've joked that passing health care reform in the Senate was harder than getting a rich man into heaven, but he seems about to do it.

The final vote went pretty much as expected, straight down party lines with no Republicans on board. So those months of placating the Olympia Snowe's of the world seem to have been all for naught. But c'est la vie. If we can pass it without them, so be it. Besides as a group, the Republicans have been 100% committed to pulling out whatever tricks they can to halt this legislation, including, just recently, praying for Democratic Senators to be unable to show up for the vote. The current refrain is that things are moving too fast, which, ironically, was the same refrain heard back at the beginning of summer. If working on this for eight months is fast, I would hate to see what slow looked like. 

We're not out of the woods yet, there's a lot that can still trip this bill up, but we can see a light at the end of the tunnel. And what we saw today was pretty impressive.