Cloture Time

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has filed for cloture on the healthcare reform bill. That means he firmly believes he has the sixty votes he needs to get past a filibuster and get to a majority-rule floor vote.

Vice President Joe Biden comes out swinging for the yes votes, noting a little history:

Most recently, in 1993, Democrats had a chance to forge a compromise with Senator John Chafee, Republican of Rhode Island, on a health care reform bill. Congress’s failure to pass health care reform that year led to 16 years of inaction — and 16 years of exploding health care costs and rising numbers of uninsured Americans.

...

I share the frustration of other progressives that the Senate bill does not include a public option. But I’ve been around a long time, and I know that in Washington big changes never emerge in perfect form...

...Is America better off today because a chance at a compromise health bill was missed in 1993? For my friends on the left, the rising toll of the uninsured provides an emphatic no. For my friends on the right, the soaring share of federal spending on health care likewise provides a no. Let’s not make the same mistake again.

The widow of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) goes back even further:

In the early 1970s, Ted worked with the Nixon administration to find consensus on health-care reform. Those efforts broke down in part because the compromise wasn't ideologically pure enough for some constituency groups.

She goes on to list all the good stuff in the current bill, which is well worth reading.

There's one other simple reason to pass this healthcare reform legislation: because no matter how nerfed it might be, the GOP still hate it, oppose it unanimously in the Senate, and is the only political party that will benefit by its defeat.

Go team.