As debate on the reconciliation “fix” bill winds down and Senate Democrats have been unifying around a strategy of defeating all amendments (including a public option amendment, which is why we won’t see it offered) so that the bill remains intact, I’ve been wondering whether that strategy could or should change if a Republican amendment were somehow adopted despite the plan.

The adoption of any amendment anywhere along the line would make the question of whether or not the reconciliation bill would have to go back to the House moot. Any change would send the bill back to the House. So if the bill were amended at any point, it would basically be costless to attempt to send the bill back to the House with a public option attached.

But it now occurs to me that the points of order the Republicans are threatening might not be handled until the end of debate on the bill and any amendments, so it may well be the case that Democrats are able to prevail against all amendments and keep the bill intact until that point, and only after the opportunity for amendments to be offered had expired would any of the changes that points of order could force actually be made. So it could be that supporters of the public option in the Senate would feel constrained from offering it until it was too late. The “costless” opportunity to add it by amendment might arise only after amendment time had come and gone.

But if the bill does have to be amended due to Republican points of order, that just creates an opportunity for public option supporters in the House. Yes, the path of least resistance at that point would be for the House to concur in the Senate’s changes and pass the reconciliation bill without further amendment. But if the House is going to have to take another vote on the bill, it might as well extract some price for it.

That probably means that public option supporters need to be talking to the House as well, and that the House may be the front line for offering such an amendment, with the Senate only asked to concur in it if the House is the one to include it. Supporters should be thinking about that possibility, lining up sponsors and backers in the House, and letting Senators know that if that were to happen and the bill were to return to the Senate with a public option attached by the House, that’d have to be considered as having the public option “come up for a vote,” and those letters they signed would either have to be honored or repudiated on that question. If the count of Senators who’ve said they’d support the public option “if it came up” are solid, then House Members would have reason to believe the provision could survive — at least politically — in the Senate.

Read the full article, here.

Senate Reconciliation
Liveblog Mothership #2

Senate Reconciliation Liveblog Mothership #2, Daily Kos, March 24, 2010, by NDakotaDem, excerpt quoted verbatim:

Please REC THIS DIARY and not the Shuttlepod diaries. Please use this diary as #4 after Shuttle pod #3 fills up!

Thanks to Cedwyn for doing the ORIGINAL mothership diary to be found here: Senate Reconciliation Liveblog – Impotent Tears of Bitter Rage Mothership

Thank you to:
kirbybruno for Shuttlepod #1

papicek for Shuttlepod #2

FleetAdmiralJ for Shuttlepod #3 (Please see this diary for a recap of the voting of the amendments).

Shuttlepod #5 – sheba

Today we continue in the journey to go where no live blogs have gone before…cutting through the insanity of Wingnuttia B.S.

Only today, its on a much grander scale! Its the Senate!! You think Members of the House of Representative are windbags, Senators are even more so.

Please feel free to mock. Mocking is fun.

Please feel free to play Republican Talking Point Bingo. Here is a visual aid:

If you are at work, as I am (sssssssshhhhh, don’t tell my boss! [although she probably wouldn't care]), you can Watch HERE on C-Span.

Or you can play the Republican Healthcare Buzzwords Drinking Game! Drink when you hear any of the following:

    1. socialism

    2. government takeover

    3. flawed

    4. abortion

    5. unconstitutional

    6. rationing

    7. repeal

    8. rais(ing/es) taxes

    9. cut(s/ing) Medicare

    10. any variation of “kill grandma”

Feel free to add to the list!

Robert Gibbs
White House Press Briefing

March 24, 2010 – 3:32