Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) has pledged to vote to bring the health care bill to the floor, a procedural hurdle that would allow the Senate to start debating the $849 billion plan.
Without promising he’d back the final plan, Bayh told the Hill newspaper he would support the first cloture motion that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid files. Several conservative Democrats had suggested they might vote against that, and Republicans have threatened to use those procedural votes as political fodder.
Bayh said:
“At the end of the process, I’ll avoid the Washington two-step of voting to go forward but then voting against the final bill. But this is just a starting point, so at this point I do think there’s a difference.”
He joins Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), who suggested yesterday he would do the same.
