Later this morning, after tense months of negotiating and arguing, the Senate Finance Committee will vote on its health care reform bill. The package, which is expected to pass on a party-line or nearly party-line vote, will be a precursor to a Senate bill, which will be compiled in the coming days, and reach the floor later this month.
Of the five Congressional committees with jurisdiction over the nation’s sprawling health care system, Finance is the last to act, though it began preliminary hearings on the issue about one year ago.
The members to watch today are Democrats Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and, more crucially, Republican Olympia Snowe (R-ME). Wyden and Rockefeller are among the panel’s most knowledgeable health care experts, but were largely shut out of the process of designing the bill, and do not approve of many of its more conservative and industry-friendly measures.
Snowe, by contrast, is perhaps the only Republican in the entire Senate who is considering supporting a Democratic health care overhaul, and her vote today (yes? no? abstain?) could signal how she plans to involve herself in future negotiations when the bill advances. We’ll bring you the final tally in real time.
