If Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid does not ultimately decide to include a public option in Senate health care legislation before he brings a bill to the floor, it could have important consequences for the fate of the public option.
As I’ve noted before, the public option would then have to be added to the bill by amendment, or, failing that, in a contentious conference committee with the House of Representatives.
Neither option is particularly straightforward: The latter route would ask Democratic conservatives whether they’d support a filibuster to kill a health care bill with a public option–brave, but dangerous. The former will be a daunting climb.
It seems very likely that any provisions that Senators want to add to the health care bill will, by what’s known as a unanimous consent agreement, be required to pass with at least 60 votes. Note, that’s different from normal Senate legislation, which only needs 51 votes to pass, but often has to overcome a 60-vote procedural hurdle to end a filibuster.
The difference is important. In the case of unanimous consent, the public option would need 60 supporters–a number even its supporters admit it doesn’t have right now. In regular order, by contrast, the 60 votes would only be required to overcome a filibuster. The question, in that case, would be whether there are 60 senators who believe that the public option deserves an up or down vote, even if they happen not to support the underlying amendment, or if some Democrats will team with Republicans to filibuster it.
Now, as its name implies, unanimous consent agreement requires the unanimous consent of the entire Senate, so public option supporters could theoretically throw a wrench into this. They could argue that public option amendments could be exempted from the agreement. I have some calls out to see what the current thinking is and how the key players plan to proceed, and I’ll report back what I learn. But though this is very deep in the procedural weeds, it’s an important pivot point to watch.
