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Live from Capitol Hill: Almost time for healthcare vote

Republican and Democratic leaders prepare to take the floor ahead of the evening vote. Read live coverage here

WASHINGTON — The moment Democrats have been waiting for is almost here: The House plans to vote on the healthcare reform bill Sunday night. Lawmakers are debating the Senate’s healthcare bill, and they’ll soon vote on that and a budget reconciliation measure designed to make changes to it. Look here for updates throughout the day, and read earlier coverage here and here.

10:07 p.m. Eastern: House Minority Leader John Boehner is speaking now, giving the Republican closing argument. But he accidentally gave Democrats a chance to rally themselves a bit. “Can you honestly say that if you like the healthcare plan you have, that you can keep it?” he asked. “Yes!” Democrats yelled back. “No, you can’t,” he snapped. Which, naturally, prompted an Obama-esque retort from the Democratic caucus: “Yes we can!”

Not long afterwards, Boehner started shouting that Democrats haven’t read the bill. “Hell no, you didn’t!” he yelled. A Democrat objected to the language. “Both sides will do well to remember the dignity of the House,” Rep. Dave Obey, D-Wisc., the acting speaker, told Boehner.

9:50 p.m. Eastern: When the House does finally vote on the Senate’s version of the healthcare bill and, even later, the reconciliation fix, look for Republicans to blast passage of the legislation “in the dead of night.” The vote on the Senate version won’t come until after 10 p.m., and the vote on the reconciliation bill could come close to midnight.

What the GOP won’t say, though, is that the main reason the vote will come so late is because Republicans have done all they can do to drag out the day’s proceedings into the night. For instance, earlier Sunday, the House held a roll call vote on a measure to name a post office in Columbus, Ohio, for an activist named Clarence Lumpkin. That passed, 420-0, with 10 lawmakers skipping the vote. But it also took up more than 15 minutes that could have been spent debating the bill. Same goes for another measure, which passed 426-0, that expressed the “sense of the House of Representatives regarding the meritorious service performed by aviators in the United States Armed Forces who were shot down over, or otherwise forced to land in, hostile territory yet evaded enemy capture or were captured but subsequently escaped.”

Both roll call votes were forced by GOP objections to passing them, and other non-controversial business, on a voice vote.

“Republicans have made stuff up throughout the course of this debate — without a bit of shame or a hint of blushing,” said Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse. “At least they are going out on a low note — we wouldn’t expect anything different.”

9:30 p.m. Eastern: Debate on the healthcare reform bill is starting to wrap up, and the leaders of both parties will soon head to the floor to make their closing speeches. The last couple of hours have been a whirlwind of very brief remarks by Democrats and Republicans alike; each member wants to say they had a chance to talk about the bill on the floor, so the House is rolling through minute-long (or shorter) remarks from nearly all of its members.

Because the schedule is so tight, and because there’s really nothing else happening on Capitol Hill, there are actually quite a few lawmakers sitting in the chamber listening. Usually, the speeches on C-SPAN are delivered to an empty room. Sunday night, though, about two dozen Republicans and two dozen Democrats have been there throughout.

In between the speeches, lawmakers have dropped in to ask consent to “revise and extend” their remarks — to edit their text before the Congressional Record is published. But each request has been turned into a kind of mini-speech. So Republicans come and ask for consent to revise and extend their remarks to underscore their opposition to this government takeover of one-sixth of the U.S. economy, and Democrats come and ask for consent to revise and extend their remarks on this great triumph for America. All the speeches started blending into one another long ago; at this point, Congress has been debating the bill for more than a year, and lawmakers really don’t have much to say about it that they haven’t already said.
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