"The 11 Democrats who will decide the fate of healthcare reform"

[Clio the Leo]

The 11 Democrats who will decide the fate of healthcare reform
BY MIKE MADDEN

WASHINGTON -- The White House is convening a healthcare reform "summit" next week, with Republican and Democratic leaders from the House and Senate. But now that Democrats have lost their 60-vote Senate supermajority, it's already clear that the options for passing reform legislation have dwindled down to a very short list. Armed with a newfound zeal for filibusters, the GOP won't let the Senate pass any new healthcare bills. So the House will have to pass the bill the Senate has already finished, and then a separate measure, which would "fix" parts of the Senate bill that the House doesn't like, would pass through the budget reconciliation process.

Thanks to the Senate's complicated rules, that would leave Democrats needing to find 51 votes for healthcare reform, not the 60 that now look completely out of reach. But even with the 59 seats the Democrats (or like-minded independents) control, getting just those 51 votes could be tricky. The reconciliation bill will need to be carefully tailored, to make sure it doesn't leave itself open to challenges from the GOP. And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada may still need to put some pressure on anxious members of his caucus to make sure they stay in line. "You get right down to 51 votes" in whip counts, one Senate Democratic aide says. Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet's decision to send a letter asking Reid to include a public insurance option in a reconciliation bill gave some hope to Democrats who had wondered if he would even support using reconciliation.

It's worth pointing out that aides aren't even sure it'll come down to counting votes. The House has insisted the Senate pass a reconciliation "fix" before the House votes on the Senate's underlying bill, and so far, officials haven't figured out the logistics of how to do that. "Amending a bill -- through reconciliation or otherwise -- when the bill itself hasn't passed yet -- it's kind of hard," one source told Salon. But if reform gets around that hurdle, here's a look at the Senate Democrats who aides say are most likely to break off and vote with Republicans against healthcare reform if it comes up in reconciliation. (Keep in mind, if the going gets really hard, Reid only needs to find 50 votes; Vice President Biden can break a 50-50 tie.) If Democrats can get two or three of these wavering votes, they should be able to pass the bill. If not, it might finally die.

More than just the four shown here, click below to see who the 11 are...


http://www.salon.com/news/healthcare_reform/index.html?story=/news/feature/2010/02/17/healthcare_reconciliation