Health Reform: 59 and counting… 60 Votes To Proceed To Debate

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2:30 EST: They’ve got 60. Lincoln says she will vote to proceed. See update below

With Senator Mary Landrieu’s announcement this afternoon on the Senate floor that she will support the motion to proceed to debate on the health care bill–with the caveat that this does not guarantee her support for the final product–Majority Leader Harry Reid is now one vote short of the 60 he needs going into this evening’s vote. We’re all waiting to hear from Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln. We’re told she’ll be speaking this hour.

In listening to the proceedings on C-SPAN (I’ve got it on my radio), I must say I’m pretty impressed by the quality of the argument as Senators lay out their philosophical differences on this bill. Maybe they should make the Senate work on Saturday more often.

Are you following it, too, Swampland commenters? If so, let us know what you think.

UPDATE: There will indeed be a Senate debate on health care. Declaring that this is “the beginning of consideration of this bill by the U.S. Senate, not the end,” Senator Blanche Lambert Lincoln of Arkansas has just announced that she will give Reid the 60th vote he needs to begin Senate debate on the health care bill. But she also warned that she will not vote for passage of the bill as it is written, and she issued a none-too-veiled threat to join the Republicans in a fillibuster down the road if the government-run public option is not removed from the bill.

This marks the beginning of what promise to be weeks of tendentious debate on the Senate floor. The real fights–over the public option, abortion, taxes, whether to require individuals to buy coverage and businesses to provide it–still lie ahead after the Thanksgiving recess.