Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid "got to 60" at 1:08 Monday morning.....
But, while Reid appears to have a bill, and a remarkable legislative accomplishment, he does not have a happy caucus. Even as they voted for the measure, progressive senators were saying they hoped reform would not ultimately look like the bill they are now rushing to passage.
Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown, a key member of the Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, described himself as "very disappointed" by the broad concessions Reid made to get centrists such as Connecticut Indepebdent Joe Lieberman and Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson on board.
But the most frustrated Democrat was Senator Russ Feingold, who announced late Sunday that he would cast critical votes for a health-care reform bill that is far weaker than what he had wanted.
To a greater extent than any backer of proposals to establish a government-run "public option," the Wisconsin Democrat had wavered on whether to support a Senate bill that fails to establish competition for private insurers that will be enriched by "reform."
......Feingold spoke openly about those who had undermined the cause of real reform. In so doing, he placed explicit blame for the weakness of the Senate bill where it belongs -- with the Obama administration.
It is no secret that the White House abandoned efforts to pass a real reform measure weeks ago.
Indeed, President Obama's December 6 speech to Democratic senators -- in which he failed to express support either for a government-supported public option or expansion of Medicare -- was seen by many of Capitol Hill as having strengthened the hand of Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, who demanded that measures designed to hold private insurers to account by stripped from the Senate bill.
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"I've been fighting all year for a strong public option to compete with the insurance industry and bring health care spending down. I continued that fight during recent negotiations, and I refused to sign onto a deal to drop the public option from the Senate bill. Unfortunately, the lack of support from the administration made keeping the public option in the bill an uphill struggle," the senator said. "Removing the public option from the Senate bill is the wrong move, and eliminates $25 billion in savings....
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