What effect does the election of Scott Brown have on healthcare reform?
What effect does the election of Scott Brown have on healthcare reform? I know it is significant because the Dems now have less than 60 (is that correct?) senators, but what makes that such a big deal? Please note that I am not American, or I would probably understand it better.
He’ll vote No. Like republicans do. He won’t do much of anything else, until around 2011 then he’ll announce he wants to run for president.
Then Brown loses.
It’s already had an affect. Obama himself was talking about a revised health care bill without a lot of the things that the majority of us objected to.
They will actually be forced to work with republicans on this if they hope to get anything accomplished.
Hopefully it will kill it entirely.
The only things that would actually lower the costs of health care, like tort reform and deregulation of interstate competition, aren’t even in the bill.
Because the Dems need 60 votes in order to pass health care reform (among other things) and now they do not have enough votes, Brown will not provide their much needed 60th vote. It has a strong potential of ruining their entire agenda.
yey!
Technically the effect would be that votes of 60 Senators are needed to end the debates and to proceed to actual vote on the bill. In absence of the 60th vote the Republicans would simply stand on the Senate floor and speak all kinds of nonsense, for days and days 24/7, just to prevent the bill from voting. This is called filibuster.
In practice the result will be that a lot of liberals in the House will abandon the sinking ship of ObamaCare like rats, becuase all 450 of them face reealection in November.
We do not know yet.