Geoffrey Burr, ABC Nationa's Vice President of Federal Affairs sent an email out to the chapter presidents this week, discussing the health care bill recently passed by the Senate. Here is some of what Mr. Burr had to say:
Shortly after midnight last night the Senate, by a 60-40 party line vote, passed the first of three procedural votes necessary in order to end debate and pass Majority Leader Reid’s health care bill. There will be another procedural vote Tuesday and another Wednesday and then the Senate is expected to pass the bill on Christmas Eve around 7pm.
So, what happens next? Because the Senate passed bill differs greatly from the bill passed by the House, the Senate bill must be sent back over to the House for action. If the House passes the Senate version (without changing so much as a comma), the path will be cleared for it to head to the President’s desk. However, if the House changes the bill (and this is highly likely due in part to many factors, most prominent among which are the lack of a “public option” in the Senate bill and the discrepancies in the language regarding public funding for abortion) then the bill will be sent back to the Senate and will again be debated and again it will need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. The latter scenario, at this time, appears to be more likely. In short, even though we will have a House passed bill and a Senate passed bill by Christmas, this debate is still far from over and will continue for several more weeks with the ultimate outcome still unclear.
Important note: An amendment we had been following closely, the Merkley Amendment, was added to Senator Reid’s manager’s package at the last minute. This amendment is targeted at the construction industry, to make sure that smaller construction firms with less than 50 employees are still subject to some of the employer requirements to provide coverage. According to the changes in the manager’s amendment, construction companies are required to help provide coverage or pay penalties if they have more than five employees, instead of the 50-employee threshold for most other companies. If it had been offered as an amendment on the floor, it would have failed, but Majority Leader Reid saw fit to include it in his legislative package so it would be voted on before anyone knew it was there. We are working with a construction coalition to make known the vast opposition to this provision and we will make sure that both the House and Senate are aware of it before they again vote on this package. We all already talking to House offices about the need to remove this from the bill.
The House is not scheduled to return until January 12 and the Senate returns on the 19th and they will resume work on health care reform at that time.
This bill will negatively impact all of the small companies in our industry, so we will need to take action if the bill goes through. We will keep everyone updated on this issue, so check back soon.