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...public option - as it currently does. "I feel so strongly about the creation of another government health-insurance entitlement," Lieberman told CBS's Bob Schieffer. "I think it's such a mistake that I would use the power I have as a single Senator to stop a final vote." Just days before that, he told ABC News he intended to campaign for both Republican and Democratic candidates in next year's midterm elections. And late last month, in a rare oversight hearing of the Obama Administration, he examined the legality of the President's so-called czars - a favorite bone...
...think if you break it down even further, over 80% of Democrats - and this is going to be a Democratic bill - want a public option," says Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the only other independent in the Senate. Sanders was one of a handful of Dems who voted to boot Lieberman from the party back in January and says that if given the chance, he'd do it again. Rumors have swirled on Capitol Hill and on liberal blogs that if Lieberman follows through with his threat, he could face such a vote, though Sanders demurs. "I leave that...
...right to his opinions," says Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Democrat (as of April, when he switched from the Republican Party). "We'll work it out." "There's a long ways to go" before considering punitive measures, says Patty Murray of Washington. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who also voted in January to expel Lieberman, is similarly cautious: "Let's see what happens. Nobody should be filibustering health care - either vote it up or vote it down." Says Dianne Feinstein of California: "If there is a public option and somebody wants to remove it, move an amendment, stand up on the floor...
...difficult and close as the health care vote turned out to be in the House - requiring a last-minute deal by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to appease antiabortion Democrats and secure her 5-vote margin - things get exponentially more complicated in the Senate. There the ideological balance among Democrats is closer than in the liberal House, and the rules allow amendments that could send the bill in almost any direction. Most crucially, it will take a supermajority of 60 votes - exactly the number Reid has in his Democratic caucus - to progress in the face of a GOP filibuster...
...hard to overestimate the complexity of Reid's task. His first challenge, which is expected to come as soon as he can obtain cost estimates for his bill from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), will be to get the legislation onto the floor, with a normally routine procedural vote known as a "motion to proceed." While Reid doesn't have his 60 votes locked down for it, the betting is that he will. More uncertain is whether he will find that many to get the bill out of the Senate, which will require a second, more contentious vote...