Forget the town halls and the bitter partisan barbs. Now things are really getting nasty in the health care debate.
During a meeting of Democratic senators last week, Majority Leader Harry Reid got assent to keep the Senate in session seven days a week and keep debate open well into the night until the bill is passed.
Lawmakers got their first taste of it this past weekend, when the Senate met Sunday for only the 30th time since the Civil War. If they don’t meet the goal of passing the bill by Christmas, Reid has vowed to bring lawmakers back the day after and work until New Year’s, when he’ll give them a day off before making them return again.
It’s a startling possibility for lawmakers used to working 3 1/2 days in Washington and having plenty of time off around the holidays.
And while it creates a sense of urgency to the process as the clock ticks down, Democrats concede there is another motive at work — wearing down Republicans.
“Suddenly, we’re at Christmas Eve, and Republicans are saying, ‘I’m supposed to be with my family and my grandkids, and I’d rather be back home.’ And you have to choose. Ultimately, Republicans will want to be back home,” said a senior Democratic aide.
Helped by the arcane rules of the Senate, this is the health care debate’s endgame, one that is as much about a battle of wills as it is amendments or whipping up votes.
So far, Republicans are using those rules to great effect, slowing debate to a crawl and forcing Democrats to round up 60 votes on each amendment to end debate.
Unlike the speaker of the House, the majority leader in the Senate has only a small number of tools with which he can respond, and the power of the calendar is one of them.
Among its historical precedents is the battle over civil- rights legislation, which not coincidentally Reid brought up in a floor speech Monday, comparing it to the current fight over health care.
“When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today,” Reid said.
The majority leader at the time responded by keeping the Senate in session nearly around the clock.
“Lyndon Johnson said, ‘We’re going to hold continuous sessions, be here night and day and make these people sleep here and totally wear them down until they couldn’t take it.’ There are famous pictures of senators in cots from that filibuster,” said Julian Zelizer, a congressional expert at Princeton University.
But as a lesson from history, it’s a double-edged one for Democrats.
“The problem was, it was the Northerners who got tired, and what was passed was a totally watered-down version of what was originally desired,” Zeli zer said.
In the case of health care, “the Republicans have nothing else they need to do. Their main goal is to use the health care bill against the Democrats by making it an example of why they can’t govern. They can probably afford to sit around more than the Democrats can,” he said.
