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IMAGE SOURCE: Los Angeles Times Web site/ President Obama after visiting House members
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Vote Possible Saturday
It was getting contentious on the House floor today as Democrats and Republicans could not only not agree about health care reform but couldn’t even agree about the rules for a debate.
This afternoon there was a turn in the contentiousness when lawmakers voted 242-to-192 to approve a must-pass procedural measure to set up terms for debate.
15 Democrats were among the 177 Republicans who voted to block the debates.
“We will vote today on the floor of the House of Representatives,” said Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland after a session with President Obama who made a personal appeal to Democrats on the fence.
Reportedly, the president appealed to their sense of their own legacies, reports the Los Angeles Times.
Later in the Rose Garden, the president urged passage telling reporters that every day 14,000 Americans continue to lose their health insurance and 18,000 Americans die because they don’t have it.
"I just came from the Hill, where I talked to the members of Congress there, and I reminded them that opportunities like this come around maybe once in a generation," Obama said. "Most public servants pass through their entire careers without a chance to make as important a difference in the lives of their constituents and the life of this country. This is their moment, this is our moment, to live up to the trust that the American people have placed in us -- even when it's hard; especially when it's hard. This is our moment to deliver.
"I urge members of Congress to rise to this moment. Answer the call of history.”
“Heed the Gavel” Rep. John Dingell had to shout over a highly partisan debate that erupted earlier Saturday.
Rep. Dingell (D-Mich.) is the longest-serving congressman who is chairing the debate and whose name appears on H.R. 3962. In his Op-Ed published in various papers this week, he said Americans, “pay more for health care than we do for food.”
The vote could come as soon as tonight if Democrats find they have 218 votes needed to pass the legislation among the 258 Democratic seats in the House. Republicans are united in their opposition to the bill.
Emerging from a closed door meeting with the president, Speaker Nancy Pelosi predicted approval today saying “We will pass health care reform.”
If not the final vote on the $1.2 trillion bill could fall on Sunday or early next week.
H.R. 3962 is the final, merged version of the health care reform legislation that the House has been working on for much of 2009. #