The Senate has positioned itself to ultimately pass the Health care reform bill by Christmas day, assuming the Senate Democrats can garner the 60 votes needed to invoked cloture, three separate times. The first of these super majority votes will be needed early Monday. Dec. 21.The Senate Democrats were able to position themselves by abusing Senate Rule 15 and by muscling adjournment resolutions through the Senate calling for 12:01AM convenings. While feelings may be bruised on both sides of the aisle by the sharp elbows, the true bruising might be members of the House of Representatives. You see they will be asked to take the Senate bill, hook, line and sinker.

This writer believes if 60 votes are mustered to overcome the GOP filibusters and pass the bill in the Senate before or on Christmas day, then there will never be a conference between the House and the Senate. Remember the unusual start this bill took in the Senate, that being that the Leader called up an unrelated bill and not the house passed Health Care bill. That means any language the House wants included in this process, the Senate will have to include or the House will have to add if they in fact amend the Senate bill. However, if they want to avoid all of that, including having to deal with the Stupak (abortion) language again, the House could simply concur (adopt) in the Senate amendment and the bill is then sent to the President for his signature. 

While this is not the best scenario for many House members who were told they would get a chance to vote to "redeem" themselves by having another shot at amending the bill, this does get the bill out of the Senate where a few hold-out Senators could claim they are providing the Leader one of the 60 votes needed "just to move the process along." This scenario would be the end of the long and winding legislative road for Health Care in the Senate and just 1 roll call vote away from it being the end of the road for the House, where it is then off to the President for signature. One tip as to whether this might be the play of the session, if the Reid manager's amendment makes references in the legislative language to some of the text contained in the House passed Health Care bill. This indicates that they have pre-conferenced the language and may in fact simply concur (adopt) the Senate language.

Elizabeth Letchworth is the Owner-Founder of GradeGov.com, 4 times elected United States Senate Secretary for the Majority/Minority, U. S. Senate-retired, presently senior legislative advisor @ Covington & Burling, LLC