Senators' Sunday Morning Debate on Health Care Bill
Sunday, November 22, 2009 at 10:23AM 
One day after the U.S. Senate passed a procedural vote that will move the health care bill to the floor of the Senate for debate, Senators from both parties are battling it out.
A great debate this morning on Meet the Press as four senior senators - Assistant Majority Leader Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), and Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) - exchange their ideas on the bill.
But there is also a significant debate within the Democratic Party itself. The Los Angeles Times reports:
Only a day after Senate Democrats voted to move into a historic debate on overhauling the nation's healthcare system, key centrists made it clear today that the party is still a long way from delivering on its promise to provide near-universal insurance coverage and contain medical costs.
Faced with the prospect of Republican filibusters, Democratic leaders must deliver the same kind of total unity they managed to achieve in Saturday's vote to begin debate: Every Democratic senator, plus two independents who caucus with them, supported the key procedural motion.
But several of those senators spoke out today to say that they will not support the healthcare bill itself unless major changes were made.
Conservative Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said on ABC's "This Week" that he voted to cut off a GOP filibuster and move into debate after the Thanksgiving recess only because that opened the way to changing the bill put forward by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
"If I thought the bill couldn't be amended and couldn't be improved, I wouldn't vote to move it forward and move the debate," Nelson said. "When I saw the debate [on the motion to proceed] I said it can be amended, it can be improved. Debate can begin. We ought not to stop the opportunity to improve the bill."

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