Gregg: Republicans will filibuster Senate health bill if it resembles House version

Republicans will filibuster a health bill if it resembles the one passed by the House, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) pledged Monday.

Gregg said that if the Senate GOP can get the votes together, they'll work to filibuster the bill.

"If this bill is in any way near the form it came out of the House…we will definitely try to filibuster it," Gregg says during a telephone interview on the Fox Business Network. "But we have to have 41 votes to do that."

All 40 Republican members of the Senate have said they would oppose a Senate bill containing the so-called "opt out" public option that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has said he would include in the bill.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) has signaled some support for a triggered public option, though Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) has said he'd join a filibuster of a bill including the public (or "government-run") plan.

A handful of other centrist Democrats have yet to say how they would vote, including Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who said earlier today he's "highly unlikely" to support any bill without restrictions on abortion like those to have passed out of the House.

Gregg said that Republicans don't know whether they'll have the votes to sustain a filibuster, due to the fact that a formal Senate bill has not actually finished being drafted.

"We don't know because, as a very practical matter, we have not seen a Senate bill yet," he said. "We don't know what the bill is they're going to bring to the floor, and therefore we really don't know what deals have been made to get votes."

Still, the New Hampshire Republican said he believes that the Senate would pass the Democratic health proposals, as the majority party controls 60 Senate seats.

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