Senate Republicans insisting on time for healthcare debate

Senate Republicans are urging the chamber to slow down its debate of the healthcare bill this fall, reviving a tactic they used this summer to stall the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Sonia Sotomayor.

Republican leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) led the charge Wednesday, telling reporters at a mid-afternoon press conference that his conference will insist that the bill go through a “couple of months” of debate on the chamber floor — and only after it is analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office and published online.

In response, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) promised “sufficient time” to debate the bill, but also accused Republicans of simply wanting to kill the measure.

Republicans tried to slow Sotomayor’s confirmation process this summer, but Judiciary Committee Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) stuck to a weeklong schedule in mid-July that put the final floor vote just before the August recess. The GOP had been trying to push the final vote into September.

“I can give you some examples of the kind of time spent on other issues. Last Congress we spent four weeks on a farm bill. Within this decade we spent seven weeks on No Child Left Behind and eight weeks on an energy bill,” McConnell said Wednesday.

“Senate Republicans are going to insist that this be a real Senate debate, a multiweek debate that gives everyone on both sides an opportunity to freely amend this measure and the American people an opportunity to fully understand what's in it.”

Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) also called for a lengthy debate.

“We need a full amount of time, maybe a couple of months, to discuss this bill. And why do we need it?  Because there are a lot of important questions,” Alexander said.

Reid said McConnell and the other GOP leaders “want to do anything that they can do not to have a bill.”

“We understand that. We understand they would rather never have a vote on this,” Reid said. “The length of the debate is going to be one where there will be sufficient time. People are going to have an ample opportunity, as they did with the HELP bill, to read it and understand it; as they did with the Finance bill, to read it, understand how much it costs.”

Reid has said he plans to merge the Finance Committee bill that passed on a 14-9 vote on Tuesday with the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee version that passed in July. Few observers expect a final Senate vote this month, with most predicting a final vote around Thanksgiving or later.