The Senate Agenda for 2009 -When is it DREAM's Turn Edition!!! - Page 6

Rahn Emanuel states he wants to get Energy and Health Care before August Recess, then CIR should be addressed.

Here watch this MSNBC special on the Obama's White House:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30892505...94090#31093830

Part 1 at about 4 MIN and 10 Sec.

What you said was kind of misleading, Rahm never said CIR should be addressed after that.

^ I think dado was referring to immigration as the third priority behind health care and energy according to both Sen. Reid and Speaker Pelosi and not referring to Rahm's comments on the show. The sentence structure made it seemed like they flowed together though.

EDIT: I finally watched that small clip. The House could get both energy and health care done since they're much faster. I don't know if the Senate can do both though. Health care will definitely be debated over the summer in the Senate but will there be enough room for energy in the summer in the Senate schedule?

Ezra Klein, liberal blogger for the Washington Post, got a hold of an internal Finance Committee memo regarding the timetable for health care reform. The Senate wants to debate health care the last two weeks of July while the House wants to debate health care the last week of July. They then want to go to conference committee and have the bill ready to sign by October 1st.

The initial debate will take up the most time and in health care's case, it'll take two weeks of Senate floor time and one week of House floor time.

Before that time, the Senate should take care of appropriations bills. Also, we now have to find out when the House will debate energy since the House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said he wants that done over the summer as well.

I think health care will be much easier now that single payer is off the table.

On the flip side, it means that predator insurance companies will continue to profit from people's health.

Single payer is probably off the table, but a Public Health Care Option that competes with private health insurance companies is still definitely on the table. We would then have a mixed universal health care system similar to France and Germany as opposed to a single payer universal health care system like Canada or Britain's government run universal health care system.To achieve a universal health care system, the system requires everyone to have health insurance and realistically, that's not possible without government help for people.

Right now, the main sticking points in the health care debate according to Ezra Klein is the public option, employer pay or play as in how much employers will pay to the system if they don't offer insurance to workers, and financing the whole enterprise. Kennedy's HELP Committee health care plan has a robust public option while Baucus's Finance Committee health care plan is a bit vague on the public option.

If you haven't done so yet, go voice your opinion on whether to turn the Senate Agenda thread into a blog.

Senate Agenda news will now move to the brand new The Senate Agenda Blog!!! This thread will now be retired and all new Senate Agenda posts will be at the blog. I'd like to thank Nick for DAP where the Senate Agenda topic was first born. Thanks Nick!!!