Washington, March 23: Democrats and Barack Obama were yesterday celebrating a victory that has revitalised the party, revived a faltering presidency, and set in motion the biggest changes to America’s system of healthcare since the heady days of Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” programmes of the 1960s.
The 219-212 vote by which the House of Representatives approved the Senate’s version of healthcare reform late on Sunday night is of course anything but the end of the battle. Republicans who unanimously opposed the legislation vow to continue their fight, and the chief legal officers of a dozen Republican-governed states threaten to block it on constitutional grounds, as a violation of states’ rights.
More immediately, the Senate must pass a separate package of fixes to the measure enacted by the House – anything but a given, even under the budget-related “reconciliation” process that will be used, whereby Democrats require only a simple majority of 51.
–Agencies