8:05 – The motion passes 60-39 on a party line vote.

7:54 – We are having a vote from their desks.

7:44 – Harry Reid is closing out the debate. The vote should take place in about 10 min. Reid said they are voting at this hour at the request of Blanche Lincoln who wanted time to read the bill. He ask Republicans to join him on the right side of history. Reid is heavily focusing on the fact that this is a vote to begin debate not a vote for a bill.

7:30 – McConnell is closing out debate for the Republican side. He is going through everything he thinks is wrong with the bill. Raising taxes, slashing Medicare.

7:15 – Baucus is delivering one of the closing statements in support of reform. He was followed by Dodd. Both of them wrote their individual committees’ bills.

7:00 – Enzi interestingly seems opposes to basically every single piece of the bill. This is in spite of the fact that Enzi helped write a large part of it. I think this finally blows away the 80% agreement myth.

6:30 – Grassley and Enzi are doing the wrap up for the Republican party. Grassley is making the interesting argument that doing this would be worth than doing nothing at all. It is rare to hear a defense of the status quo in health care.

6:00 – It is the Democrats time again.

5:50 – Rationing! Rationing! Rationing! The Republican message of the hour.

5:00 – Republican hour again. They are pushing the issue that the taxes start years before the bulk of the reforms.

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4:30 – Democrats are focusing on the lack of competition in the current health insurance marketplace.

4:00 – The Democrats have the floor back and Schumer is confident they will pass this bill.

Until the actual vote happens it looks unlikely any more real news will be made on the Senate floor. I don’t see Republicans Snowe or Collins on the schedule to speak. They are the only Republicans that might consider voting for a bill if it was strongly watered down.

ConservaDem Ben Nelson, Evan Bayh, and Joe Lieberman are also not on the schedule to speak today either.

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3:00 – Time for another Republican hour of complaining about the bill. The subject of this hour will be the expansion of Medicaid.

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With Lincoln declaring that she would vote for a motion to proceed, the Democrats have now gotten commitments from all 60 members of the caucus to allow the bill to be debated on the floor. They will have the votes for the motion to proceed tonight at 8pm.

2:20 – Lincoln is the last remaining possible Democratic holdout and is speaking now. She will fight hard to make sure the bill ends up more like the Senate Finance Committee bill. There are not enough insurance options for most people. Most markets are highly concentrated. She attacks the fact that outside groups have been running so many ads in her state about her vote. She does not support the creation of a robust government administered plan. She claims to be afraid of future bailouts of the public option. (Interesting the rhetoric has quickly gone from destroying the entire private market to never being able to compete and needing bailouts. Somehow with many opponents holding both claims at once.) She will vote to proceed to debate. She wants to make it clear that she is opposed to the public option and will not vote for final cloture on the current bill as it is written. She will filibuster any bill with a government run public option.

2:00 – Its the Democrats hour now. Franken speaks in strong support of the bill. Franken points out that Minn. has on average medical loss ratio of 91%.

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To read more about the far reaching implications the Stupak anti-choice amendment. I recommend this here and here.

1:30 – Hatch, Brownback, and Johanns are running the all anti-abortion, pro-Stupak amendment hour. Expect this ridicules issue of the “federal funding of abortion,” to be one of the big republican attacks in the coming weeks.

1:05 – Hatch and other Republicans wants the Stupak amendment.

Politico has a rough line up for which Democrats and which Republicans are expected to speak today.

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12:55 – Landrieu thinks something are wrong with the bill. First she thinks the tax credits for small businesses are too small and need to be expand. She wants more tax equity for those who are self-insured. She is rightly worried about the possibility of premiums going up between now and 2014. She is against the current public option. She wants a trigger, like the one promoted by Snowe. She concludes by defending the addition of Medicaid money for states that suffered from national disasters in the past few years. She is promote of it.

12:50 – Landrieu begins by praising Wyden and his efforts to create the Wyden-Bennett plan that she co-sponsored. She says she will vote to let the debate move forward, but her vote is not a vote for the underlining bill. It is only a “vote to move forward.” She said it is clear that doing nothing is no longer an option. Landrieu plans to “stay focused like a laser” on bringing down cost for small businesses. Landrieu is pro excise tax on employer provided health insurance.

12:35 – Cantwell makes a strong case for her basic health plan and says she hopes to work to expand it. It is not a public option but it is basically how the health exchange should have been designed to begin with. The state creates the design of a good health insurance plan (co-pays, benefits, deductibles, etc). Insurance companies bid to offer this insurance plan to all the people in the basic health plan program. The state approves several of the lowest bids and individuals can choose from any of these approved insurance providers. Read more about the “basic health plans” here.

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It is important to remember that this is not the debate about the Senate health care bill, the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” This is a debate about whether to allow the bill to come to the floor where it can be debated and amended. The Republicans are threatening to use the Senate’s unlimited debate clause to prevent the bill from coming to the floor where it then can be debated. They are threatening to never stop debating (this is what a filibuster technically is) the vote on the motion to proceed. This is how the Republicans plan to use their right of unlimited debate to actually stop any debate on health care reform. When trying to explain how the Senate has become a broken, undemocratic, unconstitutional perversion of its original self, I recommend using this as an example.

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The debate on whether to allow a debate on the Senate health care bill is talking place right now on C-SPAN 2. The cloture vote is expected at 8 pm. For the most part this will be a serious of senators from both sides giving speeches based their sides talking points.

The Republicans are calling the bill terrible using buzzwords like “tax increase,” “Medicare cuts,” “rationing,” “new entitlement spending,” “government takeover,” etc..

The Democrats are saying how great the bill is. They are using the talking points of “deficit reducing,” “cost containment,” consumer protects,” “expanding coverage,” “banning deny based on pre-existing conditions,” etc…

Most of the speeches are not going to be newsworthy. There are a handful of conservative Democrats and maybe two Republicans who might use this time to explain what amendments they must see adopted to gain their final vote on the bill. It is also possible, but very unlikely, that a few of the most progressives members of the Senate will draw a line in the sand about what changes they will not accept. If any of those senators make news with their speech I will bring it to you here.