The Senate officially begins debate on health care reform today at 3 pm. The floor debate will be live on C-Span 2.

6:56 – The Senate adjourns until tomorrow.

6:50 – There has been no speaker on the senate floor for the past roughly 20 min.

-I most leave temporary- You can keep watching the debate on C-Span 2

6:10 – Enzi is attacking the new super Medpac commission because all the secret deals Obama made with the industries would prevent the Medpac commission from reducing most industry’s profits. He is joining the McCain bandwagon about Medicare cuts.

5:40 – Bob Casey speaks to counter McCains’ claim that the bill would hurt Medicare. He says the bill will stop Medicare from going bankrupt in 8 years and lowers drug cost for people in the Part D doughnut hole.

Casey is now talking about how reform will help children in this country. He points out how successful the SCHIP program has been at reducing the number of children without health insurance. He strongly supports Rockefeller’s efforts to make sure the SCHIP program is not folded into the exchange.

5:03 – John McCain offers his motion to recommit. The motion would require the bill without “cuts to Medicare” or basically any changes to the program. (This not a serious motion but a piece of pure theater used to attack the bill.) McCain’s code word of the day is “cuts.” He calls the bill Bernie Madoff or Enron accounting. He claims the savings expected from Medicare are completely unobtainable. (I guess this means McCain believes there is no way of avoiding the bankruptcy of the nation or the Medicare program in the next few decades.) He attacks Obama for being to friendly with health care lobbyists and their numerous visits to the White House. (A good point Sen. McCain.) McCain is in full blown anti-lobbyist firebrand populist mode. “Shame on AARP, shame on AMA.”

McCain is jumping on criticizing the bill for delaying reforms until 2014 but starting many of the revenue provisions right away. This is an ironic populist connect of Republican attacks and serious concerns among progressives. McCain is claiming the excise tax on high end insurance would end up like the Doc Fix and never be allowed to be fully implemented. McCain is attacking the new powers giving the Secretary of HHS. He is shocked that the Secretary of Health would be able to define bare minimum of what qualifies as health insurance.

4:40 – Grassley claims the bill is not revenue neutral because the taxes start in 2010 but the benefits don’t start until 2014. (This is a line of attack expected to be very common in the coming weeks. Grassley over the months has moved from calling the public option the reason this is a government take over to saying the basic reform regulations are what make it a Washington take over of health care. (A less to Democrats no matter what you do about health care reform the Republicans will always call it a “government take over.”)

In a magical dual thought moment Grassley attacked the idea of a public option because it would slash reimbursement rates to provider and than in the next sentence attacked the bill for not controlling cost. Grassley is pulling out the Tenther conspiracy talking. While he does not directly state that he thinks the individual mandate is unconstitutional he comes very very close citing the ten amendment.

Interestingly Grassley points out that the bill would leave 25 million uninsured as a failure of the bill. Of course a third of them are undocumented immigrants and just moments before Grassley said he wanted reform to take farther steps to prevent illegal immigrants from getting benefits from reform. (This is not a honest stand against the bill for idealogical reason. This is just Grassley throwing everything at the bill hoping something sticks.)

Grassley claims he wants to start over again in a bipartisan way. (That was a huge success earlier in the year.)

4:36 – Baucus says he has not given up on trying to win Grassley’s vote for health care reform. (I don’t know if Baucus is just being nice or is truly delusional.)

4:10 – Dodd speaks about the work Ted Kennedy did to help write the HELP Committee. Dodd almost pointing out the silliness that the Senate requires a debate about being debate. He claims we are here to create an “American health care plan” not like other countries’ plans. (Why exactly must we recreate the wheel. Can’t we learn from others and copy what they are doing well?) Dodd talks about all the great improvements the bill will make and tries to make a very personal case for reform.

4:03 – Enzi calls the Reid bill a “job killer” and says it will “ration care” and is “a government takeover” of health care. He says the bill has billions in pork. Enzi is making the case the the bill breaks several promise of Obama. He also claims future Congresses will basically not allow many of the elements of the bill to go into effect.

4:00 – Enzi called the gang of six a honest negotiation to find support and claims the fault was the leadership finally set a deadline. (which was after months of repeated blown deadlines and clear indications Grassley for political reasons would never vote for anything.)

3:53 – Enzi is speaking now and calls Reid’s unanimous consent request a stunt (I do agree although all floor “debate” is a stunt and has been years now). Enzi calls the bill partisan. (which is funny because Obama bent over backwards giving Enzi months to write a bipartisan bill he could vote for and Enzi kept moving the football making it clear it would never support a bill regardless what was in it.)

3:42 – Baucus claims the bill would reduce cost by eliminating cost shifting, reducing red tape, streamlining with standard enrollment forms, providing tax credits, etc… He has 10 item list of reforms that should reduce cost. Baucus says cost without reform would continue to spiral out of control. Of course the CBO just put out a report saying premiums in 2016 would increase at the same rate with or without the passage of this bill.

3:34 – Baucus says women are currently discriminated against in our country when it comes to health insurance. He speaks in general support of the reform bill. “Our system is in crisis.” Baucus said the claims reform is about government take over of health care is false. It is about restoring control to the doctor and patient. He says claims reform would increase deficit are false. It would in fact reduce the deficit. He says claims the reform would raise taxes are also false. Baucus is going through all the myths about health care reform and calling them false.

3:20 – Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) offers the first amendment. This amendment deals with cost-sharing for preventive screening for females. Mikulski stresses that woman currently pay more for health insurance than men. The cost of her amendment will be $1 billion as scored by the CBO. It would reduce co-payments and deductibles for some additional preventive screening measurements not currently in the bill.

3:19 – Mike Enzi is “upset” about the unanimous consent requests but will let Mikulski get to her amendment.

3:16 – Enzi objected. Reid calls this a bad way to start debate.

3:15 – Reid gives Blanche Lincoln alot of praise for saying the bill should be public for at least 72 hours before the vote. In the veil Reid asks that all amendments be posted publicly online before they are voted on.

3:13 – Enzi objected to the consent request. (Ben Nelson has been very concerned about the CLASS act so this could be a move by Reid to help win him over)

3:04 – Reid calls this one of the most historic debates in Senate history. He points out the bill would reduce the deficit and expand coverage. Reid makes a point that the money for the CLASS act should only be used for the CLASS program. Reid ask for unanimous consent that no amendment not could use the money generate for Social Security or the CLASS act for anything besides those programs