Senate votes to repeal provision, but not health care overhaul

By Karoun Demirjian

Published Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2011 | 3:46 p.m.

Updated Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2011 | 5:52 p.m.

As far as the Democrats are concerned, the health care bill is now done.

The Senate on Wednesday voted to repeal the pesky 1099 provisions that made it into last year's health care overhaul.

Senators banded together 81-17 to support stripping a requirement that medical offices fill out new tax forms every time they spend $600 or more, presented as an amendment to the Federal Aviation Administration overhaul bill that the body is still debating. Both of Nevada's senators voted for the measure.

They stuck to the party line though, when it came to scrapping the health care law in its entirety.

Republicans, who had been threatening that they would force Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's hand to let the Senate have a vote on repeal of the Affordable Care Act, tried to insert that repeal into the same FAA bill as an amendment, but came up far short, with a vote of 47-51. Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia weren't there for the vote, but they've long been supporters of the health care law.

As expected, Nevada's senators split on the issue.

"By voting for this repeal, we can start a new path forward by taking an important step back to the drawing board," said Nevada Republican Sen. John Ensign, using the same words Democrats have used to disparage the Republican plan to cast it in a positive light. "The people of this country deserve an improved healthcare system that increases access to care, decreases high costs and saves the jobs that would otherwise be lost under this law."

"Democrats have said we are willing to compromise on common-sense fixes to health care reform -- keeping what works and changing what doesn't -- to make an imperfect law closer to perfect," Reid said. "But Democrats will not compromise if it means undoing the progress we've made toward fixing a broken system ... It's time for Republicans to set aside the battles of the past."

But will they? For most of the Republican Party, the battle to repeal healthcare seems anything but the past, despite the outcome of Wednesday evening's vote.

Over in the House, where the entire Republican caucus and even three Democrats voted to repeal the health care bill last month, the fighting spirit is still very much alive. Majority Leader Eric Cantor said in no uncertain terms at the time of their vote that if the Senate failed to follow suit and vote for repeal, they would seek other avenues to bring it about -- whether that was through other bills, or by stripping the necessary funding for its provisions, step-by-step.

That's like putting a monkey wrench into the Republicans and Democrats' agreement in the Senate not to play procedural politics with each other -- an agreement, frankly, that seemed to take a spirited hit on the first legislative try.

While Republicans did let the Senate proceed to taking up the FAA bill without threatening a filibuster, and Reid did agree to allow lawmakers to raise as many amendments as they wanted, the spirit of camaraderie pretty much broke down when Republican Leader Mitch McConnell proferred a repeal of the health care law. Reid brought it down by raising a budgetary point of order against it -- you can do that when an amendment is expected to add to the cost of a bill -- and Republicans couldn't muster the 60 votes needed to waive it.