Dems Have 60 Votes in Senate for Cloture on Health Insurance Reform Bill

If we go by today's floor speeches by Dem Senators -- we now have the 60 votes needed to fend off a GOP filibuster and win the cloture vote on H.R. 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. A total of 58 Dem Senators will join with two independents -- Sen. Joe Lieberman (I, Me, My Party-CT) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) -- to get to the magic 60. While Lieberman agreed to vote for cloture today, he's still threatening to vote against cloture on the bill itself, once a weeks' long debate is finished.

The last three holdouts on the Dem side -- Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) -- have now all said they'll vote to allow debate on the bill itself to begin, although they also said they would likely vote against the legislation itself if the opt-in public option stays in the bill. When the bill is voted on by the entire Senate, we'll need only 51 votes to win, but it will take another cloture vote on the legislation -- with that same 60-vote requirement -- before that can happen.

The official cloture vote is expected to take place around 6:00 PM MST tonight. Debate on the bill -- meaning individual floor speeches -- is expected to begin on November 30, when the Senate returns from the Thanksgiving recess. Hot air alert: it's expected to last up to a month, with Senators parading to the microphones one by one before a mostly empty Senate chamber.

The three holdouts were given perks to "encourage" them to vote for cloture. Sen. Nelson had a provision to remove an anti-trust exemption for the insurance companies stricken from the bill. Sen. Landrieu got a provision for adding an estimated $100-$300 million to Medicaid funding for states that suffered severely from natural disasters -- with only her state qualifying according to the rules. Sen. Lincoln got $50 million in funding for abstinence-only programs added to the bill.