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Few surprises expected in Saturday's health reform vote

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will lead the Republican's filibuster charge Saturday.Democratic efforts to pass a health reform bill lumbers on in Congress, with a key vote taking place this Saturday. The Senate will vote on whether or not it'll take up the latest version of the health reform bill, which Senate Democrats recently finished tweaking.

In plain English, the Senate vote this weekend isn't about whether to pass the bill or not, it's to decide whether to even consider it for debate. NOTE: The bill in question is the $848 billion version, based on the bill that passed the Senate Finance Committee with a single lonely Republican vote from Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine).

What's to expect: Republicans have promised to do everything in their limited power to stop the bill, which means they'll launch a filibuster. You can expect the honorable Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to lead this bold charge. Filibustering is of course, stalling by using time on the Senate floor to do things like read the phone book aloud. It might be more instructive for McConnell to read aloud the final 2010 Physician Fee Schedule instead.

Filibustering can be halted if enough Senators vote to invoke cloture, to force a vote and end debate (or the monotonous recitation of lengthy documents). You can expect cloture, because the Republicans have only 40 votes. For a successful filibuster, they'll need Democrats willing not only to vote against the bill, but to vote against considering it. That's unlikely when even Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Ct.) has indicated he'll vote Saturday to begin debating the bill.

Remember, Lieberman has been pretty hostile to reform in general and the public option in general. More so than the most conservative Democrats, anyway.

Remember: This is the cheaper Senate bill, not the $1.2 trillion House bill. The Senate bill does nothing permanent to fix your pay cuts mandated by the Sustainable Grow Rate (SGR) formula; it just delivers a well-aimed kick to the proverbial can, sending it a few paces down the proverbial road.

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