Ezra Klein

1) Does D.C. have any dishes as legendarily hot as "pork on fire"?

2) Could Obama have done more to protect choice?

3) Proof of America's poor train infrastructure: "Even Amtrak’s self-declared high-speed Northeast Corridor between Boston and Washington does not qualify as high speed by world standards."

4) Michael Bloomberg and the fall of the republic.

Recipe of the day: Today, I'm begging you folks for a recipe. I want to make some Kimchi. How should I go about doing it?

Tim Fernholz recommends Jonathan Martin's autopsy of Creigh Deeds's failed campaign for the Virginia governorship. "The lessons couldn't be clearer," Fernholz says. "Equivocation doesn't win votes. Campaigning on a real agenda does. Running away from President Obama isn't the same as running away from the caricature of the national Democrats, and it doesn't seem to work. Moderate and conservative Democrats would do well to examine these ideas if they don't want to end up losing tough races next year."

Maybe! Or, you know, maybe not. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are way more conservative than their state and they spend most of their time equivocating and curtailing the ambitions of other people who have real agendas. Yet they're wildly popular. Ben Nelson's behavior doesn't seem to have dented his standing as an equivocating Democrat in a conservative state. The House is full of Democrats ambivalent about their party standing and loud about their inner conflicts.

Deeds seems to have been a bad candidate, and that probably mattered. On the other hand, incumbent parties generally lose off-year elections, lose elections when the economy is doing terribly, and lose elections after their party has been in power a long time. Deeds ran smack into all three. A better candidate probably could have done better, but that would have probably meant losing by a bit less.

On some level, this is all obvious: Off-year elections don't favor the minority because the majority forgets to speak clearly. But part of the danger with emphasizing the primacy of campaign strategy and message is that it favors an overly political view of how legislators should think of their seats. The point of the Democratic majority in the next few years is not to enable the campaign strategies that will sustain a Democratic majority. It's to pass legislation, knowing full well that Democrats will lose their majority, and probably sooner than they would like.

That's the nature of politics: The moment your offense succeeds, you are, by definition, left playing defense, as you have more seats to defend than they do. But that means you're never, or at least rarely, playing offense when you can actually score. Health-care reform barely passed the House on Saturday, and most of the Democrats who voted against it are from fairly conservative districts that may not return them to Congress. Passing health-care reform, however, is far more important than holding a marginal district for two terms rather than one. The point of winning uncommonly large majorities is to use large majorities, not to keep them slightly longer than would otherwise be the case.

Photo credit: By Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post

The fine folks at Zagat sent me an early copy of their latest little red book. It's friendlier than Mao's effort, but it's beginning to feel similarly dated. The problem is that the book sounds like it's making fun of me.

The rise of the Internet -- not to mention of snark -- has meant that people spend a lot of time being sarcastic in print. One of the ways they signal their sarcasm is to put quotation marks around words that aren't direct quotes. For instance: Glenn Beck had a "thought" about American politics.

Zagat, famously, is made up almost entirely of quotes. That means that a lot of words that don't seem to be direct quotations actually are. But without a line identifying the speaker, or any good reason for the words to be confined between quotation marks, they just come off as sardonic. For instance, a review of Johnny's Half Shell reads:

A 2006 move to "the Hill" meant "more tables" for "the power crowd" at this New American seafooder set in spacious "upscale" digs with polished wood floors, white tile accents, and "lovely" outdoor seating eyeing the Capitol.

Zagat isn't making a joke about Johnny's moving to the Hill: the new address is 400 N. Capitol St. Nor are they implying something by saying there are "more tables" or noting the "lovely" seating. But it sure reads like they are. Indeed, the whole book sounds like it was written by this guy:

Maybe it's time to drop the quotations?

This is getting a bit confusing. First there was Jon Stewart. Then there was Stephen Colbert imitating what Stewart was doing, at least in spirit. Then came Glenn Beck to imitate Colbert. And now Stewart is imitating Beck. And he does it better than either Colbert or Beck.

Fred Hiatt's column today calls the House's health-care reform bill "a step closer to bankruptcy." But he's not really talking about the House's health-care reform bill, which he admits the Congressional Budget Office has assessed as not only deficit neutral but deficit improving. He's talking about, first, a fix to Medicare reimbursement rates that really isn't part of health-care reform, and, second, the capacity of Congress to make hard decisions about, well, anything. Fair points both, but neither here nor there when it comes to the House legislation.

To take them in order, the $250 billion Medicare payment fix is actually the outgrowth of another bill: The 1997 Balanced Budget Act. That legislation created a payment formula for Medicare that tied the program's payments to the period's extremely low growth in health-care costs. But then cost growth accelerated again, and Republican and Democratic congresses alike began voting to reject the formula's cuts. Bringing the formula back into line with the growth of health-care costs will require a hefty $250 billion. But we'd have to do it whether President Obama pursued health-care reform or not. Just ask President Bush, who had no interest in health-care reform, but saw Congress reject these payment cuts in 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008.

Hiatt's more compelling objection is that Congress will continue to duck the hard questions of health-care reform and vote to avoid making the cuts and reforms that are written into the bill. As he says, "history suggests that legislators will not be deaf to the complaints of seniors and those who treat them when it comes time for the ax to fall."

This may be true. The problem, however, is that it obviates any possible solutions. For instance: In the final line of the column, Hiatt proposes that "Obama puts his clout behind the progressive ideals of thrift and cost containment." Elsewhere in the column, Hiatt laments that Congress did not "end the tax break for employer-provided insurance" or "empower an independent commission that could make cost-control decisions" or "rais[e] taxes on anyone who earns less than $250,000 per year." But if Congress will simply thwart any effort at cost containment, what's the point?

Taxes can be rolled back (see the Bush tax cuts) or indefinitely delayed (see the AMT). Commissions can be ignored or overturned. Cost controls can be repealed and weakened. I'm not necessarily arguing that Hiatt's pessimistic conception of Congress is inaccurate, but the appropriate response is either nihilistic or revolutionary. It cannot, however, be to propose different and harder cost controls than the ones Congress itself has passed.

Meanwhile, in a world where Congress cannot make the hard decisions to avert fiscal catastrophe, health-care reform hardly matters. As Uwe Reinhardt has noted, a trillion-dollar health-care bill would be less than 1 percent of the GDP America is expected to produce between 2010 and 2020. In that world, health-care spending, alongside the general growth in the state, will bankrupt the country. If Congress passes this bill and then repeals all of the cost controls and moves the day of reckoning forward by a matter of months, that hardly seems meaningful. And, on the bright side, tens of millions more Americans will have health-care insurance between now and the day when the republic collapses.

"Two North Carolina State University engineers" have "used hundreds of thousands of three-dimensional computer simulations" to produce a peer-reviewed paper with recommendations for shooting better free throws. I love science, particularly since I've been playing a bit of basketball lately and my shot, after years of nonuse, would make Shaq feel extremely good about himself. If only I'd remembered to put three hertz of backspin on the ball …

George Miller chairs the Education and Labor Committee and is one of Nancy Pelosi's closest allies in the House. We spoke today about the mechanics of the vote, the problems with Stupak's compromise and what comes next for health-care reform.

Were you surprised at the slim margin for health-care reform?

We have been counting the votes on this legislation since we came back from Labor Day. We’ve been counting, in fact, since July. We’ve been in more or less continuous meetings with members. As the members learned more and more about the bill, our numbers continued to increase. We had a good handle on a lot of people.

Some suggested that the 220 votes were understated and that you had more votes to call on if needed. Is that accurate?

I think we were pretty close. [Laughs] I think these numbers were pretty close.

There were a lot of last-minute changes to the bill, in particular the Stupak amendment. How did that come about?

On Friday night, it became clear that we would not reach a majority vote if we did not allow an amendment to be voted on about abortion. Those negotiations were very serious.

Politico reported that you told colleagues, “There is now a pro-life majority in the House.” Is that true?

I don’t remember saying that, but it’s not inconsistent with what the votes say. That’s been the situation.

It’s striking that the Stupak amendment doesn’t really stop the government from subsidizing insurance coverage that includes abortions. The subsidy for employer-based insurance remains in place, for instance. This mainly hits poorer women who will be subsidized on the exchanges.

That’s one of the concerns. You’re in the employer-based system, you have coverage. If you lose your job and go into the exchange, then you don’t have coverage.

Was abortion the biggest issue in the final days? Did any other sticking points emerge?

That was really the topic of conversation. We saw it in committee mark ups. Because of the votes that are available, you were not going to be able to ignore this.

Of the 39 Democrats who voted against the legislation, was there a single concern that united them? What did they want?

I think if there was an overarching view, it was that their confidence in the cost of the bill was low. That played out in different ways. Some people had suggestions for what to do about it. Others just said they wanted to wait and see, even though we had the CBO letters and the assurances.

What’s always confused me about that objection is that the way to make the health-care cost less is to reform it more radically, striking closer to the core of the system, which is where the expense is generated. But the folks who worry about cost tend to revert back to the status quo rather than turning into relative radicals.

You have this interesting fact that the people most opposed to the robust public option were raising the most issues on cost and CBO was saying it would save 110 billion. That was real money! There were these inconsistencies that were very frustrating. But that’s what we were presented with.

Have you given any thought to who will be named to the conference committee, assuming that the Senate passes its bill?

No. I haven’t given that a moment’s thought yet. We’re really just trying to do whatever we can to help the Senate go forward. It’s a pretty self-contained body.

What can you do to help them?

I don’t know. The Senate has a different way of doing business. It’s much more one-on-one. The actions you’ve seen Harry Reid take so far suggest he’s having those continuous conversations with their members.

This bill will change in conference with the Senate, and it didn’t pass with a very large margin. Do you worry that the conference committee’s version will blow up the delicate compromise and lose crucial votes?

I think we get stronger with the conference report. I think that happens.

Why?

That’s this process. We always know there are people who wait for the conference report to vote. They generally vote for it. They know there will be changes. That’s the way it is. Is this difficult to do? Are the margins thin? But a lot of people have tried and failed. This isn‘t easy. If it were, people would have done it a long time ago. But by not doing it, everything has gotten worse for the health-care system, its customers, our families, our employers and the economy. Not doing it makes everything worse.

Photo credit: By Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Foreign Policy's Annie Lowrey* takes note of some big news across the pond:

Something that might augur a truly titanic shift in foreign affairs happened this week. It involves possibly sweeping foreign-policy changes in two of the world's five official nuclear states. It promises to alter the Middle East peace process, negotiations with Iran, and policies regarding Russian missile defense. It will likely necessitate scores of new embassies. It directly affects 500 million people and indirectly affects the rest of the world.

On Tuesday, Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, grumblingly signed the European Union's Lisbon Treaty. His was the last signature needed to ratify the agreement, which streamlines Brussels' byzantine and slow-moving policymaking process and creates two leadership roles, an elected president with a 30-month term and a high representative for foreign policy.

Most focus has centered on the former position, whose precise responsibilities and powers EU leaders plan to hash out at a Nov. 11 summit. (The treaty comes into formal effect in December, and the new president is expected to take office on New Year's Day.) The somewhat sexy idea of a European president has led to wild speculation as to who might fill it, with dozens of potential candidates mentioned, most often the silver-tongued and internationally renowned Tony Blair and the barely known center-right Dutch leader Jan Peter Balkenende.

But it's actually the latter gig that has the most potential to transform how Brussels works and how Europe relates to the world.

There's some concern as to whether this will mean anything in the long run. Will Slovakia worry that it's interests are being ignored? Probably. Will Germany want to give up it autonomy? Probably not.

In the short-term, the arrangement will likely be quite tentative, and the high representative fairly weak. Over time, however, that's likely to change, if only because a more multipolar world in which China, India, Brazil and other countries gain power is one in which Europe will begin to lose its power unless it finds a way to speak with a clearer voice. As Europe expert Charlie Kupchan comments later in the article: "This is not a geopolitical earthquake. On the other hand, it is precisely these kinds of institutional changes that, in the long run, change the world." Europe is more united than anyone could have imagined 50 years ago, and there is every reason to believe that a young holo-blogger will be saying the same thing 50 years from now.

*As a quick full disclosure, Annie and I have an, er, personal relationship. But that's no reason, I figure, to deny you her trenchant insights on Europe! Also, I wonder why I feel the need to disclose this but don't see an issue linking to writers who are personal friends?

It's the Senate:

It’s worth taking a moment to appreciate the fact that in a unicameral United States of America, we would now have passed both a comprehensive health care reform bill and also the most important piece of environmental legislation in the history of the world. Now that’s not the world we live in. Instead we live in a world where neither of those things has passed and where their prospects aren’t clear. But think back on this point the next time you hear someone say Obama is struggling with his agenda because he’s not centrist enough, or else that Obama is struggling with his agenda because he’s not left-wing enough.

Health-care reform passed with 50.5 percent of the vote in the House. Cap and trade passed with 50.8 percent. Neither margin would've been nearly enough in the Senate. Whether or not you think Nancy Pelosi had a couple more votes in her back pocket, it's pretty clear that she didn't have 41 more votes, which is what she would've needed to pass health-care reform if the House worked by the Senate's inane rules. Pelosi really does seem like a great speaker, but a lot of the ire directed at Harry Reid would be more appropriately aimed at the rules he labors under.

Rep. Bart Stupak's amendment did not make abortion illegal. And it did not block the federal government from subsidizing abortion. All it did was block it from subsidizing abortion for poorer women.

Stupak's amendment stated that the public option cannot provide abortion coverage, and that no insurer participating on the exchange can provide abortion coverage to anyone receiving subsidies. But as Rep. Jim Cooper points out in the interview below, the biggest federal subsidy for private insurance coverage is untouched by Stupak's amendment. It's the $250 billion the government spends each year making employer-sponsored health-care insurance tax-free.

That money, however, subsidizes the insurance of 157 million Americans, many of them quite affluent. Imagine if Stupak had attempted to expand his amendment to their coverage. It would, after all, have been the same principle: Federal policy should not subsidize insurance that offers abortion coverage. But it would have failed in an instant. That group is too large, and too affluent, and too politically powerful for Congress to dare to touch their access to reproductive services. But the poorer women who will be using subsidies on the exchange proved a much easier target. In substance, this amendment was as much about class as it was about choice.

Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) knows as much about health-care policy as anyone in Congress. He teaches the subject back home in Tennessee, promoted his own plan (to the anger of many Democrats) in 1994, and has been both a vocal advocate and critic of this year's reform fight. On Saturday, he voted for the House's health-care bill. Earlier today, he told me why.

What was the weekend like for you?

This was one of the best votes I ever cast. The key is to keep the reform process alive. There are many things in the House bill I disagree with. But the Senate bill is the more likely final product due to the difficulty of getting 60 votes over there. If we had dropped the baton at this stage, it wouldn’t have given the Senate a chance to improve the bill. It would have given the House what amounted to a one-chamber veto. The Senate could have powered through, but those folks are not noted for their courage. The House had to perform here. And I am thankful that in the nick of time the leadership realized how short they were on votes.

The slim margin surprised many observers. Do you buy the argument that there were a number of congressmen who would have voted for the bill if they’d been needed?

I think the actual number was closer to 210. The leadership had to move heaven and earth to get to 220. The achievement of the leadership was to corral the votes at the last minute, and that is a great achievement that should not be diminished, and they did that by making major concessions they didn’t want to make.

Those concessions all pointed in one direction. The public option was weakened, the vote on single payer was jettisoned and abortion rights were curtailed.

I really wasn’t involved in those processes. The failure of any vote on single payer was amazing to a lot of Democratic stalwarts. So was the permission to vote on Stupak and the large vote in favor of Stupak. One of the papers quoted Rep. George Miller saying there’s a pro-life majority in Congress. That’s painful for a lot of folks, but it’s the reason the Stupak compromise was necessary. The bill would’ve failed without that.

The argument over Stupak’s amendment was striking for how effectively it evaded questions of choice and focused on the Hyde amendment. They narrowed that debate very sharply.

They won the argument that their amendment was the continuation of current law. It shows how popular the status quo is. That’s the major problem health-care reform has always had. People prefer the devil they know. The default position is usually to do nothing.

But the debate is a continuing education process. Before the Stupak amendment, many of my friends had not realized that the government gives a $250 billion annual subsidy to employer-sponsored health care. If you understand today’s system, the Hyde amendment bans direct subsidies of abortion. It does not ban indirect subsidies of abortion, in particular the $250 billion that goes to employer-based health care. The bishops never noticed that. But this is the way education works in a democracy. It’s not easy or simple. But when people begin making decisions, they learn about lots of things they never noticed before.

It's the same with procedural things. In the Rules Committee’s explanation of the Stupak amendment, they said flat out that the Stupak amendment codifies the Hyde amendment. Most people didn’t realize that that’s the description from the Stupak amendment’s advocates, not necessarily the judgment of the Rules Committee’s staff. Like many things in Congress, lots of folks did not pay attention to the details. It looked like it just continued current law. But this turned out to be very important.

What was your role in the final days?

Exhausting, round-the-clock, nonstop small-group meetings that were part seminar and part therapy. What the bill went through was a near-death experience. One of the climactic moments was the caucus meeting two or three weeks ago. They took a public whip count. Normally whip counts are private. So this was astonishing to many members.

The specific question was whether you were for a robust public option or not. And they just went through the names. Early in the alphabet, one member answered that he was for that, but against the overall bill. Someone in leadership shouted out that that meant you were against the whole thing. So it became about reform as a whole. There were a shocking number of committee chairmen and regular members, not Blue Dogs or anything, who said they were against the reform. Jaws started dropping around the room.

The tension was incredibly ugly. It was one of the worst meetings I’ve ever been to. Later in the roll call, someone said he’d be for the bill if we had better negotiation for drug prices. Than leadership said that was in the bill. Then someone yelled out, “how would we know?” Nobody had seen anything!

Now that the bill is out, negotiation for better prices is in the bill, and in the very next paragraph, they ban the use of formularies, which voids the negotiation. That’s why CBO scores it at 0. If you look at substance, is negotiation in the bill? I think it’s still not in the bill. This is one of the thousand provisions where you had to scratch your head and ask who were we trying to fool here? It sounds to me like Billy Tauzin won that one.

During an interview in late July, Speaker Nancy Pelosi explained her legislative philosophy to me. "You get the votes," she said, balling one hand into a fist, "and you take the vote," and she punched her other hand. "Because you never know what can happen."

On June 26, Pelosi passed cap and trade out of the House. Many considered it a huge, unforced error. The Senate wouldn't consider the bill for many months, if it ever took it up at all. Health-care reform was in full swing. And Pelosi had just forced her most vulnerable members to take an incredibly difficult vote. The House legislation would languish as it waited for the Senate, and angry House Democrats would be less willing to take a second hard vote on health-care reform.

Talking to congressional Democrats over these past few months, Pelosi's decision to push cap and trade came up in almost every conversation. Coaxing support from vulnerable members who hadn't yet forgiven the leadership for cap and trade had, according to some of these sources, become one of the biggest obstacles to health-care reform.

But health-care reform passed the House. And so, too, did cap and trade, all the way back in June, when most eyes were on health care and the Republicans hadn't yet found their voice in opposition (eight Republicans, in fact, voted for cap and trade). Pelosi's decision to move on climate change as soon as she had the votes now looks, well, a little bit genius: It's virtually impossible to imagine the House passing cap and trade in the coming months, not after the exhausting health-care reform battle and not as the midterm election draws closer.

As for the Senate, they now have the pressure of the House's climate change bill forcing them to focus on the issue. The fact that the House passed the bill and the president is ready to sign a bill means that it's really only the Senate standing in the way of serious legislation to address global warming, and that's not a position the Senate particularly wants to be in. It's also easier for senators to work on legislation in an election year than it is for the House to do the same, and it's easier for them to write legislation when they can sell their efforts as improving what the House has already done. After all, conservative Democrats can say, you don't want that bill, do you?

I'm not saying that cap and trade has great odds this year, but whatever chance it does have is a function of Pelosi passing it back in June. She got the votes, and she took the vote. It's tempting to say that she knew exactly what would happen.

Photo credit: Mark Wilson/Getty.

Joe Lieberman went on Fox News last weekend to give viewers some insight into his thinking on health-care reform.

LIEBERMAN: A public option plan is unnecessary. It has been put forward, I’m convinced, by people who really want the government to take over all of health insurance. They’ve got a right to do that; I think that would be wrong.

But worse than that, we have a problem even greater than the health insurance problems, and that is a debt -- $12 trillion today, projected to be $21 trillion in 10 years.

WALLACE: So at this point, I take it, you’re a “no” vote in the Senate?

LIEBERMAN: If the public option plan is in there, as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote because I believe debt can break America and send us into a recession that’s worse than the one we’re fighting our way out of today. I don’t want to do that to our children and grandchildren.

I've sent a couple of requests over to Lieberman's office for an interview, and haven't had much luck. But my question is a simple one, and any reporter could ask it: What's the mechanism by which the public option increases the national deficit?

This has been Lieberman's standard argument for the past few weeks, but he has not, to my knowledge, explained how it works. Every analysis of the public option I've seen has concluded that it will reduce federal, and consumer, spending. Indeed, the stronger the public option is, the more it reduces the deficit. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that a public option paying Medicare's rates would save the government more than $100 billion in the first 10 years, and more after that.

Some argue, however, that the government will end up subsidizing the public option. I can't come up with a convincing scenario in which this would happen, but Congress is a strange place. Amending the bill to subsidize the public option, however, would need 60 votes. The initiative could, and almost certainly would, be filibustered. Unless Democrats control many more seats than they do today and fill those seats with extremely liberal members, or Republicans decide they really love subsidizing public insurance, it's hard to imagine that happening.

We're left, then, in a strange place. Lieberman says he cannot support the public option because he is worried about the national debt. But the public option, in its current form, shows some hope of reducing the deficit, and has no mechanism for increasing it. Any such mechanism would need to be added later, and would be subject to the filibuster.

Lieberman isn't much of a liberal, but he's not a stupid man. I'd really like to hear his explanation for how the public option increases the deficit. Maybe he sees something I don't.

In case you missed it, the big news this weekend was that the House passed health-care reform. But the mild surprise was that it barely passed health-care reform. In the final tally, 220 congresspeople voted for the bill -- two more than needed to achieve passage. But two votes is not a very large margin, and 39 Democratic defections are worth taking seriously.

The hard question to answer, however, is whether there were 39 Democratic defections or 39 Democrats who voted against the bill. Because within that 39 are some Democrats who were solidly against the legislation, but also some vulnerable or conservative Democrats who would have voted for the bill if Pelosi had needed their vote.

You saw the difference between the two groups a few minutes before the final vote. At almost 11 p.m., Eric Cantor (R-Va.) raised a "motion to recommit with instructions." A longer explanation of that parliamentary maneuver is here, but for the moment, think of it as the House's version of a filibuster. If it succeeded, health care would've been thrown back to the committee. It failed. And not by a slim 220 votes. A solid 244 Democrats joined three Republicans (including, interestingly, Ron Paul) to defeat the GOP's effort to stall the bill. Only 13 Democrats defected, suggesting that fairly few of the Democratic "no" votes were out to doom the legislation.

One of the other explanations for the number of Democratic defectors is that a certain percentage of Democrats would like to vote for health-care reform but didn't want to vote for this bill. Most believe that the Senate will pass a more conservative bill with a smaller public option, tighter language on immigrants, no surtax on income, and no employer mandate, among other modifications to the more controversial elements of the House's bill. They also believe that the final bill will look more like the Senate bill than the House bill. If that proves true, they'd prefer to vote against the initial House bill so they're not attacked for supporting policies that don't survive into the final legislation. After all, if you don't think an employer mandate will be in the final bill, why anger local businesses by casting a symbolic vote for one?

All that said, the fact that there might have been more votes for health-care reform if Pelosi had needed them doesn't obviate the fact that more congresspeople didn't vote for health-care reform. However you slice it, 39 Democrats worried that voting for this bill was a political liability, and decided that opposing it was, for the moment, the safer play.

Correction: I'd been a bit confused on the "motion to recommit." Turns out there are two variants: one that effectively kills the bill and is analogous to a filibuster, and one that is used as a rapid amendment process. The version the GOP employed was more of the rapid amendment type, so the bill would've been amended with the Cantor's medical malpractice provision, and then sent back for a vote.

Photo credit: Yuri Gripas/Reuters.

Health-care reform passed the House, quite literally, at the eleventh hour. It passed with a slim, two-vote margin. But it passed. That is more than has ever happened before. More than Truman or Nixon or Carter or Clinton managed. More than Rayburn or O'Neill or Gingrich managed. It is success, at least for this stage in the process. It is history, even, though it's hard to sense the importance of the moment when you watch members of Congress spend the day squabbling over the true meaning of the word freedom.

But it was also sobering. Harry Reid's job will be harder. Health-care reform passed the House with 50.5 percent of the vote. It will need 60 percent in the Senate. Pelosi had the luxury of losing 40 Democrats. When it comes to beating the filibuster, Reid probably won't be able to lose even one.

Photo credit: AP Photo/Alex Brandon.

Live coverage of the vote is happening over at my Twitter feed. Well, coverage may not be quite accurate. "Commentary" probably more like it. Other good live tweeters include Wonk Room, Dave Dayen, Jon Cohn, Jeff Young, Jesse Taylor, Matthew Yglesias, Brian Beutler, and many others. Live tweeting is the new live blogging.

It's sadly telling that the "compromise" proposal limiting abortion was offered by Bart Stupak, and seconded by a Republican male. The opposition was led by Diana DeGette, and seconded by Rosa DeLauro. Stupak's proposal has female supporters, to be sure, a decision that will mainly govern women is being made primarily by men. I would bet that the final vote will show a majority of congresswoman vote against this bill.

When you watch C-SPAN, there's a little chryon across the bottom of the screen that say's "Today's Debate." You hear that word a lot when it comes to Congress. "Debate." The rules today allowed for four hours of "debate." The Senate is expected to have a couple weeks for "debate." But spend the day watching the various legislators speechify for a few seconds each and it comes pretty clear that the proceedings have nothing to do with debate, as traditionally understood. These are statements. The longer Congress has, the more statements you get. Moments ago, Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) stood up to add his contribution to the debate. "I will vote no," he explained, "because that's the vote that says 'I love my country.'" Cicero would be proud.

The reality is that the debate that led to this bill did not really take place across congressional committees and floor speeches. It took place in think tanks and campaigns. In policy forums and among experts. The basic shape of the House's bill is virtually identical to the bills we saw during the campaign, and they were all expressions of the ideas being developed and refined in think tanks and policy shops and advocacy groups ever since Clinton's effort failed.

And good thing, too. Most members of Congress know virtually nothing about health care. Even the relevant committees only have a handful of knowledgeable legislators. Congress doesn't debate the legislation so much as debate its politics. Watching Congress consider this bill is like watching campaign ads being recorded. It's not like watching people talk about hard issues in a serious way. It's sad, actually.

But it's why, if you take a few steps back, so little has really changed in the basic bill. There's a trope in Washington that Congress should be more deliberative, that it should take more time to "debate" these big issues. But more time spent arguing over the precise contours of the public plan, or the exact language governing abortion coverage, or whether a bureaucrat will pull the plug on grandma, serves neither to enlighten the citizenry nor improve the legislation. Congress hasn't debated health-care reform. It's debated a narrow subject called "the politics of health-care reform."

The bill, however, has been debated, and at length. It has been debated in thousands of op-eds and blog posts. It has been talked through on countless news programs and radio shows. It has been the subject of endless expert panels and summary briefs. It has been estimated, analyzed, and modeled. Graphed and tabled and plugged into spreadsheets. And it has survived intact. It has the support of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, and AARP, AFL-CIO and Families USA, SEIU and the American Medical Association. Yesterday, eleven eminent economists released a letter (pdf) calling for passage of the bill.

Few of the debaters think the bill perfect, but most think it a step forward. That, however, is where their influence stops. They are the debaters, not the doers. And they have done their job. Now it is time for Congress to do its job.

The final compromises before a bill comes to the floor are never very pretty. This one, however, is worse than I anticipated. Opposition from anti-abortion Democrats, driven in large part by aggressive activism from the Catholic Church, forced Democratic leadership to allow a vote on Bart Stupak's amendment limiting elective abortion coverage from both private and public insurers on the exchange. It reads:

The amendment will prohibit federal funds for abortion services in the public option. It also prohibits individuals who receive affordability credits from purchasing a plan that provides elective abortions. However, it allows individuals, both who receive affordability credits and who do not, to separately purchase with their own funds plans that cover elective abortions. It also clarifies that private plans may still offer elective abortions.

Because of the limits placed on the exchanges, most of the participants will have some form of premium credit or affordable subsidy. That means most will be ineligible for abortion coverage. The idea that people are going to go out and purchase separate "abortion plans" is both cruel and laughable. If this amendment passes, it will mean that virtually all women with insurance through the exchange who find themselves in the unwanted and unexpected position of needing to terminate a pregnancy will not have coverage for the procedure. Abortion coverage will not be outlawed in this country. It will simply be tiered, reserved for those rich enough to afford insurance themselves or lucky enough to receive from their employers.

The amendment is expected to pass with relative ease. Republicans will join with anti-choice Democrats to push it over the finish line. Once the amendment passes, the bill is cleared for a vote, and all parties expect that vote to succeed. Today looks likely to end with a historic, and important, vote. A vote that is a first step towards helping more than 30 million people secure health-care coverage, and making sure hundreds of millions are better protected from the vagaries of the insurance industry. But Stupak's amendment is a bitter start. It is, however, not the end. Even if it muscles into the House bill, it will also have to pass in the Senate, and then survive conference, before it becomes law.

Photo credit: AP Photo/Alex Brandon.

Rep. Jim Cooper, a moderate Democrat from Tennessee, has been skeptical of the House's health-care reform bill from the beginning. But a press release sent moments ago by his office announced his intention to vote for health-care reform. And it's not because he supports this bill. It's because he does not want to stand in the process's way.

I will vote yes on H.R. 3962. My vote is not an endorsement of all the provisions of the bill because I find much of the bill to be deeply flawed. There is little chance that H.R. 3962 will become law due to the long legislative process.

My reason for voting yes is to advance the cause of health care reform by forcing the Senate to act. Without passage of this House bill, the Senate could delay reform indefinitely. That would be the worst possible outcome because our current health-care system is not sustainable. Congress needs to pass good health legislation in the next few months for the good of the country.

Passing legislation is a little like writing a term paper in school. The first draft is usually not very good. The second draft is better -- H.R. 3962 is the second draft. The bill that the Senate will vote on will be the third draft, which I expect to show major improvement. The final draft will be written next month when the House and the Senate vote on the same bill. I will continue to work hard to make sure that the final legislation helps all of our families get quality, affordable health care.

This is what passage looks like. Unpleasant compromises. Reluctant congressmen. Ambivalent press releases. Whatever is needed, no matter how painful, to secure the necessary 218 votes and move forward.