President Obama delayed his holiday plans to be in Washington for the historic vote.  Still he will have a while to wait before any health care reform bill reaches his desk.

The next stop for the bill is what is known as conference committee – where a group of House and Senate members will meet to hammer out the details and differences in their bills and attempt to draw up a final version that can pass both Chambers again.  Opinions differ as to whether this will be an easy or difficult process. 

Nonetheless, there are differences between the bill the House passed in November and the Senate version that was passed today.  Among those differences, the House bill features the government-run insurance plan, also known as the “public option” which was stripped from the Senate bill to ensure passage.  The Senate bill includes a tax on high-value plans that was strongly opposed by many House Democrats. Also to be reconciled is the difference in language regarding abortion with the House version containing much more restrictive language that was softened in the Senate bill to gain the 60^th supporting vote – Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Nebraska.

Nelson and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) have been under fire from Republicans during the last several days for the style of deal-making that went on to gain Nelson’s support.  In exchange for his support of the bill, Nelson received among other things an agreement that the federal government will pay to expand Medicaid services in Nebraska, a contentious move because the states and not the federal government fund the Medicaid program.  The move has caused the attorneys general from several states to look into the constitutionality of this move.      

Among them is South Carolina Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate, Henry McMaster, who has announced that he along with his counterparts in Michigan and Washington state are investigating whether the special provisions for Nebraska and other states are constitutional.

"Whatever the legal status may be, and we hope to find out soon, these negotiations on their face appear to be a form of vote-buying paid for by taxpayers," McMaster stated. 

In response to Senator Nelson’s deal, Senator Jim DeMint (R- South Carolina) proposed an amendment seeking a ban on vote-buying for future bills.

“The House of Representatives has a rule that bans trading votes for earmarks but the Senate does not,” Senator DeMint explained. “The Senate passed a vote-trading ban in 2007 by a unanimous vote of 98 to 0, but it was dropped behind closed doors.  If that rule were in place today, the earmarks and kick-backs used to buy votes for the health care bill would not have been possible.”

The DeMint amendment was defeated by a vote of 53 to 46.