House Democrats posted their $940 billion health care package online at 2 p.m. Thursday. Because of a promise by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to give members 72 hours to consider the legislation before voting on it, that means Sunday afternoon is the earliest time for a final vote on the bill.
Before the House even begins to debate the bill, though, it will have to figure out a rule that dictates how the bill will be considered. That will happen in the House Rules Committee, likely Saturday morning. The proceedings will be televised on C-SPAN.
The Rules Committee will likely approve a procedure in which the House would vote on a smaller bill that corrects things in the larger Senate legislation that House members don’t like. On passage, the larger bill will be deemed passed without members ever casting a vote for it.
If the House passes the bill, President Obama will sign it into law. The action then moves to the Senate, which must take up the smaller corrections bill under a potentially difficult parliamentary procedure called budget reconciliation, which would allow it to pass it with just 51 votes but would subject many parts of the bill to objections by the GOP.
