12:06 AM: Actually, per Chuck Todd, two Democrats — Lynch and Lipinski — voted for the reconciliation bill but against the Senate’s package. But one Democrat — Jim Cooper of Tennessee — flipped the other way.
11:44 PM. Ken Bazinet says that it’s Lynch who flipped — one of my two guesses. Take that, Bowers!
11:41 PM. Chris Bowers thinks that Costello was the most likely person to vote yes on reconciliation but no on the Senate’s bill. Could very well be. Either way, it’s likely to be someone who doesn’t face a tough re-election campaign.
11:35 PM. Reconciliation bill in fact gets one extra vote to bring it up to 220. I’d put my money on Berry first, then Lynch.
11:30 PM. The reconciliation bill has 217 votes and has passed, with 5 Democrats yet to vote.
11:29 PM. The reconciliation/fixes bill will be passed in a few moments here. This is the one the Senate needs to vote on too — although the Senate’s original bill still becomes law with the President’s signature regardless of what happens there. Also quite likely that the reconciliation bill itself will be amended in the Senate (such as because of Byrd Rule problems), in which case the House will actually have to cast another vote to approve the changes.
11:24 PM. If anyone flips to vote yes on the reconciliation package after voting no on the Senate bill, I’d look first toward Lynch or one of the five Dems who voted yea on the rules package earlier (Altmire, Berry, Kissell, Peterson, Teague).
11:19 PM. Nice touch to have Dingell ask for a recorded vote on the reconciliation package.
11:18 PM. Motion to recommit fails 232-199.
11:14 PM. Another moderately specious argument that I’m hearing: that Pelosi had a few spares and therefore should have released some vulnerable members. The problem is that she needed commitments from some of those vulnerable members — like Markey — in order to persuade others to get on board. And once someone like Markey made a very public commitment to vote for the bill, it wasn’t going to do her much good to walk it back. With that said, if there hadn’t been this Stupak variable — or people like Lynch being unhelpful — she might not have had to ask for some of those commitments in the first place.
11:09 PM. The motion to recommit (a.k.a. kill the bill) unsurprisingly fails. Already 224 votes against (all Democrats). Next and last up is the vote on the reconciliation package. Wouldn’t be totally shocking if the Democrats got 1-3 votes for the reconciliation package that they didn’t have for the Senate bill.
11:06 PM. Essentially no surprises in the roll call. All 218 yesses from the New York Times whip count in fact voted yes, plus the undecided Jerry Costello.
11:00 PM. Stupak speaks out against the motion to recommit, which the GOP is trying to cast as a pro-life vote.
10:53 PM. As much as it’s tempting to say: see, they really needed those Stupak votes and that’s very probably true, it’s not completely dispositive since (i) the votes aren’t cast independently of one another — some Democrats who voted no might not have if their votes were needed; (ii) some individual members of the Stupak coalition might have been picked off had a deal not been struck.
10:48 PM. All Republicans and 34 Democrats vote against. 219 Democrats vote for. Health care reform becomes law with the President’s signature later this week.
10:47 PM. 219 Democratic yeas. Two Republicans yet to vote, although unless one of them is Cao, that won’t change anything.
10:45 PM. Ballgame.
10:43 PM. Dems are at 210-31. Pelosi needs 6 of last 12 for passage.
10:42 PM. Why are there still more than a dozen Republicans who haven’t voted yet? Now 209 for passage, still just 27 nays.
10:41 PM. Up to 203 for passage — 27 Democratic nays.
10:38 PM. There doesn’t seem to be that much motion/activity on the floor, another sign Democrats feel pretty comfortable about their total.
10:34 PM. The key thing to watch, of course, is the number of Democrats nays. They have 22 so far — in the neighborhood of 35 are expected.
10:33 PM. Record ratings for C-SPAN tonight?
10:33 PM. Votes coming in surprisingly fast. About half of the Congress voted in the first 45 seconds.
10:32 PM. They’re voting now. This first vote is the most important — the Senate’s bill.
10:22 PM. One lucky (?) break for the Democrats: since tonight’s House vote has been so close and become the vote to watch on health care reform, and since Obama will have to sign a bill if/when the House approves the Senate bill, that’s going make the Senate vote on the fixes — where the optics are much worse because of the use of the reconciliation procedure — feel like an anticlimax.
10:19 PM. Democrats did not use the entrepreneurship/self-employment argument enough during the course of the health care debate. Of course, I’m a little self-interested in that regard.
10:17 PM. Pelosi should probably be Time’s Person of the Year for getting this done. Recall that Person of the Year by no means always go to someone who is universally liked. But, she’s very, very good at her job.
10:16 PM. Didn’t Boehner also imply that the cap-and-trade vote the most important vote the House had cast? Too tough to search through Congressional Record.
10:14 PM. Relatively tame for Boehner after a very confrontational start. Sustained GOP applause. He’s not bad as a speaker in this relatively narrow context.
10:10 PM. Boehner wants a roll call vote — which would be fine by me. One of the frustrating things about watching the House vote is that there’s almost no way to know the yeas and nays until it’s over.
10:04 PM. We’re nearing the finish line here. I’m not sure if I’ll have all that much to say, but you’re welcome to continue yelling at one another in the comments section.