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The Rachel Maddow Show: Bayh Won't Filibuster Health Reform Debate

From The Rachel Maddow Show Oct. 29, 2009. Rachel reports that Evan Bayh is now walking back from his comments made on CBS News and has released this

CBS News and has released this statement:

Senator Bayh will support moving forward to a health care debate on the Senate floor, where he will work hard to address his concerns and craft affordable legislation that reduces the deficit and lowers health care costs for Indiana families and small businesses.

Maddow: In other words according to his office's statement today Sen. Bayh is now promising to allow the bill to come to the floor, but would he still like Lieberman filibuster the final vote with Republicans? Would he block a majority vote on the final bill and force his party to get sixty votes to pass health reform instead of fifty? Well, exclusively this afternoon Sen. Bayh told us this.

He told us that his position on health reform is not the same as Sen. Lieberman. Sen. Bayh told us it is extraordinarily unlikely that he would filibuster health reform. He said there is nothing in the bill he is aware of now that would cause him to vote to filibuster and he said that he currently "can't think of a set of circumstances under which he would vote against cloture.

What does this mean? It means that it's been a very big 24 hours for health reform. Sen. Bayh's statement as of 24 hours ago indicated that he had walked through the door that Joe Lieberman had opened--that he was willing to go even further than Joe Lieberman—not only willing to filibuster the final bill on health reform, but to filibuster any debate as well, both of those perceived threats from Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana have been walked way back. Which means that Joe Lieberman stands alone—Joe Lonely.

And round and round we go. Lieberman needs to be stripped of his chairmanship and as I said in my post yesterday, if Joe Lieberman wants to filibuster his own caucus, break out the cot and the diapers Joe.

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