Senate Defeats "Obamacare" Repeal

The GOP's "repeal Obamacare" dog-and-pony show hit the wall in the Senate today. The vote was 47-51, right along party lines. Lieberman and Warner were not present.

With a Democratic president and Republicans 13 votes short of the 60 votes they would need to break a filibuster in the Senate, the odds of the law being overturned legislatively in the next two years are essentially zero. It is possible that it will be overturned in the courts, however; two federal judges have deemed the law unconstitutional, while two have found it to be constitutional. The issue will likely end up before the Supreme Court. In classic Senate fashion, the vote on the repeal measure was anything but straightforward. The repeal measure was actually in the form of an amendment to the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill, and the vote was actually on a "budget point of order" and needed 60 votes for passage.