Senate Voting on Health Care Repeal Today

Senators will vote late Wednesday afternoon on whether to overturn the health care law, a symbolic action driven by fierce opposition to the law among Republicans.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that senators will hold roll call votes on three amendments to the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill currently up for debate, most likely between 5:00 and 6:00 Eastern Time. One is an amendment from Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell to repeal the health care law.

Though Senate Republicans are unified behind the effort, they are not close to having enough votes to repeal the law. Republicans campaigned in the midterm elections on a promise to "repeal and replace" the law, and the GOP-led House has already passed a repeal measure.

In a statement, Reid hammered Republicans for forcing the vote, saying, "The time for fighting old battles is behind us."

"[T]hey want to replace the law of the land with a broken system we know doesn't work," he said. "They want to replace patients' rights with insurance companies' power. They want to replace health with sickness. They want to replace the promise of tomorrow with the pain of yesterday."

The two other amendments to the health care bill are ultimately far more important than the repeal amendment, since they have a reasonable chance of passage. Though they are slightly different, both would eliminate a provision in the health care law that requires businesses to file a 1099 form with the IRS for every vendor with which they've done 600 dollars worth of business or more. That idea has broad bipartisan support.

"I will vote to remove the IRS 1099 provision because it imposes a needless burden on small businesses and we need to fix that as soon as possible," Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska said in a statement.