Health care vote set for Sunday

Democratic leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives have scheduled a Sunday vote on the Senate version of the health care reform bill and it appears they will do it without a so-called “deem and pass” procedure. And while they would not have scheduled a vote unless they were nearly certain they could get the votes to pass it, it’s going to be very close — and it doesn’t look like they have all the votes they need quite yet:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi still had plenty of work to do, and no one in leadership was yet saying she has 216 votes in hand. But a series of events Thursday — the president postponing his overseas trip, a solid deficit reading and a handful of members firming up as “yes” votes — all left the impression of a bill gaining ground.

The question now is whether these last-minute conversions will be enough to offset a collection of wavering Democrats who could trade their “yes” votes for “no” votes in the final round of a yearlong fight.

The Congressional Budget Office released their final score on the bill Thursday morning.

Democrats opened the day on an up note after the Congressional Budget Office unveiled its initial cost estimate for the House-Senate compromise. The government’s official scorekeeper put the cost of subsidies and new programs created by the bill at $940 billion over the next decade and predicted the bill would save the government $138 billion during the same period — a projection that seemed to buoy fiscal conservatives. Democrats also said the bill is fully paid for and would cover 95 percent of all Americans.

The CBO estimate also said that the bill would reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion over the second decade after the bill.