we will be willing to work with them. it will probably help them to have the joe donnelly s from indiana, north dakota, missouri, these are prominent senators to be voting against portions of obamacare. there was a vote on the senate floor yesterday afternoon now, where the republican senator from montana, placing a pair amendment on the floor. daring democrats to support it. well, most of the democrats voted president, meaning you arg you present, meaning you are voting that you are there, but you re not going either way. others voted no, because it helped him get on the record and say, we are not for a single pair, that doesn t work in their states.
vice president pence was there for a short time. did you get a chance to talk to him? no. he was in and out tonight. he came up to the capital in case his vote was needed to try and break a tie. i talked with mark short, president trump s legislative director who was predicting the vote at about 12:00 or 12:30. there was a moment where vice president pentz and john mccain went to the cloakroom off the floor to have a little bit of a chat. some people wonder, maybe there was a call that was made. we don t know if that in fact took place or not. that is something that they always talk about the president being the chief within congress. that is very important to be able to persuade people, but those folks who have studied what happens to the presidential power to persuade lawmakers to go a certain way, they say it is at the end of the day you get on the phone and you crack the whip. it is the idea that you have written creatively a legislative solution that matches the contours of th
we had republican who felt confident. eight the democrat from illinois, she thought that at that point the republicans had the vote with vice president pentz likely casting the tie-breaking vote. again, john mccain was the deciding factor. what is so interesting is that if you look back to that speech by john mccain on the senate floor, he said essentially what he did, which was move forward to debate, but then, if the bill doesn t meet what you think it should meet, then scrap it and start over, try a bipartisan process. he almost forecast what that process was. talking to him on the phone, what does the state need. he was listening to his governor, he was listening to his gut, and he chose to vote
vote. that first vote was held up for more than an hour i can think of two points in the past 24 years i have been covering congress. one was in 2003, a vote in the house of representatives that started at 3:00 in the morning and ended just before six that morning on a prescription drug benefit. the longest bow ever held in the house of representatives. it was a tied vote, it went on forever and ever, and then you had the failed tarp vote. during the financial collapse of late 2008. the vote failed in the house of resented us, and the dow jones industrial average lost 777 points in synchronicity with the votes. that is a perfect example of a bill failing before it passed. it obvious we had to pass later where the country s economy was going to be in the tank. this had that level of drama to it here tonight. i have to say, you must be an awfully patient man. your wife must love you a lot to
days ago where they arrested 90 or so people protesting on capitol hill. big protest almost every day at mitch mcconnell s office. there was a pretty big protest in the senate chamber on tuesday afternoon when they were starting the vote on the motion to proceed. this was to call up the health care bill, and once in a while you have a demonstrator or two and the sergeant of arms and u.s. capitol police remove those persons. there were so many people demonstrating enchanting, kill the bill, don t kill us. it took them about three or 4 minutes, they just did not have the personnel. these were not violent protesters, they expected to get arrested if they re going to do that, but that took a while. there has been a lot of local opposition, people exercising their first amendment rights here in the halls of congress,