Did you catch the end of the Michigan State-Maryland game yesterday? Unbelievable. I now predict a Kentucky (original pick) - Syracuse (new pick to replace bounced Kansas) final with Kentucky (original pick) winning it all.

This is an Open Thread.

Now that health care issues are basically tabled for the next decade (What? You think there will be more legislation like the Grayson Medicare for all bill? Dream on), what is next on the agenda? Let's hope some good old fashioned economic populism from the Dems. The best vehicle is financial regulation:

Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., unveiled a bill Monday to overhaul the U.S. financial system, proposing new powers for the Federal Reserve to oversee the nation's largest financial firms; a consumer protection agency housed within the Fed; and a new systemic risk council headed by the Treasury Secretary to identify and monitor complex firms that could pose a threat to the country's financial stability.

Dodd's bill is entirely inadequate. Both on substance and politically. A lot of work needs to be done on this.

Speaking for me only

Chris Bowers writes:

Health reform has passed the House. I feel determined, in that this is just a step in the right direction. There is a long way to go before we achieve universal health care in this county.

I feel sad that it came at the cost of throwing reproductive rights under the bus. Any win that means hurting some of your friends is not a full win. I feel frustrated, because I know we could have won the public option campaign, but it didn't happen.

This is what progressive failure looks like under a Dem Administration and Congress. The health bills reject the progressive vision of health care reform and embrace market based view of health reform. Reproductive rights were sacrificed as were health coverage for undocumented aliens. All for someone else's vision of health reform. Let's hope that the progressive vision is wrong and that the President and the Village Dems are right.

Speaking for me only

Matt Yglesias writes:

Now that it’s done, Barack Obama will go down in history as one of America’s finest presidents. [. . . F]undamentally, he’s reshaped the policy landscape in a way that no progressive politician has done in decades.

I guess anyone can call anything progressive, but I think E.J. Dionne is right that this is essentially a GOP (from 20 years ago) bill. I hope Yglesias is right and his thesis will be tested - Obama's (and Yglesias' and the rest of the Village Dems') vision is now law. My view aligns with Atrios':

President Obama after the House passed the health care reform bill:

This is not radical reform, but it is major reform. … This is what change looks like

Full transcript of remarks below: [More...]

Update: The bill passed 219 to 212. Here's the roll call vote. Reconciliation bill vote next.

The health care vote should begin in about 15 minutes. Obama will address the nation afterwards.

Here's a thread for the vote and the speech, and whatever else you still have to say about health care.

CBS has a wrap-up of what's in the Health Care Bill and when the various provisions take effect. The Daily Beast has a good recap of both what's in it and what's not in it.

Here's the House Summary of the reconciliation bill. Here's a summary of the Manager's Amendment. And here's a summary of the actual bill. [More...]

Here's the text of the Executive Order on abortion funding that Rep. Stupak finds acceptable enough to change his health care vote. Key points:

The Act maintains current Hyde Amendment restrictions governing abortion policy and extends those restrictions to the newly-created health insurance exchanges.

The Act specifically prohibits the use of tax credits and cost-sharing reduction payments to pay for abortion services (except in cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the woman would be endangered) in the health insurance exchanges that will be operational in 2014.

[More...]

The House is debating the health care bill. If you're a rules buff, you can follow along on the House twitter feed, where you'll see lots of references to things being "laid on the table," which always reminds me of Cream and "Badge":

Thinkin' 'bout the times you drove in my car.

Thinkin' that I might have drove you too far.

And I'm thinkin' 'bout the love that you laid on my table.

I wonder if anyone in the House has a kid who is married to Mabel. On a more substantive note, FDL is live-blogging the debate.

Update: There's a deal with Stupak. He'll hold a press conference at 4pm ET and announce he's voting for the bill. C-Span will stream live. Republicans on Twitter sound pissed, they're calling him a traitor.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

The National Mall in Washington is ready for today's March for America. Maybe now that the Dems have their 216 votes and the vote won't happen until this evening, it will get some attention.

Tens of thousands of people are expected from all over the country. You can follow along here or on Twitter here or on Facebook.

The Democrats say they have the 216 votes needed to pass health care. They are already pounding their chests. Here's House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larson on ABC's "This Week":

"President Roosevelt passed Social Security. Lyndon Johnson passed Medicare. Today, Barack Obama will pass health-care reform.”

The vote will take place between 6 p.m. and midnight.

The health care vote may not be until tomorrow, but the accolades for President Obama, who says health care will be his legacy, Nancy Pelosi and even Harry Reid are already beginning. From The New York Times:

That Mr. Obama has come this far — within a whisper of passing historic social legislation — is remarkable in itself. But the story of how he did it is not his alone. It is the story of how a struggling president partnered with a pair of experienced legislators — Ms. Pelosi and, to a lesser extent, Mr. Reid — to reach for a goal that Mr. Obama has often said had eluded his predecessors going back to Theodore Roosevelt.

Their journey over the last two months, interviews with White House aides, lawmakers, outside advisers, lobbyists and political strategists show, involved tensions, resolve, political spadework — and a little bit of luck.

The accolades are less for the content of the bill and more for the arduous task of herding the cats. (I wonder if that's how the phrase "Congress critters" came about.)Do most Americans even know what's in the bill? [More...]