Brace Yourself - Senate to Pull Rare All-Nighter

The "vote-a-rama" has begun -- literally a vote-a-palooza, votes every 10 minutes on health care reconciliation legislation.  This is the "fix-it" bill that makes adjustments to the bill President Obama signed into law yesterday.

Democrats are moving to table, or kill, all GOP amendments.  They  clearly feel the wind at their backs and just want this over with.    Indeed, Majority Leader Harry REid, D-NV, said there will be "no breaks" -- so they'll keep voting for hours.  REid's estimation was 9 hours of voting.

A spokesman for Reid tells Fox that there will come a time on Thursday when the leader will have had enough.  Vice President Biden, as the President of the Senate, is "certainly not going anywhere for the next 24 hours," meaning, the Veep could be brought in to preside over the chamber and force the voting to a close -- moving the members to final passage.   I can find no one who has seen this happen before.

Meanwhile, Republicans are even losing some of their "fight" in speeches, as the bill does appear to be on a glidepath to passage.

BUT -- what we don't know is what Republicans will do on points of order.  These are motions that basically say a provision in the reconciliation bill violates the Budget Act rules.    GOPers won't tell us what they have planned, so there could be a "Perry Mason" moment, a "gotcha" moment.  We'll see....

The time for votes is supposed to be held to 10 minutes, but they've already broken that pledge.   So goes the Senate....

Remember -- if you want to check out the amendments Republicans have filed, the Senate GOP Conference has them here and is updating:

http://republican.senate.gov/healthcare/reconciliation