Senate follows House to override Medicare bill veto

Congress voted Tuesday to override President Bush’s veto of legislation that would undo a 10.6 percent cut in Medicare fees to physicians.

The Senate voted 70-26 to override the veto following action by the House earlier in the day. The lower chamber voted 383-41 to enact the bill over Bush’s objections. In both houses, the votes exceeded the two-thirds majority needed to overturn the veto.

{mosads}The votes mark just the third time Congress has successfully voted to override a veto by Bush. The president has vetoed nine pieces of legislation during his terms in the White House; he vetoed the Medicare bill earlier Tuesday.

In both chambers, more Republicans voted to override the veto than voted for the bills, underscoring how GOP lawmakers have grown more emboldened to buck Bush, a lame-duck president, during an election year.

In the Senate, Sens. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and Kit Bond (R-Mo.) voted to override the veto, even though they previously opposed the bill. The Senate passed the bill 69-30 on July 9.

In the House, the lopsided 383-41 vote included 153 Republicans siding with all the Democrats. When the House passed the legislation on June 24, 355-59, 129 Republicans voted for the bill.

Republicans were under considerable pressure from the American Medical Association and other physician groups, along with the powerful and influential senior citizens’ lobbying group, the AARP.

Bush and the faction of Republicans who voted to sustain the veto highlighted cuts to Medicare Advantage plans as a key reason for their opposition.

“I support the primary objective of this legislation, to forestall reductions in physician payments. Yet taking choices away from seniors to pay physicians is wrong,” Bush wrote in the veto message he delivered to the House.

Like many congressional Republicans, Bush supports the underlying aim of the bill, which is to revoke the cut in Medicare payments to doctors that took effect on July 1. The president, however, objected to other provisions of the bill. Chiefly, Bush opposes the Democratic plan to offset the cost of the physician payment fix by reducing spending on private Medicare Advantage plans by as much as $14 billion.

Tuesday’s votes marked the final stage in a journey that began late last year. Originally, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) attempted to draft a bipartisan bill. Baucus abandoned those talks in May and moved forward with his own bill, which formed the basis of the legislation enacted Tuesday.

The most dramatic turn came last week, when Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) made a surprise return from cancer treatment in his home state to cast the deciding 60th vote to pass the bill, which failed on two earlier attempts. Eighteen Republicans voted for the measure that day, including nine who previously opposed the bill.

Neither Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) nor Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), their party’s presidential candidates, attended the veto override vote. Obama previously voted for the measure. Although McCain missed all four votes on the Medicare legislation, he has said he opposes it.