After months of infighting, compromising, and Sunday-show grandstanding among his caucus colleagues, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid cheerily told reporters Saturaday he's confident he'll have the 60 votes he needs to pass health-care reform legislation. Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), once skeptical of the bill, has signed on after winning a nice chunk of pork for his state and after the Congressional Budget Office released its cost estimate of the effort. (Nelson managed to get the federal government to pay the entire cost of expanding Medicaid in Nebraska.) The Senate version of the bill will reduce the deficit by $132 billion over the next decade and cost $871 billion. President Obama hailed the bill as "the largest deficit-reduction plan in a decade."
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