If you're tired of hearing about stem-cell research, brace yourself. These next two years are going to be a long haul.
The Senate will vote on the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act (SCREA) after Easter, Harry Reid confirmed yesterday.
Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid on Tuesday said senators will debate stem-cell legislation in early April. They'll consider a bill similar to the one sponsored by Denver Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette, which passed the House in January.
Senate backers say they have enough votes for passage. That would send the bill to Bush for the second time.
Bush has promised to veto the measure when it reaches his desk, and that's where the nightmare begins. According to the Denver Post, DeGette will keep reintroducing the bill in the House of Representatives "until it becomes law." Unfortunately, doing so may be detrimental to the Democratic Party.
By saying she will keep reintroducing the bill, DeGette assumes the House and Senate will keep passing it. The problem is that the stem-cell legislation will be held hostage by its Senate opponents.
In order to bring the bill to the floor of the Senate without having it filibustered (by amendment), supporters of the legislation will have to make concessions to opponents – who are predominantly Republican. The opponents in the Senate will use Democrats desire to pass the SCREA as a means to bring other pieces of legislation to a vote that would otherwise never make it.
The current "concession" seems a fairly reasonable request, but future agreements may stretch the bounds of credibility. The upcoming unanimous consent agreement will likely bring up multiple stem-cell bills for consecutive votes, similar to the one made last year that allowed a vote on the SCREA and led to Bush's first and only veto.
Likely to be considered along with the SCREA this year are Norm Coleman's two bills, S. 362 and S. 363.
(Update [03/29/07]: According to the Kaiser Network, there will be only one additional bill considered: A combination of bills sponsored by Senators Isakson and Coleman to support research into ways of obtaining ESCs without harming embryos.)
S. 362, the trickily named Stem Cell Research Expansion Act, would allow federal funding for human embryonic stem cell (ESC) research on the condition that no embryos were harmed to derive the stem cells. S. 363, which currently lacks a short name, was described earlier by Bodyhack. It would provide $5 billion in funding for all forms of stem-cell research (adult and embryonic, animal and human), with up to 10% of the money designated to promote embryo adoption and develop the methods allowed by S. 362.
(Side note: A Domestic Policy Council report [.pdf] released earlier this year stated that $3 billion has already been spent on stem-cell research in the first six years of Bush's Presidency, so $5 billion over 10 years is actually a decrease in funding when considering inflation and the 10% of diverted funding.)
Future attempts at unanimous consent agreements may include strident requests for votes on items completely unrelated to the stem-cell issue and anti-thetical to Democratic beliefs. Given such a case, Reid may have to postpone Senate votes on the stem-cell bill until a veto would give supporters of stem-cell research a political boost.
Politically beneficial times for such votes, if Reid can manage agreements for them, would probably be:
- Just before the primaries.
- June of '08, halfway through the general election.
- Late October of '08.
Whatever happens, you will be hearing about stem cells for a long time to come.
Senate To Debate Bill Expanding Stem-Cell Studies [Denver Post]
