Republicans set healthcare bar: 80 votes

Two influential Republican Senators seemed to raise the bar for bipartisanship today, saying that a healthcare bill will need 80 votes to be considered successful.

“We need to get a bill that 75 or 80 senators can support,” Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) told the Wall Street Journal. “If the Democrats choose to shut out Republicans and moderate Democrats, their plan will fail because the American people will have no confidence in it.”

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the Finance Committee, echoed those thoughts in the Washington Post.

“It’s not about getting a lot of Republicans. It’s about getting a lot of Democrats and Republicans,” said Grassley “We ought to be focusing on getting 80 votes.”

Both Grassley and Enzi and in the “Group of Six” Senators who are working on hammering out a bipartisan bill.

For a bill to get 80 votes, exactly half the Republican caucus would need to get on board. That’s an extremely high hurdle if the legislation is to remain palatable to liberals in the House.

(h/t: Matt Yglesias)