Another Great Weekend in DC!

This weekend was, yet again, awesome. Yesterday a couple of us went to the Waterfront and had an outdoor lunch overlooking the river. The weather this weekend was unusually warm for this time of year and we saw a couple of sailors who were taking advantage of it. Right below the deck was the former presidential yacht, which apparently was sold under the Carter administration. It sort of looked like a Mississippi river boat:

Following lunch we had some downtime at 225 and were keeping our eyes on the healthcare reform debate that was going on in the House of Reps. C-Span reported that the final vote would occur sometime around midnight, and a couple of us decided to head over to see if we could get into the gallery. Sure enough, we did! We got there around 9:30 and saw 3 or 4 amendments debated and voted on. At around 10:30, the vote for the passage of the entire HB 3962 began. The 15-minute vote began, and the tallies started adding up in the "yea" column. Around the 10th minute of the vote, we noticed Majority Leader Steny Hoyer anxiously searching for someone. We then saw him quickly make his way over to a representative and say something to him as he put his hand on the representative's back. The representative immediately went to cast his vote, and we saw an additional vote appear in the "yea" column on the board. I'm not sure whether the representative was on the fence about the vote or was just dragging out his vote, but it was nonetheless really cool to see.

When the number of "yeas" finally got to the 218, the democratic caucus erupted in cheers. At this point, there were probably another 3 minutes left. 2 more votes appeared in the "yea" column shortly thereafter, and as 10 seconds remained on the clock, the democrats started doing a countdown. There was so much excitement in the room when it passed!

It didn't escape us that this was a monumental moment in our history. We walked back to 225 with a real sense of amazement at what we just saw. Though there are still three more big steps in the process of passing healthcare reform, we got to witness firsthand the first big step.

-Liz