The three-day gap in posts here is due to a long weekend in Cedar Falls. Had a good time — and had a political connection when watching University of Northern Iowa Panther volleyball. In walked U. S. Sen. Charles Grassley, who goes to a lot of volleyball, in part to hear his son Jay handle the announcing. We had a brief chat, then others in the crowd hit him up as well, so I suppose Grassley didn’t get to see too much of the Panther plays.

Anyway, being away from computer and television for the weekend, my news dosage was simply reading the Sunday newspaper. Settling back into town here I see the U.S. House passage of federal health care reform ran on P5 of the Journal, while in the Waterloo Courier it warranted P1. The Courier also devoted much of the jump page to a comprehensive breakdown of what was in the reform bill,  as well as what was in the competing Republican reform bill that wasn’t enacted. I knew from reading the piece that only one Republican voted for the bill, so was certain that tri-state Republicans Steve King of Iowa and Jeff Fortenberry of Fortenberry did not vote for it.

However, several Democrats voted against the measure, but there was no breakdown of names in the article. So the nagging thought the rest of the weekend was whether South Dakota Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, a Democrat who lines up with the fiscal moderate Blue Dogs, had bucked the party line and voted against the bill. She’d expressed concern over health reform in a conference call just over a week ago, and I had an inkling she might not vote for reform in a state where Republicans dominate politically.

Sure enough, Herseth Sandlin voted ‘nay.’ As this Mount Blogmore post relates, that riled some South Dakota Democrats who saw merits in comprehensive reform. In a statement, Herseth Sandlin bemoaned the potential impact on Medicaid provisions on S.D.’s state budget and reductions in payments for long-term care under Medicare. She also pointed to insufficient cost containment and deficit reduction provisions. Herseth Sandlin said South Dakota families just didn’t support that particular reform package, as much as she still thinks reform is necessary.

So all three Siouxland members of Congress voted no on HR 3962. Now the gaze turns to the Senate, where this piece relates how that bill is unacceptable to some senators.