Not even close. As anticipated, an effort to override President Obama's veto of a bill repealing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act failed Tuesday, falling far short of the two-thirds majority necessary.
The vote was nearly identical to the December vote to pass the repeal bill, with 241 votes in favor of the override and 186 against.
One Democrat –– Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota –– voted in favor of the veto override.
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A conservative, anti-abortion Democrat who opposed PPACA when it first passed in 2010, Peterson had a mixed record of votes related to the health law. He has previously opposed many of the GOP efforts to repeal the law, dismissing them as political stunts and voicing concerns about scrapping certain provisions of the law that he likes, such as the prohibition on insurers denying customers based on pre-existing conditions.
Three Republicans, Reps. Richard Hanna and John Katko of New York and Rep. Bob Dold of Illinois, voted with Democrats against overriding the president's veto.
Katko and Dold both represent districts that lean Democratic, while Hanna's district leans only slightly Republican.
All three have said that they do not want to repeal PPACA without a viable replacement planned.
Both parties used the vote to highlight their differences ahead of the 2016 election campaign.
"Regardless of the outcome, we have now shown there is a clear path to full repeal without 60 votes in the Senate," Speaker Paul Ryan said a day before the vote, according to Politico.
The subtext of Ryan's comment is that the repeal effort could succeed if a Republican is elected president because Democrats will not be able to filibuster the measure in the Senate. Because the GOP's most recent Obamacare repeal was passed through the "reconciliation process," the typical rules that require 60 votes to end debate on a bill in the Senate do not apply.
Democrats, meanwhile, were happy to characterize the repeal effort in different terms.
"It probably breaks all records in wasting taxpayer time and money," Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Maryland, told USA Today before the vote. "This is a futile gesture, part of an obsession to try to undo affordable care for 22 million Americans, and it's not going to happen."
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