Health care overhaul clears divided Senate committee

Full Story at CNN.com

The 13-10 vote in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee split along party lines, with its top Republican arguing it costs too much and would ration care to Americans. But Sen. Edward Kennedy, its chairman, said, “We have done the hard work that the American people sent us here to do.”

“We know, however, that our work is not over — far from it,” Kennedy said in a written statement. The senator is battling cancer and voted by proxy.

“As we move from our committee room to the Senate floor, we must continue the search for solutions that unite us, so that the great promise of quality affordable health care for all can be fulfilled,” Kennedy said in the statement.

Health care has long been one of the Massachusetts Democrat’s pet issues. Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, who led the committee in Kennedy’s absence, said the bill is the first of several proposals “to grapple with the issue that has defied resolution through seven presidents and many Congresses since the 1940s.”