The House voted 383 to 41 to override the veto, while the Senate voted 70 to 26, in both cases far more than the two-thirds necessary to block the president’s action.
With organized medicine and other lobbies promoting the popular measure in an election year, Republicans broke heavily from the White House. A total of 153 House Republicans voted to defy the White House, 24 more than in a June 24 vote that started the momentum toward passage of the Medicare doctors’ bill yesterday. Twenty-one Senate Republicans voted for the bill this time, including four senators who had voted "nay" in the two previous Medicare votes.
The Medicare bill is the third, along with the recent farm bill and a water resources bill, to become law despite Bush’s veto. Overall, Bush has vetoed 12 pieces of legislation during his presidency, including a "pocket veto" of last year’s defense authorization bill.
This action applies only to the remainder of 2008. The sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula wil present this issue agin for 2009 anf yeras after unless revised by Congress.
