Sebelius is confused

I will chalk this up as a simple misstatement by Kathleen Sebelius over the weekend. During an interview on ABC, the Secretary said:

The bill has passed the House. The bill has passed the Senate with a super-majority.

To be correct, she should have said:

A bill has passed the house. A bill has passed the Senate with a super-majority.

This is what much of the debate between Congressional Democrats have been about, and why the Health Care Summitt was called the other week. It wasn’t simply because the Republicans have refused to support the legislation, but because the House Democrats and the Senate Democrats passed two different bills. Since the Democrats have lost their super-majority control in the Senate, they are forced to rely on the House to vote for the Senate-version of the bill, which some Democrats refuse to do.  If “the bill” had been passed as Sebelius stated, there wouldn’t be any debate right now, since the President would have already signed the bill into law.