The Senate, as well as people concerned about the fate of Congress' health care overhaul, are eagerly awaiting news about the next step. Majority Leader Harry Reid has said for weeks he's waiting for an analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office before proceeding. But that was expected last week; now it's nine days before Thanksgiving_and about a month before the target 2009 adjournment date.

So here's an update on how things are going from Reid's press conference earlier Tuesday:

QUESTION: Senator Reid, is it still your intention to hold a cloture vote on the motion (to proceed to debate on the health care bill?)

REID: We're going to hold it soon as we can.

QUESTION: Senator, when do you expect to hear from CBO? Do you still expect that to be later today or (inaudible)?

REID: We're going to be hearing from CBO very soon. I spoke to (CBO director) Doug Elmendorf today, a couple hours ago. Everything is moving along just fine.As soon as we get the bill, we'll share it with everyone.

QUESTION: What do you see...

QUESTION: Will you move to the bill soon?

REID: Yeah, I feel cautiously optimistic that we can do that.

QUESTION: Are you in on Saturday?

REID: The question is are we in on Saturday. We'll have to wait and see. I hope not, but it's possible.

Democrats are in jeopardy of not meeting their long-sought goal of getting a health care overhaul bill on President Barack Obama's desk by the end of the year.

Asked Tuesday if that goal was reachable, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said "We're not going to be bound by any time lines. We need to do the best job we can for the American people. We want quality legislation, and we're going to do that."

Reid has had trouble finding consensus among eight to 12 Senate Democratic moderates, centrists he badly needs to reach the 60-vote threshold required to overcome procedural hurdles.

It's expected the Senate will need at least a month to consider health care legislation, and with Veterans Day next Wednesday and Thanksgiving Nov. 26, time is running short.

Reid said he was undeterred. "We're going to do this legislation as expeditiously as we can, but we're going to do it as fairly as we can, also," he said.

The House of Representatives is expected to take up its version of the bill Friday,with a possible vote Saturday. Its measure would then have to be combined with whatever the Senate passes--a negotiation that could take some time--and the two Houses would then vote again.

Some sobering news for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada: He's trailing two potential Republican challengers in his 2010 bid for re-election, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Sunday.

Former Republican party official Sue Lowden and real estate developer Danny Tarkanian, who are vying for the GOP nomination, both top Reid in polls by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research.

Forty-nine percent of those surveyed chose Lowden and 39 percent, Reid. Matched against Tarkanian, the Republican was the favorite of 48 percent, while Reid got 43 percent. The poll surveyed 500 Nevada voters 6 through 8. Margin of error is plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

Reid, who is currently trying to steer a health care overhaul through the Senate, was named favorably by  38 percent of voters and unfavorably by 50 percent.

According to the Review-Journal, the Reid camp's reaction was: "Senator Reid has never put much stock in polls. The Republican candidates in this race are still supporting many of the policies that got us into the mess that Senator Reid is working every day to get us out of," said Reid campaign manager Brandon Hall. "As the election draws closer and voters are presented with a choice between moving our economy forward and the status quo, we are confident that Senator Reid's vision of moving forward will prevail."

To read the Review-Journal article: http://www.lvrj.com/news/two-could-beat-reid-poll-finds-63955312.html

The Senate Finance Committee is expected to vote Tuesday on its plan to overhaul America's health care system, after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported the proposal would cost $829 billion over 10 years and reduce the deficit $81 billion.

The committee will meet Tuesday at 10 a.m.

Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., had pushed for a vote this week, but some members, notably Sen. Ollympia Snowe, R-Maine, wanted more time to review the CBO report.

The bill is expected to win committee support, since the panel has a 13-10 Democratic majority. Snowe, a moderate Republican, is the only GOP member who is seen as a possible yes vote.

The partisan bitterness was apparent Thursday, as party leaders sparred on the Senate floor.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., invoked the memory of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., the Health Committee chairman who died in August.

"As  anyone who has even superficially followed this debate knows, the route to realizing Sen. Kennedy’s dream is far from smooth sailing, "Reid warned.

“There are still those who will not rest until the American people are denied the change they demanded, those who will not be happy unless the status quo is sustained.  There are still those who want to pick fights against us, even though we are interested only in fighting for hardworking families.  There are still those who consider this a zero-sum game, and will only declare victory if President Obama concedes defeat."

But Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky fought back.

"What most people don’t realize is that the new plans wouldn’t go into effect for another four and a half years. So what’s being sold as a 10-year cost is really a five and a half year cost. That means you can take the numbers you’re getting and nearly double them," he said.

The nation's unemployment rate dropped slightly in July and though employment dropped by 247,000, those figures were less than expected, causing Democrats to offer cautious optimism. But not Republicans.

Their statements Friday rarely if ever mentioned the better news.

Some samples:

"While President Obama was taking a victory lap to celebrate the economy’s performance, more Americans lost their jobs and the budget deficit soared to a record $1.3 trillion in July. In the month of July alone 247,000 Americans lost their jobs, which means more than 2.8 million Americans have lost their jobs since the president took office," said Republican party chairman Michael Steele.

"The president said his stimulus bill would keep unemployment from rising higher than 8 percent. It hasn’t. Now he expects Americans to believe his trillion-dollar health care experiment will improve their health care? It won’t. America simply can’t afford more of the president’s costly experiments.”

Added  Brian Walsh, spokesman for the party's Senate re-election committee: “As (Majority Leader) Harry Reid and President Obama attempt to cast today’s unemployment numbers as a victory for the Democrats, the fact remains that our country’s deficit has skyrocketed under this Administration and hundreds of thousands of Americans still lost their jobs during the month of July."

And House Republican Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., weighed in with these thoughts:

“The American people have serious concerns about the economy, job creation and the unsustainable debt obligations incurred in the last seven months – and they don’t like what they see from the Administration and Congress.  The resolve of small business job creators, American workers and entrepreneurs is strong, and we believe that empowering them to succeed is a far better option than the path chosen by the Administration and Democrats in Congress.

"Beginning in January, House Republicans laid out a serious and substantive agenda that put jobs first," he said. "House Democrats, along with the White House, instead took an unfocused, ‘go it alone’ approach that has fallen well short of its goals and has failed to create jobs.”

Newly-sworn in Senator Al Franken's first formal appearance at a Senate Democratic meeting was apparently no laughing matter to Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Franken was a writer and comic on "Saturday Night Live," and as of about noon Tuesday is Minnesota's junior senator.

After a closed-door session with fellow Democrats Tuesday afternoon, Reid announced with a sly grin, "Senator Franken gave me a few jokes he thought I should share with you, but I didn't like them. So I'm not going to do it."

Sen. John Ensign, who just a week ago was an up and coming Republican star, Tuesday apologized to his GOP Senate colleagues for an affair with a campaign colleague.

Ensign stepped down as chairman of the Senate's Republican Policy Committee after his admission last week of an eight-month affair. He spoke to a closed-door meeting of GOP senators Tuesday for about two minutes, colleagues said.

He "apologized and indicated he was going to do his job," said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Colleagues said they welcomed Ensign's remarks, and applauded his comments.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada had warm words for the Ensign family.

"I know you have a lot of questions," he told reporters, "but I'm not going to answer them," except to say, "I have known the Ensign family for many, many years."

Reid added that he was friendly with Ensign's father_"a wonderful man. He's done a great job of coming from nowhere to become a very, very wealthy man. and he's done it through hard work, ingenuity." Mike Ensign ran the Mandalay Resort Group.

As for Sen. Ensign, Reid said, "I hope he works his way through this."

"Cash for Clunkers" may be headed for a fast congressional track.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday he'd like to include the plan, where the government gives consumers financial incentives to scrap old gas guzzlers and buy new cars, as part of an emergency funding bill for the Iraq and Afghanistan war that the Senate is expected to consider next week.

"Cash-for-clunkers is really important," Reid told reporters. "Every country in the world is selling less cars than they did before except one country: Germany. And in Germany they have a program for cash-for-clunkers. We need to do the same."

But while he said he would "love" to include it in the emergency bill, "the problem is I can't figure out a way to do it procedurally ... so we're trying to figure out how to do it."

The House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee Democrats offered their own version last week.Consumers could get vouchers of up to $4,500 to buy new cars to replace old gas-guzzlers.

Read the details here.

Sen. Arlen Specter's going to get a subcommittee to chair after all.

The Pennsylvania Republican-turned-Democrat thought he had retained his all-important seniority last week, when he announced the switch. Specter was first elected in 1980, which would make him the second-ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee and number four on the powerful appropriations panel. And it could put him in line for an appropriations subcommittee chairmanship.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., seemed amenable.

"Senator Reid can you talk about Senator Specter's seniority now?" a reporter asked that day. "He said he would be coming in as if he were elected, in 1980, a Democrat."

"That's right," Reid said.

Tuesday, though, Senate Democrats refused to go along, and moved Specter to the bottom of the seniority ladder. Then Majority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill., stepped in and offered to give up the helm of his crime and drugs subcommittee, one of judiciary's busiest panels.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., used President Barack Obama's 100th day in office and the House of Representative's passage of the federal budget Wednesday to once again blast congressional Republicans as the party of "No."

But the San Francisco Democrat offered a novel suggestion for solving the problem of an uncooperative House and Senate GOP brain trust: have mainstream Republican voters revolt against them.

"By and large, I say to Republicans 'Take back your party ...'" Pelosi told reporters before one of her press aides shouted "Last question!" But Pelosi added: "If I may go one step further, I would say our country needs a strong Republican Party ..."

"Not too strong," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., interrupted.