The weekend's giant snow storm sealed it for most of Washington: Christmas break started early. Federal offices closed, snowed-in roads went unplowed and local schools adjourned until next year.

But the Senate is toiling away. Monday night's breakthrough vote on a procedural matter in the health care debate has settled the issue, at least for now. Two more procedural votes are expected today and final passage of the bill is assured in a Christmas Eve vote on Thursday.

None other than the American Medical Association has endorsed the Senate bill, but that's not going to make the steps ahead any easier. The House and Senate bills are different in a bunch of ways and after the holidays the two chambers will have to come to agreement on a single version of the bill. And get it passed. In each chamber.

No greater sticking point exists than on abortion funding.

The House bill simply prohibits coverage of abortion services for any plan that's subsidized even the tiniest bit by federal money. The Senate bill would allow abortion coverage, but to assure that no federal money is used to cover abortions patients would have to write two premium checks and insurance companies would have to maintain two premium accounts.

In other words, the Senate's long holiday march toward passing this overhaul takes us to a starting point for further debate.

-- Scott Montgomery, Congress.org