In a marathon session that lasted into the early morning hours Thursday, Senate Republicans found two violations of congressional rules in a proposed package of changes to the new health care law, forcing the package back to the House of Representatives for another vote. Democrats say they expect the House to approve the measure quickly.

The new legislative roadblock does not affect the underlying reform plan signed into law by President Obama on Tuesday.

The GOP -- which has vowed to use every parliamentary tool available to undermine the recently enacted law -- launched its attempt to amend or kill the package of changes in a Senate session that finally adjourned at 2:45 a.m. Thursday.

The Senate planned to reconvene Thursday to consider a series of additional GOP amendments which, among other things, are designed to force Democrats to cast unpopular votes in the run-up to November's midterm elections.

Senate Democrats easily defeated the first of 29 amendments introduced by Republicans, which challenged provisions in the bill such as those involving changes to Medicare funding. Also defeated were attempts to send the measure to committee for reconsideration -- which would effectively kill it -- and other amendments intended to strip provisions from the bill.

GOP leaders did, however, find two minor provisions related to higher education that violate Senate procedure. These provisions have to be removed from the bill, and then it has to be voted on by the House again, said Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

"I'm confident that the House will be able to deal with this quickly," Manley said.

The House is expected to vote by week's end, before both chambers begin a spring recess.

The Democrats' so-called "fixes" bill was necessary to get a reluctant House to pass the Senate's health care reform measure Sunday night.

The compromise package would add more than $60 billion to the overall plan's cost, partly by expanding insurance subsidies for middle- and lower-income families. It would also expand Medicare's prescription drug benefit while scaling back the bill's taxes on expensive insurance plans.

Democratic senators complained that Republicans had shut down committee hearings for a second straight day as part of a strategy of obstruction in protest of the health care bill.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, and Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, told a news conference the GOP tactic was delaying work on vital issues.

"It's unconscionable," said Levin, who as chair of the Armed Services Committee was supposed to conduct a hearing with a top U.S. military commander in Korea who had flown in for the hearing. "Our national security cannot be held hostage to disagreements over a health care policy."

McCaskill had planned an oversight hearing on problems with contracts to train local police departments in Afghanistan. She said the Senate rule that allows the minority party to block committee action was "really dumb" and should be dropped.

"Disagree with us, debate us, vote no," she said. "But to use a rule to stop us from working -- that dog just doesn't hunt from where I come from. That doesn't even makes sense. That's why people in American think we are clueless here."

Levin said he "pleaded" with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky to prevent the blocking of a second day of hearings. A GOP objection on Tuesday also closed down committee work.

"It seems to me this is an example of how the obstructionism around here has gotten mindless," Levin said.

A GOP leadership aide would not directly respond to Levin's charge, but noted that Democrats canceled hearings Tuesday so that senators could attend the White House signing ceremony for the health care bill.

Among the amendments to the health care bill being proposed by Republicans is a provision to prevent the bill's planned Medicare cuts from being used to finance other programs. They also are proposing to eliminate new penalties being imposed on businesses whose workers use federally subsidized insurance.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma, has proposed that drugs for erectile dysfunction, such as Viagra and Cialis, be prohibited to sex offenders.

Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, is pushing to strike so-called sweetheart deals, such as an extra $300 million in Medicaid funds for the state of Louisiana. Critics have labeled the deal the "Louisiana Purchase."

Democrats have dismissed the GOP proposals as little more than politically motivated obstructionism meant to derail the deal.

Republicans are "not serious about helping this bill," Reid said Wednesday. They are concerned only with "throwing roadblocks in front of anything we do."

When Republicans raise a point of order, it will be up to the Senate parliamentarian to rule on whether it is legitimate. Democrats would have difficulty defeating a point of order because that would require 60 votes.

The Democrats lost their filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the chamber when Republican Scott Brown won the Massachusetts seat long held by Democrat Edward Kennedy, who died last year.

The loss of the 60-seat supermajority was what prompted the complicated two-bill strategy being used by the Democrats. If the House had made any changes to the Senate version of the bill, it would have had to go back to the Senate for another vote. There it would have stalled, because Republicans have enough seats to filibuster it.

Democrats therefore approved the Senate bill without changes and proposed the fixes bill. They are trying pass that in the Senate through reconciliation, which allows bills affecting the budget to pass by a simple majority of 51 votes.

The points of order that Republicans are expected to raise would deal with aspects of the legislation that they say violate the strict rules on the reconciliation process.

In an ironic twist, many of the provisions in the fixes bill that Republicans are trying to kill were backed by Republicans during debate on the Senate health care bill. For example, the fixes bill would eliminate a provision for the federal government to pay Medicaid cost increases for the state of Nebraska, a provision that was negotiated by Democratic Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson in exchange for his support.

Republicans cited the Nelson trade-off as an example of what they called unethical deal-making by Democrats to get the health care bill passed in December.

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