The President outlined his plan for moving Obamacare forward today, and his comments included the expected threat to use reconciliation to pass the bill if the GOP refuses to rollover:
It deserves the same kind of up-or-down vote that was cast on welfare reform, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, COBRA health coverage for the unemployed, and both Bush tax cuts – all of which had to pass Congress with nothing more than a simple majority.
The threat is in his list of programs, all of which were passed using reconciliation. But it’s crazy to compare any of these with Obamacare. All of the bills he lists were VERY popular and Obamacare is VERY unpopular.
And, just as important, those bills fit well within the intended scope of reconciliation. To use reconciliation rules to “fix” a Senate bill for which they can’t muster enough votes in both houses is a grotesque perversion of the procedure.
It doesn’t really matter though. His spirit may be willing, but the legislative body isn’t able. As I have pointed out here, reconciliation can’t be used to “fix” anything until the House passes the Senate bill. And the votes aren’t there.
Madam Speaker now claims she can get enough votes, but GOP Whip Eric Cantor released a memo to his caucus last week showing that she will come up at least 15 votes short.
House Democrats are farther away from securing the votes to pass a government health care bill today than they have ever been … [Speaker Pelosi] will not be able to muster the votes needed …
And, as if to prove that he can be even less reality-based than Obama and Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is talking about using reconciliation to “fix” a bill that hasn’t yet been passed:
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told reporters Tuesday that the leadership was mulling first passing a “fix� to the Senate health care bill, then passing the Senate bill it is supposedly fixing. The fix, in Capitol Hill-speak, is being called the “reconciliation bill.�
The problem with this surreal plan is, of course, Bart Stupak and the rest of the anti-abortion Democrats. Unless Hoyer’s fix removes federal funding for abortion, he’s still a dozen votes short.
Meanwhile, the GOP views all of this with increasing glee. For the Republicans, this is a political winner no matter how the Democrat reconciliation strategy turns out:
This is win-win for Republicans. Even if the bill passes, Republicans will have weeks to stoke up public outrage.
UPDATE:
The latest major Democrat to make the reconciliation threat (via MM) is Senator Tom Harkin:
Sen. Tom Harkin told POLITICO that Senate Democratic leaders have decided to go the reconciliation route. The House, he said, will first pass the Senate bill after Senate leaders demonstrate to House leaders that they have the votes to pass reconciliation in the Senate.
This, you will note, is a considerably different scenario than the one described by Steny Hoyer. They’re bluffing.
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