Wednesday, March 3, 2010

The Reconciliation Process - Let's just pass something now and fix it later ! !

This isn't the most recent editorial written about the horse-trading, deal-making, log-rolling,  Cornhusker-kickbacking, and Louisiana-Purchasing that will be necessary for Obamacare to make it through the Reconciliation Process. But this editorial works well with the pictures, I think.

So that they can claim to have reformed healthcare, they really are going to pass something truly horrific with 51 votes, and then go back and fix it one section at a time.  When they get around to it.  People often do a bad job, and then go back and fix it later, when they have more time and money, right?  
 
Here's Sam Stein, writing for The Huffington Post:

Despite mounting pressure to pass health care legislation through a parliamentary maneuver that would allow portions to be considered by an up-or-down vote, Democratic leadership in Congress insists that its best option remains regular order.
After several conservative Democrats in the Senate signaled their support for a Republican filibuster of reform that includes a public option for insurance coverage, a growing chorus of progressives called on Majority Leader Harry Reid to use reconciliation to get the provision passed.

The logic is simple: because the public option affects the budget it can be considered under reconciliation, which allows legislation to pass by a 51-vote majority.


The politics, however, are more complex. A Democratic Senate aide, speaking more candidly about strategy on condition of anonymity, said that the party still thinks its best shot to pass health care reform -- and, to a lesser extent, a public option -- remains through the use of normal parliamentary procedures.


For starters, leadership believes that more senators will be persuaded to vote for an entire health care package rather than individual bits and pieces.

If Reid settles on the route of reconciliation, it would mean separating other aspects of reform, including caps on insurance premiums, the promotion of health and wellness and the elimination of pre-existing conditions as a reason for denying coverage.


"Right now the best thing we can do is to do everything at once, score everything at once, and build momentum for the bill," said the aide.

Maybe so. But such reasoning doesn't fly for advocates of reconciliation who argue that splitting up the health care bill actually makes political sense. The public option, after all, is the most hotly-contested part of the legislation.


So an up-or-down vote may be the one avenue to ensure its passage. The private industry reforms, meanwhile, are largely non-controversial. So putting those provisions in a separate bill and passing them through regular order shouldn't be too difficult.


Again, however, aides insist that the devil is in the details. "The parliamentarian might tell us that, even if we have data on the public option being a budget utility, they might say we can't do it," warned the Senate Democratic aide. "Because you still have to create the exchange, you still have to have the force of law. And you may have to scale the public plan back for it to qualify."

There are other complications, added the aide. The House of Representatives, for instance, would have to go back to the drawing board after passing a full health care bill several weeks ago. And the concern on the Senate side of the aisle is that Speaker Nancy Pelosi could lose votes if she has to split up the legislation (though, if it meant ultimate passage, this seems unlikely).

The calendar presents another challenge. The White House has been pushing to get a bill to the president's desk before the new year. But reconciliation would likely push that time line back weeks, if not months, interfering with efforts to take up climate change and regulatory reform, running into the start of the 2010 campaign. "Where is the Senate floor time?" the aide asked.

Finally, the aide says, there is a question of votes. While leadership would have the flexibility to let ten Democratic senators vote against health care reform considered via reconciliation, there is enough parliamentary purism within the party to put its passage in doubt. Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) has repeatedly spoken out against the use of reconciliation. On Tuesday, meanwhile, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) told MSNBC that his preference was for regular order. Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.), one of the party's foremost champions of progressive reform, has stated a similar preference. Though, an aide tells the Huffington Post, "he has not made any statements about how he would vote on the bill if that were the case."
Most important of all, Reid himself has said rather definitively that he is "not using reconciliation." And an aide says that leadership has not had conversations with the Senate parliamentarian "in a while" to discuss what it can and can't do through reconciliation.

And yet, for all the hurdles, the push for Reid to go down this path just won't die. Jane Hamsher, a progressive health care activist who runs the site, FireDogLake, has put heavy pressure on the Majority Leader in recent days, writing: "It comes down to a simple question: will Harry Reid allow for majority rule? Or will he let corrupt members of his own caucus block a majority of the public and Congress who want a public option?"

I don't know which way Harry Reid will go either. But what could possibly go wrong? 

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A fresh coat of Whitening to BowWow for sending the chain email of Redneck Engineering pics. 

5 comments:

Hot Sam said...

In the Army we had a saying,

"If you don't have the time to do it right, you certainly won't have the time to do it over."

On the other hand, in one of my courses that was Pass/Fail we had another saying,

"70% and go".

Another common saying was:

"The perfect is the enemy of the good."

The Demon Rats have picked up on this saying, but unfortunately they are incapable of recognizing "the good" from "the absolutely, monumentally, and cosmically stupid".

Then there's:

"Close enough for government work."

How about we take control over, dismantle, and reorganize 1/6th of each Demon Rat's body, reallocating body parts among others where we think they need them.

Then we'll patch it all up later.

PeggyU said...

Glad I don't live in that house! Oh, wait ... we all do. Where's the fire extinguisher?

TarrantLibertyGuy said...

I laughed until I had tears with the pictures. The funniest was one of the least 'engineered'... the joist using a hinge as a brace was hilarious!

The Whited Sepulchre said...

I got these pics as part of a chain email, and couldn't think of anything else until I'd found the perfect Obamacare piece for them to illustrate.

Moishe3rd said...

Cute.
I'm a remodeling Contractor and one of my Conservative friends from Liberty News Forum (http://www.libertynewsforum.com/) (Sigh - and someday I'll learn how to use Blogger to make that into a link...) sent me this link.
Well done!