On Friday, I participated in a 50-minute blogger call with Sen. Orrin Hatch regarding the reconciliation of ObamaCare. The senator was extremely anxious – even distraught – that the Democrats were going to pull some fancy parliamentary footwork to avoid the need even to draft a reconciliation bill in the Senate and simply ram the current Senate bill through the House. He and the Republican leadership had been meeting most of the morning with procedural experts to war-game the different ways the Dems could do it.
The procedural footsie involved is well-described by Quin Hillyer in yesterday’s Washington Times.
In trying to pass their radical health care overhaul, President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid now are channeling the tactics of Gene Wilder and Cleavon Little from the movie “Blazing Saddles.” Opponents and fence-sitters alike should not fall for their tricks. . . .
To listen to the current debate, one would think the big question is whether the Senate is going to use reconciliation – in other words, to pass the overhaul with only a 51-vote simple majority in the Senate, rather than the 60 votes usually needed to overcome a filibuster. But as now anticipated, the reconciliation procedure would be used not on the main health care bill, but only on a companion bill to “fix” the areas of House and Senate disagreement. The problem is that by that time, opponents will have already lost.
To make the reconciliation gambit work, the House has to pass the existing Senate bill as is. Then, immediately, the House would pass the smaller bill of “fixes” meant for a reconciliation vote in the Senate. The Senate would then take up that second House-passed “fix,” pass it with 51 votes, and then the two bills would be sent to the president for signature.
In the Senate, Republican after Republican has vowed to do everything humanly possible to block that historically unprecedented use of reconciliation, which originally was meant for budgetary savings rather than for substantive policy changes. They promise a real donnybrook.
Well, there was a real donnybrook in “Blazing Saddles,” too. The Klan and the Mexican bandits and the gangsters rode into the fake town, and some of the townspeople gave them a real brawl. But it was under false pretenses. The buildings being protected weren’t real. Nor will be the reconciliation bill.
After a huge and messy fight, the Republican opponents may even win the reconciliation battle. Ten or more Democrats may wax eloquent about the need to maintain harmony in the Senate and denounce the unwise use of reconciliation rules for such a major overhaul. And why shouldn’t they? They win either way. If the Senate refuses to pass the second bill through reconciliation, the first bill already will have been passed by Congress, and will remain passed, regardless. President Obama can sign it into law with a flourish, no matter what the Senate does on the smaller bill with its fixes.
Read it all.
Sen. Hatch was certainly angry and combative about reconciliation, but he was also extremely anxious that House Republicans weren’t tuned into the strategy of creating a donnybrook while the real bill moves through the House.
More from Erick Erickson at Red State.
Related posts:
Twitter
Facebook
RSS
LinkedIn