We Don't Need No Stinking Reconciliation

In the aftermath of the Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts, the Democrats are now stuck with a less-than supermajority in the Senate, and an angry left wing in the House. As of this writing, the only way the Obamists could jam health care through is to use the process called "reconciliation." Let's take a look at how it would work, and whether it's even a realistic possibility.

Barack Obama has shown next to no leadership for his beloved socialized medicine scheme. As a result, he is taking a lot of heat from his own party as well as plenty of pointed criticism from the Republicans. He didn't do anything more than make general statements about health care for everyone, and the occasional lie about not increasing taxes to fund the "free" socialized program. He has no policy, and not a clue as to how to slip government control past the public, so he has left it to his lieutenants in the administration. They failed. That leaves only the diehards in the Democratic Party to find a way to get a health care package through the Congress and to the president's desk for signature before the trainloads of tar and feathers arrive in Washington, D.C.

If the House rejects the Senate version, the game is over. The final version sent to the president cannot simply be put together by the star chamber members of the two houses and sent for signature after a simple majority vote in Congress. Both House and Senate versions contain budgetary implications, and any modification requires a supermajority in the Senate for approval. That will not happen now. The only thing left is for the House to accept the Senate version, exactly as currently written, without any modification, or a simple majority is not enough for passage.

Says lefty Democrat writer Jeff Davis: "Politically, this is difficult, as it means swallowing all the ugly compromises in the Senate bill whole in hopes of a possible (but not guaranteed) fix down the road. House members would have to go on record in favor of the Cornhusker Kickback, the Senate Cadillac Tax, and all the rest (to which I would add the Louisiana Purchase)."

Another compromise unacceptable to the left in the House is the de-funding of abortions contained in the Senate version, and since that's a budgetary matter, it cannot be reconciled in conference since it would require a change in the Senate version. If they can "fix" that at all, it would have to be done after the bill became law. Conference "fixing" would have to come after passage, not before. Passage with an amended conference reconciliation contained in it before passage would require a 60 vote supermajority in the Senate.

So how might this scheme to pass health care without public acceptance actually be possible? Families USA spokesman Ron Pollack has suggested one way. Remember, the original plan when the Democrats had 60 votes in the Senate was "don't worry, we'll fix it in conference." Well, here's the plan to make that work. First, the House and the Senate agree to vote on an amended conference bill. That would be no easy task, since it would have to bring along 60 Senators, some of whom have already expressed dismay over the more execrable provisions of the current Senate bill. But meanwhile, the two houses could vote on the unamended reconciliation bill that would pass the bill on to the president as is with the Senate version being the only version, now approved by the House. Then send both bills to the president for signature.

That would save face for the leftists in the House, and perhaps provide an opportunity for liberal Democrats and RINOs to find a way to reconcile the two bills in a way acceptable to the crypto-socialists (more bribes, more parliamentary maneuvers). Here's where the trick works. The two bills would then be sent to the president for signature. It doesn't matter which order the bills are passed in, what matters is which order the president signs them. If the president signs the current conference-reconciled Senate version first, then signs the second bill, the latter immediately modifies the former, the Democrats get their less-than-desired bill followed by a law that amends the Senate bill. Theoretically, neither vote would require a supermajority in the Senate.

This would be a torturous route, would stall the final process, and still is likely to run afoul of the "budget" provisions requiring a supermajority vote. Still, the Democrats are desperate. Obama has staked his reputation, if not his efforts, on passing a health care bill. Part of the plan is to keep the Republicans busy proposing new amendments and fighting Democrat additions and deletions until they give up out of pure exhaustion. It also provides extra "cover" time for the Democrats to do more back-room horse-trading with shaky blue dogs and questionable Republicans.

The Democrats in the Senate still have the majority votes necessary to limit debate on the conference-reconciled House/Senate version to 20 hours, after which time unlimited amendments may be offered, but no debate is allowed, and there must be an immediate up or down vote. Insiders refer to this process as "vote-a-rama." If the Democrats can weasel-word the provisions so as not to violate the Budget Act or the Byrd Rule requiring that all amendments be "germane to the bill," it is quite possibly the only way the Democrats could get their health care bill and an amended version of it slipped past the public before they could be stopped. Sadly, the Budget Act doesn't make provisions for stopping monetary amendments which are merely part of the back-and-forth between House and Senate conference committees.

OK, that's depressing. But it isn't the end of the discussion. The Republicans in the Senate could force a separate roll-call vote on every changed line of the stealth reconciliation bill. The rule that every provision in a reconciliation bill have budgetary impact would mean that the Democrats cannot address regulatory issues, consumer protection issues, or even abortion without first successfully addressing the financial impact. Furthermore, the current rules and statutes limit a marked-up conference reconciliation bill to a period of ten years, and much of Obama's provisions wouldn't kick in until about that time or shortly thereafter, leaving them completely vulnerable to further attack by future Congresses. If this bizarre reconciliation path were to be followed, it would very likely be both a pyrrhic and short-lived victory.

Given the devastating defeat handed to the Democrats in Massachusetts, the questionable legality of a two-house reconciliation followup bill, and the unpopularity of the whole government health care scheme, it seems highly unlikely that any member of Congress in a swing district or swing-state that isn't otherwise totally dominated by leftist politics (like my own district in San Francisco) would be foolish enough to follow this path. Prior to the Massachusetts election, this crazy scheme had a small chance of success, since it relied on a simple majority vote. The Democrats realized that even before the Massachusetts election, there was already such a backlash to the overall scheme that they might lose two or three votes in the Senate and many more in the House, leaving the only salvation to a majority Senate vote if the House rejected the Senate bill in toto. The victory in Massachusetts has probably rendered an already questionable scheme into a practical impossibility.

Follow-Up Note: On Thursday morning, my local Marxist and Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, announced that she didn't have the votes to produce an agreement to accept the Senate version of health care as is. In the spirit of "it ain't over 'til it's over," I am not abandoning the position discussed in this post until I'm sure that she didn't have a botox-to-the-brain attack. What a radical Democrat says in the morning can change 180 degrees by the following afternoon. I will believe that she has abandoned her scheme when I hear the official public announcement from her, Harry Reid, and the administration. At that point I will believe that all plans to push this socialist scheme through without public support have actually been terminated.