Whatever it takes
The Republicans whine about a tactic that they've often used in the past
Whatever it takes
Dick Polman, Inquirer National Political Columnist
What are the odds that today's health care reform summit will end with President Obama and the Republicans locking arms and singing "Kumbaya?" I'd sooner take odds that Lady Gaga will morph into Greta Garbo and become a recluse.
A bipartisan miracle will occur only if the Republicans say, "Hey, guess what, folks. We want to shelve all our philosophical objections to the Democratic plan, and we also think it'd be a great idea to hand the Democrats a political victory that will inspire their liberal base to turn out en masse in the November congressional elections." And the miracle will occur only if Obama and the Democrats say, "We won in 2008, decisively so, after campaigning for health care reform - but so what? We're now prepared to betray our voters and accept Republican ideas that will leave most uninsured Americans out in the cold. We want our voters to stay home in November."
But the summit - or, to be more precise, the "summit" - is not really designed to yield anything fruitful. Obama isn't really trying to find common ground with the Republicans. At this point, why bother? No, Obama's prime task is to stiffen the spines of the tremulous congressional Democrats whose support is essential if health care reform is to be shoved into the end zone on fourth and goal.
Indeed, the Democrats have floated a possible game plan to score on health reform without any Republican assistance at all, a plan that would circumvent the usual Republican roadblocks. (Obama clearly hopes to use today's event to put the Republican naysaying on national display.) The key feature of this plan is the Senate parliamentary tactic known as "reconciliation," which, if employed successfully, would allow the Democrats to do an end run around the usual Republican filibuster threat, and pass a final House-Senate health reform bill with only 51 Senate votes.
Reconciliation can be used to pass bills that have a budgetary impact. Health reform has a budgetary impact. Democrats have already passed health reform bills in both chambers; reconciliation can be used to resolve the differences, which are mainly fiscal in nature. In a reconciliation showdown vote, Senate Democrats can lose as many as nine of their caucus members, and still get the magic 51 if Joe Biden is called upon to cast the tie-breaker.
The reconciliation tactic has long been available, of course, but Senate Democratic leaders have been averse to using it - in part because, being typical Democrats, they were afraid that if they did use it, somebody somewhere might get mad. With the clock running out on health reform, however, they now seem to understand that there are times when it's important to do whatever it takes to win. (This is a credo that Republicans implicitly understand. More on that in a moment.) So we now have people like Evan Bayh, the lame-duck Indiana Democratic senator, grudgingly conceding that reconciliation at this point is the only way to go; in his words this week, "Obviously, if the minority is just frustrating the process, that argues for taking steps to get the public's business done."
What's priceless, of course, are the Republican complaints about how this "unprecedented" reconciliation strategy would destroy the Senate forever and ever. Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson calls the potential Democratic game plan an "insult," and warns that "the minority would not only be defeated on health reform, but its rights would be permanently diminished." Senator Lindsey Graham says that using reconciliation to pass health reform would trigger "the end of the minority rights in the Senate as we know it...the loss of the United States Senate as a real viable institution." Senator Lamar Alexander calls reconciliation "the ultimate trick," and he claimed at the summit this morning that if reconciliation was used to pass health care reform ("jamming it through in a partisan way"), that would constitute "the tyranny of the majority."
OK, I'm just wondering: How come the Republicans consider this tactic to be such an outrage when Democrats contemplate using it...yet they thought this tactic was just dandy in the past when they used it? In fact, they used it repeatedly when they controlled the Senate. On all kinds of major legislation. Including health care.
On 22 occasions since 1974 (when the Senate tactic was first used), reconciliation bills have passed the chamber. Senate GOP majorities authored 16 of them. That puts the Republican slugging percentage at .727. They used reconciliation to pass George W. Bush's tax cuts, for instance. Senator Charles Grassley defended that move as necessary, given Democratic opposition in the chamber; in his words, the reconciliation tactic was "the way it will have to be done in order to get it done at all." That's also how the Senate Republicans passed Ronald Reagan's tax cuts in 1981. The ruling Senate Republicans also used the tactic to pass welfare reform in 1996. They tried using the tactic in 2003, when they sought to open the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling (failing only because they couldn't muster the necessary 51 votes for passage.)
But, most germane to the current debate, the Republicans used the tactic during the '80s to open Medicare to the HMOs. They used it to create the COBRA program, which allows laid-off Americans to keep their health coverage. They used it to overhaul the doctor payment system for Medicare, and to increase the oversight of nursing homes that take Medicare and Medicaid patients.
That's just a sampling. All told, as Washington health policy expert Sara Rosenbaum told NPR the other day, "the way in which virtually all of health reform, with very, very limited exceptions, has happened over the past 30 years has been the reconciliation process...We've changed access to health care all across the United States all as a result of reconciliation." She should know, because she helped write some of those health provisions.
So why are the Republicans whining now? Because they know the tactic is legit, and they know that it works. They just don't like having it used against them. If the Democrats can use reconciliation to actually help most of the roughly 40 million uninsured, that messes with the GOP game plan.
But Republicans need not necessarily despair. There's no guarantee that swing-district House Democratic congressmen will cast final Yes votes in that chamber, nor that the Senate Democrats will muster even the bare majority. And at the summit this morning, we had Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid saying this: "No one has talked about reconciliation." Huh? What?
Bottom line: I think I speak for most Americans when I say that, at this point, after a long year of speeches and summits and confabs and hearings and votes on health care reform, regardless of which side wins or loses...Just. Wrap. It. Up.
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Al Haig is still dead, but if you want my short version, here it is.
Doubtful that the Democrats will use reconciliation. The Republicans already are controlling the spin on it, and the Democrats are more worried about that spin instead of governing. The Senate is already failing as an institution, and neither party has an effective minority. Both parties just try to get their members reelected, and I can't for the life of me figure out why. They never do anything, and the corporations win.— HandNik- Since, we've talked about Cheney, we'll begin with him. 16. 4TH BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT was what Cheney called his office, and he subverted checks and balances with that approach. I can hear the howls!! Oversights on the executive branch did not apply to his branch of government, but only to Bush. Checks and balances on the legislative branch didn't apply either. There was no oversight is one thing, but it was used to thwart checks and balances. It was Bush has final say on everything, like a dictator, and Cheney only answered to Bush on everything. .............17. $700B bailout of '08 had a loophole that took banks off the hook completely, and was put in there on purpose at the end by Paulson. ............ 18. HALLIBURTON IN IRAQ is questionable in and of itself. ......... 19. LIBBY'S COMUTATION OF PRISON SENTENCE is also questionable in and of itself. .......... 20. TORTURE RENDITIONS are sending people to countries known to torture, and then having reports of torture.— Talvenada
- All responses will be on this thread, and not yesterday's thread.— Talvenada
- Nik - At this point in time why not use the reconciliation ? Republicans have done their spin - but are ripe for blowback on their asinine, bad spirited dissent where they will even go against their recommendations / bills if the President likes and tries to adopt THEIR ideas. This is NOT honest dissent but looking after the best interests of the GOP not the country.— FormerGOPer
- No matter how many pretty bows Obama tries to put on his box containing his health care plan, it does not change the fact that the box contains a bunch of poop. Poop always smells no matter how fancy a box you put it in.— CD75
- HALIBURTON, HALIBURTON, HALIBURTON, HALIBURTON, HALIBURTON, HALIBURTON, RUN DOROTHY RUN!— Alvenada
- Here is a link to video from 2005 of Obama, Biden and Reid stating that reconcilliation is "arrogant". evil, wrong and that dems would never use it. Of course, the state media and Dick would not call Obama on his hypocrisy. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/02/24/flashback_obama__dems_say_nuclear_option_is_arrogant.html— CD75
- CD if they need to use reconciliation they need reconciliation. Perhaps in the future the GOP will not then do their petty games at the expense of the American people. When President Obama tries to adopt a GOP proposal and the authors suddenly are against their own proposal that shows any reasonable person that the GOP is just playing games. It's time to reform the health care delivery system in this country because it's will become a runaway train taking up more and more of this countries GDP (Gross Domestic Product). I often wonder is the GOP's opposition to obama based on race ???— FormerGOPer
- I think the Democrats realize the Republicans are winning the spin battle at this point, and they have a choice of using reconciliation so they have a major accomplishment to point to, or doing nothing and looking even more ineffectual than usual. Hence the atypical willingness to stand up to the bullies and actually take some forceful action. Maybe they'll find they enjoy it, and make a habit of it in the future!— yoda
- MOCKY: Back to what you do best? Let others defend Bush, while you do the cheer-leading.— Talvenada
Comment removed.- The American people do not want this healthcare bill. That is the biggest problem for Obama. Obama needs this because he wants to expand his agenda of government control. No one other than the socialist Ideologues in the the Obama regime and the Democratic party want any part of this 950 billion dollar boondogle. Democrats have a huge majority but cannot pass this because of the bipartisan opposition. It's not going to get done. Rest assured.
- Comment removed.
- CD75 : i didn't watch the clip, but the term "nuclear option" didn't refer to reconciliation until Republicans started using it that way a few months ago. It has referred to a procedural motion under Senate rules that would have found the filibuster as unconstitutional (under senate rules, not the US constitution), and ended filibusters by changing the senate's rules without the supermajority required to chnge the rules. Look up "gang of 14" for a further explanation.— still_independent
- Mike - If the healthcare costs for delivery cannot be contained we are in serious trouble. Americans DO want healthcare we can believe in and not shallow GOP reforms which are truthfully more like a wet kiss to the insurance company and nothing else. It's time for some serious negotiations not just GOP bs.— FormerGOPer
Cited by the Columbia Journalism Review as one of the nation's top political reporters, and lauded by the ABC News political website as "one of the finest political journalists of his generation," Dick Polman is a national political columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer. He is on the full-time faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, as "writer in residence." Dick has been a frequent guest on C-Span, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and the BBC. He covered the 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 presidential campaigns.
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