Tag Archives: Health Care Reform

The Ultimate Cop-Out

March 16, 2010 – 6:23 am

Think you’ve seen it all when it comes to the health care reform debate? Well, think again:

After laying the groundwork for a decisive vote this week on the Senate’s health-care bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested Monday that she might attempt to pass the measure without having members vote on it.

Instead, Pelosi (D-Calif.) would rely on a procedural sleight of hand: The House would vote on a more popular package of fixes to the Senate bill; under the House rule for that vote, passage would signify that lawmakers “deem” the health-care bill to be passed.

The tactic — known as a “self-executing rule” or a “deem and pass” — has been commonly used, although never to pass legislation as momentous as the $875 billion health-care bill. It is one of three options that Pelosi said she is considering for a late-week House vote, but she added that she prefers it because it would politically protect lawmakers who are reluctant to publicly support the measure.

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , , , | Comments

The Health Care Reform Christmas Tree

March 15, 2010 – 5:31 am

Apparently, special deals in the health care bill are just fine, so long as they affect more than one state. I won’t be surprised if after a while, even that condition becomes negotiable.

No more evidence is needed to conclude that the health care reform effort has essentially turned into a farce. Nonetheless, more such evidence will likely be forthcoming.

It’s too bad that the White House didn’t spend more time working with people like Paul Ryan on how to responsibly reform health care. Instead, it spent time demonizing him for putting out a fiscal roadmap and for trying to offer alternative ideas on health care. Just about every Republican will remember the way the White House treated Ryan and those associated with him the next time a call for “bipartisanship” comes out from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , , , | Comments

Endgame: Pelosi’s Health Care Gamble

March 13, 2010 – 3:00 pm

Pelosi's Endgame

This is it, folks — the health care endgame. Appropriately named Slaughter strategy, come on down!

In addition, it looks like House Democrats won’t have to vote directly on a Senate bill they really don’t like. The speaker hasn’t made a final decision, but she told her rank-and-file during the meeting that the plan now is to craft a rule that would “deem” the Senate bill passed once they approve the package of fixes.

Let’s pull together a few key issues as we go into what is in all likelihood the final week in the runup to the vote within the House of Representatives, a vote that could reshape America’s health policy and economic future.

The first and most important thing to remember: they don’t have the votes right now, but that doesn’t mean they won’t when it comes to the floor. Pelosi can only allow for 37 “No” votes from Democrats, and my current count has her at 45…but we’ll soon see how solid those are.

By Ben Domenech | Posted in Blogs, The Whip | Also tagged , , , , , , , | Comments

“But Republicans Used Reconciliation Too!”

March 13, 2010 – 1:16 pm

The chief excuse used to justify the Democrats pending use of reconciliation to pass a supplemental health care bill–once the Senate’s version is presumably passed by the House–is that since Republicans used reconciliation in the past, Democrats can use it too. And specifically, since Republicans used reconciliation for things like “tax cuts for the rich!”, Democrats can use it to pass health care.

James Joyner points out that Democrats shouldn’t be allowed to get away with making this argument:

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments

That Stubborn Parliamentary Procedure

March 12, 2010 – 7:07 am

I am sure that at this point, the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats would be delighted and relieved to ram health care reform through Congress. I almost don’t blame them; the process has been long and arduous, to say the least. But the rules keep getting in the way:

Republicans said they won a parliamentary victory as they try to fight Democrats’ efforts to pass legislation to overhaul the U.S. health-care system.

Republicans said President Barack Obama has to sign a Senate health-care bill into law before the House and Senate can approve changes to it under a process called reconciliation. The Senate parliamentarian told Republicans that a reconciliation bill has to “make changes in law,” said Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“This would be another headwind for Democrats in the House” who oppose provisions in the Senate bill, said John Sullivan, a health-care analyst at Boston-based Leerink Swann & Co. “Their biggest fear has been that they vote for the Senate version and they never get the relief they’re looking for.”

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments

The Very Unpopular President

March 12, 2010 – 6:47 am

Well, I’ve seen better.

The current poll standings are bad enough, but Patrick Caddell and Doug Schoen point out how much more unpopular the President and Democrats can become:

In “The March of Folly,” Barbara Tuchman asked, “Why do holders of high office so often act contrary to the way reason points and enlightened self-interest suggests?” Her assessment of self-deception — “acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts” — captures the conditions that are gripping President Obama and the Democratic Party leadership as they renew their efforts to enact health-care reform.

Their blind persistence in the face of reality threatens to turn this political march of folly into an electoral rout in November. In the wake of the stinging loss in Massachusetts, there was a moment when the president and the Democratic leadership seemed to realize the reality of the health-care situation. Yet like some seductive siren of Greek mythology, the lure of health-care reform has arisen again.

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , , | Comments

Attention, Bart Stupak

March 11, 2010 – 12:10 am

The Senate Democrats won’t allow your anti-abortion language through on reconciliation if the House passes the Senate’s health care reform bill.

Something to consider as you decide whether to give your vote, and the votes of the House members in your coalition to the House Democratic leadership when the Senate’s health care reform bill comes up for a vote in the House.

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , , , | Comments

How Do You Whip Nonexistent Legislation?

March 10, 2010 – 11:28 am

Nancy Pelosi at work

My personal back of the envelope whip count on health care reform today puts the total House Aye votes at 205.

The New York Times this morning has a report on a key parliamentary decision which will determine whether the current strategy on health care is even possible. We noted this yesterday in the context of reconciliation news, and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) had mentioned it earlier as a very real possibility. Essentially, this parliamentary requirement would demand that the president sign or veto the Senate health care bill after it theoretically passed the House, meaning that no reconciliation changes could be done in the Senate in time.

As with all parliamentary decisions, this is going to raise a lot of questions and result in some delay, but will probably turn out to be a false barrier to proceeding. There is always a way to navigate around such provisions.

By Ben Domenech | Posted in Blogs, The Whip | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments

Another Democrat Goes Down: Massa to Retire

March 5, 2010 – 5:03 pm

In what amounts to a mixed blessing for the GOP, New York Congressman Eric Massa is going to resign Monday for “health reasons” according to his Chief of Staff Joe Racalto. As is the culprit of late for Democrats, Massa seems to actually be resigning because of scandal revolving around sexually harassing a male staffer.

By Brad Jackson | Posted in Politics, The Whip | Also tagged , , , , | Comments

Obama’s Four GOP Ideas Myth

March 4, 2010 – 3:29 pm

A closer look at the actual details of these ideas, however, shows that the White House has done very little indeed – and while it would be nice to say otherwise, the reality is that what President Obama is offering to Republicans is not an olive branch, but a rather insulting joke.

By Ben Domenech | Posted in Blogs, Features, The Whip | Also tagged , , , | Comments

Obama Overhyped

March 3, 2010 – 11:30 pm

I am late to this, but while the President is certainly a smart man, perhaps hosannas to his intelligence ought to be tempered by the fact that his current health care reform stance is in many ways diametrically opposed to the stance that he took during the election campaign, and that one of the anecdotes he used to advance his current arguments concerning health care reform revealed a less-than-intelligent side to the President.

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments

So, It’s Reconciliation Then

March 3, 2010 – 4:15 pm

President Obama all but hinted today that he is prepared to go the reconciliation route to get health care reform. As I have argued before, this is not a proper use of the reconciliation procedure. Megan McArdle and others have pointed out that reconciliation is designed to bring revenues in line with budgetary outlays, to reconcile, in other words. It is not meant to push forth new social programs. Thus, while tax increases and cuts can be pushed through via the reconciliation process, health care reform clearly cannot. Yes, health care packages have been pushed through via the reconciliation process in the past, but this effort has less to do with bringing revenues in line with outlays, and more to do with circumventing the fact that Democrats no longer have a 60 vote majority in the Senate.

Of course, it is worth noting that once upon a time, Barack Obama agreed that transformative change of the type embodied by his health care reform package, could not possibly go through except via a supermajority:

How times have changed.

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , , , | Comments
- March 21, 2010 -

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