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
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Posted in Chequer-Board
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Also tagged Barack Obama, Congress, Democrats, Health Care Policy, Health Care Reform, James Joyner, Megan McArdle, Obama Administration, Politics, Reconciliation, Republicans
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In this week’s edition of Coffee and Markets, we’ll talk about the fallout from a failed attempt by Senators Dodd and Corker to make new financial regulations bipartisan, the latest activity on the bond markets, and what’s next for Obamacare.
By Francis Cianfrocca
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Posted in Blogs, Features, Markets & Policy, Podcasts
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Also tagged Bob Corker, bond market, Chris Dodd, Coffee and Markets, Financial Regulations, HCR, Podcast, Podcasts, Wall Street
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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.”
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.
March 11, 2010 – 12:16 pm
Here’s the worst thing you probably haven’t heard about President Barack Obama’s health care plan: it makes everything onetime vice presidential nominee John Edwards once said about the class divide of “two Americas” come true.
Polls point out that Americans have a pretty basic problem with Obamacare. If it’s supposed to cut overall health spending (as he promises), then why is it going to cost a trillion dollars? Why indeed should it cost anything at all?
Well, if you’re Obama, you hasten to say two things: first, the new spending is deficit-neutral. And second, the new spending will buy health insurance for those who lack it today.
“Deficit-neutral” means higher taxes. That’s obvious to anyone who stops and thinks about it. And most ordinary people are starting to see that “the rich” are getting taxed too much now and will find ways to avoid paying even higher taxes. That means “deficit neutral” spending will be directly paid for by the non-rich, either with higher income taxes, or a new national sales tax.
The other problem is with the arithmetic. Obama promises a trillion dollars in new health spending over the next decade. In today’s dollars, and at today’s cost levels, we spend $2.5 trillion a year on health care. That’s $25 trillion over ten years. One trillion is 4% of that. But 15% or so of the people are said to lack health insurance…
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.
March 10, 2010 – 11:28 am
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.
Mitt Romney just blew his chances at the 2012 nomination by stubbornly insisting his disastrous Massachusetts health care plan was “the ultimate conservative plan.”
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.
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.
I guess that is the only conclusion to reach after reading this:
A healthcare revamp received some support on Monday from investor Warren Buffett, the world’s second richest man, who said the country badly needed a change. But he said he would prefer a program focused on out-of-control costs.
“It’s like a tapeworm eating at our economic body,” Buffett said on CNBC television.
“If it was a choice today between Plan A, which is what we’ve got, or Plan B, which is the Senate bill, I would vote for the Senate bill,” he said. “But I would much rather see a Plan C that really attacks costs, and I think that’s what the American public wants to see.”
Rising costs, Buffett said, are holding back an economy that faced an “economic Pearl Harbor” in late 2008 when capital markets seized up.
Republicans insist that Obama should scrap the existing healthcare plans and start over. They condemn any talk of reconciliation, which would allow the Democrats to pass a healthcare plan in the Senate — where they control 59 seats — with a simple majority of 51 votes.
