Companion pieces about reconciliation for HCR
If you’re finding it difficult to understand exactly how reconciliation would work in terms of the current bills regarding health care reform, you’re not alone.
To clarify—or perhaps to add to your confusion—here are two somewhat opposing articles on the subject. The first is by Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat and chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, presenting the Democrats’ argument—reconciliation is just a little fix on some piddling budgetary matters. The second is by Daniel Foster and Stephen Spruiell for National Review, critiquing the Democrat argument and exposing its myths.
One thing that seems abundantly clear is that the entire edifice rests on the Democrat members of the House passing a bill they don’t like and trusting the Democrat members of the Senate to fix it ex-post-facto. This is by no means a sure thing. But you can bet that the pressure being brought to bear on Democrats in the House is extraordinary and viselike.
[ADDENDUM: Mark Steyn explains in his own inimitable way just why Democrats are determined to pass this even if they lose seats and control of Congress as a result. For them, it would still be a win in the long run.]
The thing Steyn doesn’t mention is that the statists of Canada and Europe were probably passed and appointed with wider margins of bipartisan support than Obamacare will likely receive. Nearly every single Republican and some Democrats have voted no to this overpriced package. It will be the moral wedge Europe never had in our attempts to repeal Obamacare. And I’m hoping it will be enough.
Hong: I’m hoping too.
I read an article yesterday on the Market Ticker which, to me anyway, offered a new explanation as to why the urgency to pass Obamacare:
Captain, We Cannot Withstand Another Attack
Excerpt:
rickl, I followed your link. I thought the guy was goofy.
The only thing that will stop the madness is when bondholders demand higher returns to compensate for the risk of insolvency. Paradoxically, that is not in the interest of current bondholders, especially foreign bondholders. On the other hand, if we inflate fast enough. they will have no choice.
Interesting dilemma.
There’s an aspect to reconciliation that I hadn’t considered:
Who can doubt that Obama would sign the unreconciled Senate bill if the House passed it and then reconciliation bogged down for whatever reason?
This puts the whole game on the House Democrats and the next vote.
“This puts the whole game on the House Democrats and the next vote.”
True. Reconciliation is a McGuffin. The real question is can Nancy round up enough votes who are willing to tell their constituents .. “I really thought there would be a reconciliation”.
Please, does anyone think reconciliation is going to happen???? Please for God’s sake think again. Once the House passes this bill, Obama doesn’t need reconciliation. He will have a bill passed by the Senate and the House. All he has to do is sign it. And Obamacare becomes law. This is a very obvious act by him to stab his own party in the back. The house demos will have to live, and die with this crappy piece of legislation. But Obama doesn’t care. He will be a worthless piece of a one term embarrasment, but socialized medicine will live on.
“This is a very obvious act by him to stab his own party in the back.”
This only assumes that the Democrats are dupes in the whole thing. I guess if you *really* want to think they are as a whole, then OK, but I do not believe so (especially given that the Republicans were note duped). It is a version of “If only Joe knew” (referring to if only Stalin knew what was going on he would stop it). It’s not a case of if only the Dems knew what Obama wanted they would do something else – Obama is just one of the crowd.
For whatever reason you want to come up with the Democrats see this as a winner – they are stabbing themselves in the back so to speak.
Indeed, of all the high profile people involved I think Obama is probably the most ideologically committed to the idea – that is *he* is the one being stabbed in the back. I really do not think most Dems figure it is going to hurt them but will be put on the President. I think he believes in it so much that he thinks once passed people will love it. From that point if view he has “compromised” so much and can’t understand why it isn’t working and those Evil(TM) Republicans are obstructionist to the Utopia to come.
Sadly I think that is a worse scenario than you describe – the highest office is the one being duped. Yet in this case I think it is true. I also think that Massachusetts opened a great deal of eyes that the fall isn’t going to totally be on the President and their jobs are at stake too.
I rather suspect that if Pelosi knew she had the votes it would go now on the Senate version. Either that or they think it is going to be massive failure and need to have enough Republican support to hang it on their necks. I’m easy enough to consider either one to be the case that I will not argue against either.
What Huxley said. Reconciliation is a distraction. All the important action now is the House vote. If they pass the Senate bill, anything else is window dressing.