I know we all want the House and Senate to improve the bill as much as possible. I know we all want HCR to pass. I know the Senate is intractable now that we only have a 59-member caucus and that reconciliation seems like the only way to move forward from here. It may well be. But I don't know what to make of this:
The bill won't move in the Senate until lawmakers make more progress on healthcare legislation, Harkin said. If Democratic leaders decide to use reconciliation rules for the healthcare bill, they would have to package it with the education reforms, since Senate rules allow for consideration of only one reconciliation bill each year.
It seems important, though. Come help me try to make sense of it?
What I have figured out hasn't been so helpful. It does seem that reconciliation is used rarely and most instances where it was used for two different bills, they were passed on the same date. That is not a hard and fast pattern, which is part of the problem: there doesn't seem to be much of a pattern.
One thing we do know is that the federal fiscal year begins in October and the budget process includes some kind of "soft deadline" of April 15th:
He should figure that out fairly soon, because there might "be a time constraint there based on a new budget resolution. ... The authority for reconciliation is under the old budget resolution," according to Dick Durbin. "There’s no specific time limit, but you have to pass a budget resolution before you can start the appropriations committee allocations. So it all sequences." It's not a hard deadline, but after April 15, the soft deadline for passing a new budget resolution, the process could be even more politically difficult.
So does that mean we have until April 15th to get this through reconciliation? Hell if I know. I hope this diary can help us all answer that question. Because I think it's kind of key to what we've been hearing about the Health Care Summit. It rather seems that the preference for both Obama and Reid is to find some way of passing HCR without using reconciliation.
Recent developments for the reconciliation fix are very encouraging, but it isn't yet entirely clear it's feasible. There really are a lot of considerations to be made regarding reconciliation, especially if, as Harkin said, they might need to use it to pass elements of other important legislation as well as HCR, and especially if what he said about only using it once a year is true.
I think Obama truly prefers to pass a bill the normal way with the full 60-vote shpiel. I know, I know...bipartisanship with this GOP is like trying to find the middle ground between arsenic and ice cream. I know. But it does make sense given his expressed intent to get Washington past its hyperpartisan phase. I think he views using reconciliation as abandoning that goal. As frustrating as that is, I do believe the goal is important; we cannot go through this kind of nonsense on every piece of leglislation.
One way or another, this darkness got to give and hopefully, the bright light of the Health Care Summit will do that. I think Obama is hoping to talk reason into some of the cooler, perhaps retiring, heads in the GOP caucus. And I think reconciliation is just the threat encouraging push the GOP needs to come 'round. The calculus is that the nationally televised summit presenting the final bill, fixes and all, will produce the following effects:
a) Public approval/favorabililty of the bill will improve. This exerts pressure to pass the bill.
b) We know one of the already agreed-upon fixes was to close the Medicare Part D doughnut hole. So Obama and the Dems will be on national teevee and announce this feature of the bill to the entire country. The entire country will also learn that the Cornhusker kickback is gone. This also exerts pressure to pass the bill.
c) So, given things like item a and the fact that nobody in their right !@#$%& mind would actually stand up in opposition to closing the Medicare Part D doughnut hole or eliminating pork, Obama might actually be able to corner a GOP or two to do the sensible thing and vote for the damn conference bill on a 60-vote threshold.
And I believe it just might work, precisely because reconciliation is gaining steam. If the GOP continues in its obstructionist ways and reconciliation truly is the only option the Dems have to get HCR done, it's a total loss for the GOP. The summit is a perfect storm of exposing their emptiness, calling out their obstruction and building support for the HCR bill.
It should be obvious to the GOP by now that HCR is going to pass; after the summit, even their diehards won't be able to deny it any longer. If reconciliation becomes the plan, the GOP then has two choices: they can each be a mensch and vote for health care reform the proper way like adults or they can play the ass, be humiliated on national television and have the bill pass without them anyway. Then every Dem candidate has a ready-made ad saying "Senator so-and-so wouldn't vote in support of closing the Medicare Part D doughnut hole." Plouffe himself couldn't produce better campaign fodder.
They can either vote for it or not, but it's passing. The only win they can hope to see is how much face they might save in not being obstructionist wastes of oxygen for once in their lives.