Yes.
A lot of the worries I hear expressed about using a reconciliation "sidecar" (I like that term!) to fix the Senate health insurance reform bill center around the time people imagine it might take to get such a bill in shape and moved to the floor. We all watched the hearings and markups drag on and on the first time the House and Senate worked out their initial bills, and it's just not something we want to go through again.
So is there a way to speed up the process? Yes.
How?
I think this might work:
If you have a package of changes that fit under reconciliation that you think will pass both houses -- and that's what House, Senate and White House negotiators were working on in late December and early January before the Massachusetts special election -- you take those changes, write 'em up, hand 'em to the Budget Committee chair -- that's John Spratt (D-SC-05) -- and let him hold onto them for a little while.
Next, you dust off H.R. 3200. Remember that one? Not H.R. 3692. That was the bill the House ended up passing. But H.R. 3200 was actually the omnibus bill dishcharged from the Budget Committee in October, consisting of the three committee bills the House worked out in July, and send that to the floor.
Then Spratt goes to the Rules Committee and says that H.R. 3200 is the reconciliation bill the House was instructed to prepare by the Fiscal Year 2010 budget resolution, S. J. Res. 13, and when it comes to the floor, he'd like to be allowed to offer a manager's amendment consisting of the text of the changes you handed him before. The Rules Committee says OK, and you're on your way.
The House begins consideration of H.R. 3200, Spratt offers an amendment in the nature of a substitute that has all the agreed-to changes in it, the House passes it and sends it to the Senate. Then the Senate moves it under their own reconciliation procedures, and either agrees to it in which case it's done, or amends it and the two houses look to move to a conference on it -- though it makes the most sense to try to settle things beforehand so the Senate will be satisfied the first time around, too.
That's mechanically what it would take to get a reconciliation bill done. And since the contents of such a bill were already under negotiation in the past few weeks (when everyone thought they'd be "ping-ponging" the bill), the process can perhaps move much quicker than some of us might have anticipated. No more markups, no more amendments, no more nothing. It just moves onto the floor when you're ready for it.
Tangentially related, another frequent objection to passing the sidecar first -- and again, I think this is the only sane strategy for the House to consider -- is that the Senate bill "is at least something" and "something is better than nothing." While it's hard to argue that something isn't better than nothing (provided you believe the something is a good thing, of course), it's also hard to argue that that something is indeed something, if you haven't got the votes to pass it. And by all accounts, the House does not have the votes absent some kind of fix, which is what the sidecar is supposed to be.
Right now as things stand, the House is indeed one successful roll call vote away from passing the Senate bill and locking that in for the President to sign, and that's more temptation than some fans of the bill can bear. Though again, as things now stand, the bill loses that vote in the House, which is surely something no fan of the bill can bear.
In attempting to pass the sidecar fix through reconciliation, even if the sidecar were to fail somehow, the House would still be one successful roll call vote away from passing the Senate bill and locking that in for the President to sign.
That's a pretty rare opportunity to try to nail down something that actually may have a substantially better chance of passing, since it'll at least offer some face-saving changes that House Members who want to change their votes can hang their hats on. I think we ought to take it, especially given that even its failure leaves us no worse off procedurally-speaking than we are right now.
And one final objection that I hear a lot: is it even possible to amend a bill that hasn't been signed into law yet? The answer, as always, is yes and no. No, it's not technically possible to amend a bill that hasn't become a law, and the Senate bill isn't technically law until the President signs it. But not to worry. Remember that the sidecar that has the amendments in it is also not technically law until the President signs it. And therefore it amends nothing until it is signed. Sign the Senate bill first, then sign the sidecar, and you're golden.
Sound good? OK. Let's give it a try.