Monday, March 08, 2010
Editorial: Reconciling reconciliation
Plans to use an obscure Senate procedure to take health care reform to the finish line have caused much hypocritical angst.
From the RoundTable blog
Read the latest entries
As President Obama ramps up the pressure on Democrats in Congress to finalize health care reform, there has been a lot of noise from Republicans, dutifully passed on by the mainstream media, about a once-obscure Senate procedure known as reconciliation.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, RUtah, for instance, wrote in a Washington Post commentary, "This use of reconciliation to jam through this legislation, against the will of the American people, would be unprecedented in scope."
That is, simply, false. Hatch knows that.
Reconciliation in the Senate dates back to the 1970s. It is used to streamline debate on important budgetary matters. Floor debate is limited to 20 hours, and the opportunity for amendments is restricted. Most important in the face of unprecedented Republican obstructionism, filibusters aren't allowed.
That means a straight up-or-down vote, majority-rule -- as the U.S. Constitution clearly intended.
Hatch's commentary is wrong on at least two major counts:
n Health care legislation will not be jammed through using reconciliation. Health care reform has already passed both houses of Congress, overcoming a filibuster in the Senate. Reconciliation would be used to bridge some of the budgetary differences between the House and Senate versions.
n Using reconciliation in this manner is far from unprecedented.
Hatch wrote that reconciliation should be used for substantial policy measures only when they have significant bipartisan support.
But Hatch himself has voted for numerous substantial measures under reconciliation, including the Bush tax cuts, which cost far more than the proposed health care reform and, unlike the proposed health care reform, had no offsetting revenue or budget cuts.
In 1995, he also voted to use reconciliation to pass a broad package that contained Medicaid and welfare cuts, a restructuring of Medicare and a package of tax cuts.
In almost every instance where reconciliation has been used to pass such substantive legislation, there was little, if any, bipartisan support.
As Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne wrote, "The underlying 'principle' here seems to be that it's fine to pass tax cuts for the wealthy on narrow votes but an outrage to use reconciliation to help middle-income and poor people get health insurance."
The media have been playing along, often framing reconciliation as a means to pass health care through procedural tomfoolery -- ignoring the fact that reform has already passed both houses of Congress -- and going along with the notion that its use here is both controversial and unprecedented.
As Jamison Foser of Media Matters found, though, when Republicans used reconciliation to pass Bush tax cuts in 2003 (needing Vice President Dick Cheney to cast the tie-breaking vote), the media barely noted the procedure.
Also largely unnoticed in the reconciliation brouhaha is this: If Republicans were not taking obstructionist tactics to unprecedented heights and insisting on filibustering legislation that has already passed, the use of reconciliation would be completely unnecessary.
