We aren’t reconciled to government health care

There has been much talk of the Democrats using “reconciliation” to pass Obama/Reid/PelosiCare if they cannot get the 60 votes needed to “invoke cloture” (conclude debate) and end a filibuster. The problem arises from a tradition in the Senate as a deliberative body that allows relaxed rules of debate. Unlike the “democratic” House, where the leadership acting in conjunction with the Rules Committee strictly defines the terms of debate on a bill, the Senate is more of a club of equals where courtesy and independence dictate fewer restrictions on the opportunity for members to rise and speak.

Reconciliation has traditionally been used in very limited circumstances, usually to reconcile appropriations- and tax-related bills in the Senate to budget measures already passed by both houses. But that process is regarded as a distinct exception to the Senate tradition of debate. Therefore, there are many criteria and specifications for when, why, and how reconciliation may be used. The Senate parliamentarian, a scrupulously non-partisan individual, is often called on to make rulings to limit the scope of reconciliation. Those rulings themselves are binding on the Senate, though only by tradition. The parliamentarian’s rulings can be overridden by unanimous consent, not a likely option if the process is used for anything other than the routine and fairly innocuous matters for which reconciliation traditionally was used. Alternatively, the Vice President can overrule the parliamentarian absent unanimous consent, an option fraught with political danger, a figuratively nuclear political option.

This is an overview of the reconciliation process. Read it if you dare. If Congress and the President need to resort to anything that complicated to get a bill passed over opposition, there is something wrong with the bill. It’s worse than seeing sausage made. Here is an overview of reconciliation applied to Obama/Reid/PelosiCare.

Obviously, reconciliation in the Senate is far from a sure thing. Therefore, the result-oriented ideologues in the White House and Congress might decide that they will find a way to proceed without reconciliation. A bill already has passed the Senate. The House can vote on that bill, with promises that there will be changes through follow-up amendments in a reconciliation bill. But if the House passes the Senate bill, that one can go to the President’s desk, as it has met the Constitution’s bicameralism requirement, namely, that a bill must pass both houses in identical language before being presented to the President. Once Mr. Obama signs the bill, it becomes law. There is no legal compulsion for the Senate then to live up to its word and pass the amendments it promised. They might give it a try, and, finding that they don’t have the 51 votes to go forward, abandon the effort. That would be a tremendous breach of trust toward the House, but Pelosi and the leadership might go along with it, just so they can have some health care “reform” adopted. The real losers would be those House members in swing districts who were opposed to the earlier bill and who voted for something that can prove to be toxic for their re-election in November.

This is a risky procedure for the Congressional Democrats, and the possible use of such a tactic presumably is known to the Democratic fence-sitters. Thet do not trust either the House and Senate leadership or the administration and would push for another alternative. That alternative is to have the Senate pass amendments (which would require the cumbersome reconciliation described above) and the House to approve that amending bill before the House votes on the underlying health care bill. As long as the President then signs the health care bill before he signs the amending bill, everything is in proper order.

All of these procedural gyrations are done to get around the Senate tradition of the filibuster and to engineer an eventual government take-over of one-sixth of the economy against the wishes of a majority of the American people. But don’t hold your breath that this will happen. Reconciliation and adoption of the Senate bill are far from assured. Right now, the votes are not there, and the odds appear to be getting longer.