Health care reform: ignoring the dangerous precedent of reconciliation
Today’s thoroughly excellent WSJ editorial on using reconciliation to pass health care reform makes the point that Democrats’ comparisons to previous transformative bills such as Social Security, Medicare, and welfare reform are inappropriate, because all those measures enjoyed significant bipartisan support. Health care reform not only lacks bipartisan votes (it threatens to make a real Republican out of Maine’s Olympia Snowe), but it is actually being resorted to because it lacks Democratic support as well. This is simply unprecedented.
Here’s some of the history:
Social Security passed when Democrats controlled both Congress and the White House, yet 64% of Senate Republicans and 79% of the House GOP voted for it. More than half of the Senate Republican caucus voted for Medicare in 1965…Democrats often point to welfare reform in 1996 as a reconciliation precedent, yet that bill passed the Senate with 78 votes, including Joe Biden and half of the Democratic caucus. The children’s health insurance program in 1997 was steered through Congress with reconciliation, but it, too, was built on strong (if misguided) bipartisan support. The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 that created Schip passed 85-15, including 43 Republicans. Even President Bush’s 2001 tax cuts, another case in reconciliation point, were endorsed by 12 Senate Democrats…
The only precedent within historical shouting distance is Ronald Reagan’s 1981 budget, which was controversial because it reshaped dozens of programs. But the Senate wasn’t the problem””it ultimately passed the budget 80 to 14. The real dogfight was in the Democratically controlled House, where majority rules have always obtained, yet Reagan convinced 29 Democrats to buck Speaker Tip O’Neill.
One sentence in the WSJ piece that struck me as especially important was this seemingly obvious one:
Historically, major social legislation has always been bipartisan, because it reflects a durable political consensus.
Ever since reconciliation has become a strong possibility for this bill, I have wondered at the Democrats’ willingness to ignore that principle. If such an unpopular measure is passed by a simple majority of both houses (and barely passed, at that), what’s to stop it from being repealed in similar fashion, once Republicans get control, as it is predicted they will? And if Obama’s veto would stop such a thing from happening in 2010, why would it not occur in 2012?
And then what’s to stop Republicans from doing something similar, using reconciliation to pass their agenda, whatever it may be? The rules that slow things down in the Senate favor both parties; it is to the advantage of a party temporarily in power to respect such brakes on their power because someday they may be the ones on the outside looking in. Otherwise, we will experience a series of wild and frequent oscillations, the passage of extreme legislation and the subsequent repeal of such legislation, as the electorate gets whiplash watching.
As this article observes [emphasis mine]:
[This sort of restriction] has been a virtue of the American republic since “The Federalist Papers” defended the Constitution’s original design as one intended to keep factions from moving too quickly to dominate politics for short times of abrupt change.
But today’s Democrats appear to have no ability to see beyond their immediate needs, and no sense that they actually will lose, and then it will be payback time.
There are no dearth of theories to explain this—the leading one being that they will cook the elections and then it will be moot. A more benign explanation is that the Democrats believe repeal will be difficult even if they lose power, because the Republicans will still lack either the votes or the courage to undo the bill. Some Democrats also appear to sincerely believe that the American people will love Obamacare once it is in place, and that the perks will outweigh the negatives. In this, the growing economic crisis and unemployment actually helps them, because it drives more people away from the protection of job-associated health insurance and into the arms of the government dole.
This isn’t directly responsive to your post, but it’s got me worrying:
If the plan is for the House to pass the Senate bill first, and then they take up a bill containing various “fixes” to make it more palatable to Blue Dog dems, then don’t we get stuck with Obamacare no matter what happens with reconciliation?
Let’s say the House passes the Senate bill. Obama either signs that immediately or holds onto it pending the outcome of the reconciliation try. (Although, I think he’s REQUIRED to sign it within 10 days, isn’t he?) So now, the Senate bill is law.
They then go to reconciliation. It either works as planned, and we get THAT version of HCR; or it fails, and we “just” get the unadulterated Senate bill.
Unless I’m missing something, reconciliation is only going to determine which version of Obamacare gets enacted into law, not whether any version gets enacted.
I’m not even sure what the GOP would be fighting for in opposing reconciliation. Is the Senate version less disasterous for the American people than the reconciliation version? I don’t even know.
Please, someone tell me I’ve got this all wrong.
Conrad: if the House could have just passed the Senate bill as is, it would have done so already, and reconciliation would not be necessary. It’s certainly true that this could still occur. But the fact that it has not yet occurred makes it seem less likely. That’s why reconciliation has come into play so much lately.
The real question now is what will the House do. Will either bill—the Senate version or some other version—get enough votes to pass the House? If the answer is “no,” then the whole thing fails (although there’s nothing to stop them from separating it into a series of bills, and taking those up one by one in a more incremental fashion). But if the Senate version of the comprehensive bill passes the House, reconciliation is not necessary. If a new comprehensive version passes the House, reconciliation will be necessary.
That’s my understanding of the thing, anyway.
Leadership:
House: Aye: 297 Nay: 133
Senate: Aye: 77 Nay: 23
The issue? A war resolution for Iraq. The leader? George W. Bush. 58% of Senate Democrats voted in favor, along with 39% of House Democrats.
(Presumptive) Obama-ship:
House: Aye: 218 Nay: 217
Senate: Aye: 51 Nay: 50 w/ Biden tie-breaker
Yes, yes, I know. The numbers will shift due to vacant seats, etc. It is safe to predict, though, that the percentages of Republicans voting away our country’s economic health and individual freedom will approach 0%.
Clearly, neither the Congress nor the President have any regard for procedure (with the exception of any that play to their advantage).
I’m fairly stunned by the behavior of Obama in contrast with these quotes published over on Michelle Malkin’s site:
CBS Interview 11/2/04
My understanding of the Senate is that you need 60 votes to get something significant to happen, which means that Democrats and Republicans have to ask the question, do we have the will to move an American agenda forward, not a Democratic or Republican agenda forward?
Change to Win Convention 9/25/07
The bottom line is that our healthcare plans are similar, the question once again is, who can get it done? Who can build a movement for change? This is an area where we’re going to have to have a 60% majority in the Senate and the House in order to actually get a bill to my desk. We’re going to have to have a majority to get a bill to my desk. That is not just a fifty plus one majority.
Obama Interview with the Concord Monitor 10/9/07
You’ve got to break out of what I call the sort of fifty plus one pattern of presidential politics. Maybe you eke out a victory of fifty plus one. Then you can’t govern. You know, you get Air Force One, there are a lot of nice perks, but you can’t deliver on healthcare. We are not going to pass universal health care with a fifty plus one strategy.
Center for American Progress Conference 7/12/06
Those big-ticket items: fixing our health care system. You know, one of the arguments that sometimes I get with my fellow progressives, and some of these have flashed up in the blog communities on occasion, is this notion that we should function sort of like Karl Rove where we identify our core base, we throw ’em red meat, we get a fifty plus one victory. See, Karl Rove doesn’t need a broad consensus because he doesn’t believe in government. If we want to transform the country, though, that requires a sizeable majority.
Of course it isn’t the fact that these are lies or that he has gone against these presumed principles he held up before being elected, but rather the pure shamelessness in the contradictions of his actions. The wonderful thing about the internet is how impossible it is to hide these kind of lies and still they (Democrats) don’t care.
It reminds me of a line from Neil Young’s “Ambulence Blues” originally written about Nixon. It clearly sums up Obama for me:
I never knew a man
could tell so many lies,
He had a different story
for every set of eyes,
how can he remember
who he’s talking to,
cause I know it isn’t me
and I hope it isn’t you!
Conrad: I’ve been following HCR too. We are in uncharted waters — nothing of this scale, complexity, controversy, and parliamentary trickiness has been attempted with reconciliation.
No one knows how this will play out if Democrats resort to this Hail Mary play.
Note, though, that it is desperation that drives reconciliation — not confidence, not well thought out strategy. Obama and the Democrats go into this undertaking vulnerable.
I too found the WSJ article useful in gaining needed perspective.
Reconciliation is a budgetary process, there is real uncertainty that the process can be used to ‘fix’ the Health Reform Bill. If not, the Democrats are going to spend between now and November explaining, among other things, how they justify forcing everyone to pay for abortions.
Come November and a new Republican controlled Congress, the gutting of Obama’s agenda will begin, through denial of funding and where possible, the legislative process.
It’s now predictably obvious that Obama, in ideological reaction is going to ‘double down’ and, facing a recalcitrant Congress hostile to his agenda is almost certainly going to increase his ‘rule-by-fiat’ use of executive orders.
It’s past time to rein in executive orders, they’ve gotten way out of hand and by undermining the Constitution, actively threaten our freedoms. Perhaps mandatory Congressional approval and/or SCOTUS review?
IN 2011, Obama of course will change his ‘rhetoric of blame’ from Bush to the ‘obstructionist’ Republicans.
It will be interesting to see his expression when someone essentially says to his face; “hey, they elected you but they also elected us…get used to it”.
The Republicans should attempt to craft truly bipartisan bills, concentrating on areas of agreement, which will be hard for Obama to credibly veto, as doing so will paint him as the obstructionist.
@ neo:
I think you’re right, but if the sequence is for the House FIRST to pass the Senate Bill, then I don’t see what keeps either (a) the Senate bill or (b) the Senate bill with House “fixes,” from becoming law. If reconciliation fails, aren’t we just stuck with the Senate bill?
The point I’m making is, rather than House passage of the Senate bill being the first barrier the Dems have to get past, it’s really the ONLY barrier. Because once that is done (IF it is done), the only thing remaining to be determined would be which version of Obamacare we get.
Unless, of course, I’m wrong, and there is something procedurally that prevents the Senate bill from becoming law if reconciation fails. But what would that be?
Maybe there’s an agreement that Obama never signs the Senate bill unless the “fixes” are made through reconciliation? But if that’s it, it would just be a deal among the Dems which the GOP would have no apparent means to enforce. I can easily imagine a situation where the House dems pass the Senate bill ostensibly based on the promise of the reconciliation “fixes.” They pass those fixes in a separate bill, and the action then shifts to the Senate. Let’s say the GOP fights it tooth and nail and actually succeeds in preventing the Senate from passing most or all of the fixes. Are we to believe that the Dems, at THAT point, won’t simply take the bicamerally-passed Senate bill out of their pocket, walk it down Pennsylvania Ave. to the Rose Garden, and hand it to a waiting Obama for his signature? They’d do that in a second! “Oh well, we tried to take out the Nebraska kickback and all, but the GOP wouldn’t cooperate, so we had no choice but to just go with the original Senate bill.”
If what I’ve spelled out is accurate, then the GOP strategy shouldn’t be focused so much on stopping the reconciliation process but on keeping up popular opposition to the bill itself, which a handful of supposedly moderate Dems have the power to either defeat or pass into law.
neo: We agree that Obamacare is terrible domestic policy and using reconciliation to pass it is even worse.
However, you miss what is currently the main driver of Democratic motivation for Obamacare: the fear that if Obamacare fails, the Obama administration will be gut shot and die a painful lingering death.
James Carville, who a mere year ago was predicting a forty-year Democratic reign in the Age of Obama, is now sounding the alarm that healthcare’s failure would be Obama’s Waterloo:
Those are the stakes as Democratic leaders and many (most?) Democrats see things. It’s a matter of short-term survival and they aren’t looking any further than that.
There are no dearth of theories to explain this–the leading one being that they will cook the elections and then it will be moot
This blog is the only place I know where the leading theory on why Democrats keep doubling down on unpopular policies, especially Obamacare, is because they expect to cook future elections
Obama, the elitist Marxist America hater is trying to do as much damage to his hated country as he can in the shortest amount of time as possible.
1) wreck national character by creating a culture of entitlements;
2) wreck the economy;
3) make an extensive military commitment overseas economically and morally impossible thereby
making the world safe for elitist Marxist anti-democratic movements everywhere.
Or am I being paranoid?
Obama’s presidency will not be saved by passage of the health care bills. Nor will it will lost if the bills do not pass. It has already been irretrievably lost. If it passes the only sure result will be greater damage to the Democrat party, which the electorate will not trust for a long, long time. It will most likely rename itself the Poodle Party and be known for the legislative dogs in pushes.
Obama has been bossing Pelosi and Reid around as if he knew something that they didn’t, and they let him. The Democrats aggressively pushed an unpopular health insurance/care policy “knowing” that is what the people need, without regard for whether they need it or even want it. If there is a party that lives by the polls, it is the Democrat party. But, the Obami go against type and don’t even know what they don’t know. It is as if every day Obama asks the same wise guy question, “What was I, born yesterday?” and gets the same quiet response, “Well. Yes.” Yes, because nothing seems to be learned from one day to the next by either him or his crew.
huxley wrote, the fear that if Obamacare fails, the Obama administration will be gut shot and die a painful lingering death.
If so… they can pass meaningful legislation by adopting bi-partisan proposals that 60+ senators want – sort of like was done for Welfare reform and SCHIP.
Making it sooooo unpopular that they can’t get 60 Senators is their own fault.
As for your comment about cooking elections… it’s a theory. You disagree. I’m not so sure either but I don’t put it past Democrat leaders to cook elections as they did in Missouri and other areas in the past. Can it be done nationally? Does it have to be done nationally?
Bob,
You’re not paranoid, if someone really is trying to get you.
“Obama, the elitist Marxist America hater is trying to do as much damage to his hated country as he can in the shortest amount of time as possible.”
There is another possible explanation for Obama’s behavior.
1.) the result may be to wreck the national character by creating increased entitlements but the motivation may be to merely have us emulate Europe, which in his opinion is a more ‘compassionate’ societal model
2.) he believes his own rhetoric, that after a ‘rough’ period of adjustment, green jobs will appear and America will adjust to a European socialist economy
3.) we don’t need any commitment overseas because they want to sell us stuff and if we leave them alone, they’ll leave us alone.
The ‘unsanity’ of these beliefs is irrelevant, many Americans do believe them and nothing we can say, no amount of facts will dissuade them from those beliefs. Hard reality is the only thing that is going to discredit appeasement minded liberals. Just as in early 1939 Britain majority liberal party believed Hitler could be appeased.
“We should seek by all means in our power to avoid war, by analyzing possible causes, by trying to remove them, by discussion in a spirit of collaboration and good will.
I cannot believe that such a program would be rejected by the people of this country, even if it does mean the establishment of personal contact with dictators, and of talks man to man on the basis that each, while maintaining his own ideas of the internal government of his country, is willing to allow that other systems may better suit other peoples.” —Neville Chamberlain, explaining Munich
Someone please refresh my memory. The Senate has passed a health care bill and the House has passed their bill. What stopped them from going to a conference when the Dems still had 60 votes in the Senate?
Our National Presidential elections of late have been won or lost on the margins, from a percentage point of view. Now where, o where, could the Democrats replace a few lost percentage points of the current citizenry in the next election with a populace that is beholden to them? Just a few million might do the trick.
Nevermind.
@ Frank:
They really weren’t expecting Scott Brown to win, so they weren’t going about getting it in and out of conference with any sense of urgency. They still would have had a LOT of work to do in order to come up with a compromise (if possible) between the House and Senate versions, so it’s not something they likely could have done in a week or two. Once it became clear Brown MIGHT win, it was too late to make a conference negotiation a realistic option. Moreover, the fact that Brown was even threatening took the winds out of the HCR sails, in that it demonstrated just how unpopular the bills had become.
Thanks, Conrad.
huxley wrote, the fear that if Obamacare fails, the Obama administration will be gut shot and die a painful lingering death.
If so… they can pass meaningful legislation by adopting bi-partisan proposals that 60+ senators want – sort of like was done for Welfare reform and SCHIP.
Making it sooooo unpopular that they can’t get 60 Senators is their own fault.
Baklava: Absolutely.
I still consider Obama a dangerous president because of the damage he could wreak were he to pivot to the center in a way that voters believed.
But I do agree with neo and most commenters here that Obama is genuinely an ideologue, and he won’t do that.
Nor will his supporters who are locked into Democratic tunnel vision where they can’t imagine that their objectives of socialized medicine and Big Gov holding the world in its compassionate, capable hands is anything short of the word of God.
> And if Obama’s veto would stop such a thing from happening in 2010
Don’t forget presidential vetos can be overridden. And the current pattern may give the GOP the votes to do it without Dem support.
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