by Kakofonous
With Stupak and his bloc now signed on, it certainly looks like health care reform will pass. Obama could theoretically sign the bill into law after the vote tonight, but, since the bill currently under debate includes the earmark provisions known as the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purhcase, etc., he wants to wait for the reconciliation "sidecar" bill to pass the Senate, a process that will supposedly begin on Tuesday. The current GOP talking point with regards to the reconciliation bill is that they may be able to issue a challenge under reconciliation procedure which dictates (as I understand it) that bills considered under the process may not affect Social Security funds. However, I believe that the Democrats have spent more than eight hours with the Senate parliamentarian discussing their reconciliation bill, and it seems ridiculous that they could have missed this. We'll see how it pans out.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Senate bill to pass in House, but what about reconciliation?
Labels: Health Care, kakofonous, reconciliation
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3 comments:
Kakofonous-
Do you think that now Congress has used budget reconciliation for health care, they will use it for almost everything?
To me, the health care vote looks like the moment when the Democrats realized that they have a significant majority and should use it. The bi- and post-partisan rhetoric that Obama and his Democratic colleagues adopted did not translate into bipartisan results; indeed, how could it, if McConnell and presumably the rest of the Republican leadership had decided ahead of time to allow Obama the bipartisan cooperation he wanted? Whatever uncertainty or desire for cooperation on either side, like Cao's initial vote on health care reform, has now hardened into bitter, angry (Boehner's speech on the House floor last night) opposition. I doubt the Republicans will allow productive debate in the Senate, armed as they are with my state's latest Senator, Scott Brown. This will probably mean more reconciliation. You can bet that will be a talking point in November of this year, and probably 2012.
Ahem...that should be "...had decided ahead of time NOT to allow Obama the bipartisan cooperation he wanted."
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