Everything You Need to Know About the Reconciliation Process

[babylonsister]

How Reconciliation Would Work

*
Jeff Davis

The potential loss of a 60th vote in the Senate for health care reform has many in Washington focusing on the budget reconciliation process, which requires only 51 votes in that chamber. Since a reconciliation bill must contain provisions that have “budgetary impacts,” many of the regulatory and consumer protections in the House and Senate health bills would not qualify, so the idea now gaining traction would be for the House to accept the Senate health care bill as is, pass it without change, and then try to implement as many of the compromises now under discussion as possible in a subsequent reconciliation bill.

Politically, this is difficult, as it means swallowing all of the ugly compromises in the Senate bill whole in hopes of a possible (but not guaranteed) fix down the road. House members would have to go on record in favor of the Cornhusker Kickback, the Senate Cadillac Tax, and all the rest. Obviously, all of the House Democrats who held their noses and voted for their own bill the first time around after being told by their leaders “don’t worry, we’ll fix it in conference” are right to be extra-skeptical of this approach. But an interesting trial balloon floated by Ron Pollack of Families USA in a recent article in Politico points out that a reconciliation bill amending the health care bill could actually be voted on before the House votes to accept that health care bill.

That’s right. When it comes to enacting laws and then later amending those laws, it doesn’t matter in what order Congress passes bills. All that matters is the order in which the president signs those bills into law. As long as the president signs the health care bill 30 seconds before he signs the reconciliation bill, the latter can amend or repeal any provisions in the former. So the House and Senate could, in theory, vote on a conference report amending the Senate health care bill before the House actually has to take the tougher vote to accept the Senate bill.

No matter whether the House votes on reconciliation or the Senate bill first, the Speaker can ensure that the health care bill is signed into law before reconciliation. (The dirty little secret of Congress is that even if the House votes to pass the Senate health care bill tomorrow, the Speaker has unilateral power to hold that bill at her desk until January 3 of next year before sending it to the President and starting the 10-day Constitutional veto clock.)

But the problems with reconciliation are legion. The restrictions laid down by the Budget Act, the annual budget resolution, and the Senate’s “Byrd Rule” prohibiting non-budgetary items combine to make Alan Frumin, the Senate Parliamentarian, the de facto editor of a reconciliation bill. In particular, he determines which parts of the bill have to be jettisoned in order to keep the bill qualified for the 51-vote fast-track instead of the 60-vote cloture process, and he determines which amendments to the bill require a simple majority for passage and which require a 60-vote supermajority.

more...

http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-treatment/how-reconciliation-would-work

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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[babylonsister]

2. What don't they want? Do share. nt

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

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[regnaD kciN]

4. In other words, you can't or won't answer. Cute, but expected.

:eyes:

[jpak]

5. The insurance industy has been ramming it to us for decades - this is better than what we got now

When people take off the blinders and actually see that this will help them - they will change their minds.

[jpak]

7. Oh yeah - what is Scott Brown's health care proposals? Is he going to give up his Senatecare?

Naw - he's just going to keep ramming the insurance company's curling iron up our ass while he rides the taxpayer gravy train like the rest of his GOP hypocrite buddies.

good for you

low information is as low information does.

[walldude]

8. Well the fact is sometimes people are too fucking stupid or too blinded

by their petty political bullshit to see what is good for them. Some people have been lemmings for so long they think live and breath according to what their masters say, and when your masters are people as pathetic as Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingritch, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, well, you are going to need to have your change shoved up your ass. Kind of like we had to do with Civil Rights.

[depakid]

6. Republicans managed to pass all sorts of things via this process

firing not one but two parliamentarians who they found disagreeable.

This is part and parcel to why they win.

And, quite frankly- why they SHOULD win.

[elocs]

9. I posted this thread last Saturday about reconciliation and HCR:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7480650

but I honestly think most people here just don't want to be bothered with understanding it and that it is not a simple and quick fix as well as not getting a lot from HCR that is desired. The Byrd Rule is a biggie. Yes, the problems are legion.

[lamp_shade]

11. That's for certain. They are legion, but for too many here, "Ignorance Is Bliss".

:banghead:

[ChicagoSuz219]

10. That's interesting. Didn't know that... Thanks for posting. n/t

[ProgressiveEconomist]

12. As Senate Pres, Joe Biden could OVERRULE the Parliamentarian in interpreting the Byrd Rule!

in interpreting the Byrd Rule, just as Hubert Humphrey apparently did!

Months ago, Timothy Noah at Slate provided a brief history of the Parliamentarian's job, pointing out that during the past 28 years, there have been just two people who've held it, as a kind of tag team. Each has served two terms during that period:

Allen Frumin (1987-95 and 2001-present) took over from his former boss Robert Dove (1981-87 and 1995-2001) after Democrats retook the Senate in 1986. Strangely, Trent Lott fired Dove in 2001, but replaced him with Frumin, presumably because the job is so specialized that the number of potential appointees is extremely small.

From http://www.slate.com/id/2227092 :

"The title 'Senate parliamentarian' is so distinguished that one might easily assume it dates back to the 18 th century. In fact, the post was created in 1935 in revolt against (FDR's 'Veep') John Nance Garner, (who rendered) as president of the Senate questionable parliamentary rulings. Only three people held the post before Frumin and Dove's 28-year do-si-do. According to Dove, Vice President Hubert Humphrey routinely ignored his parliamentarian's advice. Might Vice President Joe Biden do the same with health care? Dove sees it as a "more plausible" prospect with Biden than it might be with other vice presidents because Biden (like Humphrey) is a former senator who can draw on personal familiarity with Senate procedure. He's also (I would add) kind of a know-it-all, an annoying quality in many contexts but a potentially useful one here.

I had no idea, before Dove told me, that it was even possible for Biden to overrule his parliamentarian in interpreting the Byrd rule. Perhaps all this speculative fretting about who Alan Frumin is and what he might do is beside the point. If the Senate parliamentarian can't be bribed or threatened, then perhaps, if he makes one or more inconvenient procedural calls, Democrats should consider the option of simply ignoring him. ...

Under reconciliation's Byrd rule, named for the ailing nonagenarian senator who devised it (Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., harbors a lifelong passion for procedural arcana), the Senate may not consider under reconciliation rules any bill, amendment, or conference report that does not relate directly to the budget. If, for instance, a reconciliation bill would affect government spending or tax revenues, but only in a way that's incidental to the bill's true purpose, it can be ruled in violation of the Byrd rule. ... A nice irony pointed out by Brian Beutler on Talking Points Memo is that in order to pass muster for reconciliation, health reform might need not only to include the controversial public option (which political sharpies inside the White House and out want to discard) but to expand and strengthen existing public-option proposals sufficiently to establish that health reform really would reduce spending. ..."