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Edited on Sat Mar-13-10 02:08 PM by stopbush
Any Senator or Representative may introduce a bill in their respective House of Congress. The proposed bill gets a cosigner or 10 and is scheduled (or not) for the debate and voting schedule of the respective House. Once the bill passes either House, it must be approved by the other House before it can go to the president's desk for signature or veto. Either House could present a bill from the other House as is for a vote.
On most bills - especially large bills like HCR - both Houses work on their own versions of the bill. Each bill will usually have significant differences when compared to each other. Once the Senate & House pass their respective bills, the bills usually go to a conference committee. This committee works out the differences between the two bills and merges them into ONE bill. That bill is then sent back to both Houses for approval, as it is no longer the original bill that was passed. That merged bill must pass each House based on it's rules. In the HoR, that means a simple majority vote. In the Senate, it means the 60-vote super majority.
In the case of the current HCR legislation, both Houses have passed their own versions. Normally, the two bills would go to conference and a single merged bill would emerge to be voted on by both Houses. And there's the rub - since the Ds now have only 59 votes in the Senate, a merged bill would not pass the Senate unless a few Rs crossed over and voted with the Ds. There's also the chance that the merged bill would lose a few D votes, votes from conservative Ds who voted for the original Senate bill because they were bought off with pork. That pork would most likely be removed from a merged bill.
If a merged bill failed in the Senate, it would kill HCR for this Congress. If it was killed this time around, most Congress critters would be loathe to take it up again.
Which brings us to where we are. We know that no merged HCR bill will make it through the Senate as it is now comprised. That means that the only option is to fore go the conference committee and have the House vote on the Senate version that was passed. That means throwing out the House version completely. This scenario has a chance because Pelosi need only round up a simple majority - 216 votes - to pass the Senate version. Bills pass in the House with a simple majority. They pass in the Senate with a super majority. Once the present HCR Senate version is passed in the HoR, it goes to the president and is signed into law. The process could have been reversed if, say, the Ds had picked up 2-3 seats in the Senate and lost the House in the last election. Then, the Senate would have been in a position to toss its version and pass the House version.
Reconciliation is a process that is like a conference committee, except that it is limited to items in the now-passed Act that effect the budget, AND it requires only a simple majority to pass in BOTH Houses. Reconciliation happens after the bill becomes an Act. So, reconciliation could insert the PO because the PO saves money. Reconciliation could not address the Stupak Amendment because it has no impact on the budget. Reconciliation requires only a simple majority in BOTH Houses to pass because it is dealing only with items in the legislation that effect the budget directly.
The problem with reconciliation is that the House Ds must trust the Senate Ds that there will be reconciliation AND that some provisions that were in the tossed House version (like the PO) but that weren't in the Senate version will be allowed to be added to the Act as amendments during the reconciliation process. There is the very real possibility that the Senate would screw the House and decide not to go to reconciliation AFTER their version of the HCR bill became law. Even if the Senate does go to reconciliation, there's no guarantee that the Senate could muster a 51-vote majority to vote for the PO if it was added as an amendment.
Hope that helps.
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