With the health care summit showing no sign of getting either side
to budge, lawmakers are staking out positions in the battle many
believe is imminent: a presidential effort to push legislation through
without Republican support.
On the political talk shows Sunday,
Democratic and GOP leaders fought over budget reconciliation, the
parliamentary procedure that could allow a vote in the Senate and
circumvent a GOP filibuster.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch
McConnell, R-Kentucky, told CNN's "State of the Union" that he and
other lawmakers "do not think something of this magnitude ought to be
jammed down the throats of a public that doesn't want it through this
kind of device."
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, told ABC's
"This Week," "It would be a political kamikaze mission for the
Democratic Party if they jam this through."
But Democrats cast
it as a chance to enact critical reforms. "We'd really like to get a
bipartisan bill," Sen. Robert Menendez, D-New Jersey, told "Fox News
Sunday." "In the absence of that," he added, the maneuver could help
the country "move forward on health care reform
The tactic allows a measure to pass on a simple majority vote of 51, rather than the 60 needed to break a filibuster.
Facing
staunch Republican opposition and having lost a 60-vote supermajority
in the Senate with the election of Republican Sen. Scott Brown of
Massachusetts, President Obama has been considering turning to budget reconciliation.
"He's
going to have more to say later this week how he thinks is the best way
to move forward," Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office
of Health Reform, said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."
If the reconciliation tactic is used, it technically would not be on the full package of reforms.
"Reconciliation
cannot be used to pass comprehensive health care reform," Sen. Kent
Conrad, D-North Dakota, chairman of the Budget Committee, told CBS'
"Face the Nation." He added, "It won't work because it was never
designed for that kind of significant legislation."
But under
the scenario Democrats are considering, the procedure could prove to be
the key to enacting the full package of reforms.
To get to the
president's desk, a bill must first win passage in the House of
Representatives and Senate. Last year, the two chambers voted -- and
passed -- different versions of the bill. They differ on key points.
Democratic
sources have said the general plan is for the House to pass the version
the Senate passed last year with 60 votes. Meanwhile, negotiators in
both chambers would agree to a separate package of changes to that
legislation. That package would go before the Senate under
reconciliation rules.
Reconciliation
is a process, limited to budget-related bills, that bypasses the Senate
rule on 60 votes being needed to end debate, known as cloture. By using
reconciliation, only a majority vote would be needed to advance a bill.
It was established by the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, in
part, to lower the bar for passing tough deficit-reducing legislation.
Debate on reconciliation measures in the Senate is limited to 20 hours.
According
to a report by the Congressional Research Service, 22 bills have been
sent to presidents through the use of reconciliation from 1981 to 2008.
Many of the 19 reconciliation measures that became law since 1981
involved substantive policy issues such as federal health care
programs, tax exemptions and Social Security.
In an interview broadcast Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,
D-California, did not describe how a reconciliation scenario might play
out. But she said, "When we have a bill, which we will in a matter of
days, then that is the bill that we can sell."
Pelosi also sought to remove some of the stigma that might accompany legislation passed by one party with no bipartisan support.
"The
bill can be bipartisan even though the votes might not be bipartisan,
because they [Republicans] have made their imprint on this," she said.
Pelosi
noted the final bill likely would not include a government-run public
health insurance option, a provision vigorously opposed by
congressional Republicans but supported by liberal Democrats.
"We
went into the legislative process -- hundreds of hours of hearings and
bill writing and all the rest -- where the Republicans made their
suggestions," Pelosi told CNN senior political correspondent Candy
Crowley. "We know that one of the reasons we didn't have a bill in the
fall is because the president wanted to give the Senate more time to
arrive at bipartisanship in the Senate bill, which he thought might be
possible then."
She added, "And so what we've had is the year of
trying to strive for bipartisanship -- as I say, over 100 Republican
amendments in the bill."
DeParle, the White House point person
on health care reform, expressed confidence. "I believe that we will
have the votes to pass this in Congress," she told NBC. "I believe that
the president will keep fighting and that the American people want to
have this kind of health reform."
Budget reconciliation was
established in 1974 to make it easier for the Senate to pass bills that
would lower the nation's deficit. Since then, it has been used to vote
on other issues. In total, the procedure has been used 22 times, and
every president since Jimmy Carter has signed into law bills achieved
through reconciliation.
Reconciliation language involving health
care was included in the 2010 budget -- to some controversy at the time
-- so the procedure could be invoked in this case.
The White
House has noted that every Republican senator who took part in last
week's health care summit has voted for a reconciled bill in the past.
But Republicans said that doesn't justify its use for such sweeping legislation.
"Just because it has been used before for lesser issues doesn't mean it's appropriate for this issue," McConnell said.
And Alexander said that if the bill passes through reconciliation, a new set of headaches begin for Democrats.
"Then for the rest of the year," he told ABC, "we're going to be involved in a campaign to repeal it."
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