This is how the House can pass Health Care
Posted by Clyde Middleton
on Mar 9 2010 Filed under Politics.
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Bill and I had a conference call with Sen. Orrin Hatch on Monday (audio here). He described a process by which the House could “pass” Health Care without actually voting on it. This article lays it out in more detail.
The upshot is this: Forget the Senate passing a reconciliation bill for the moment. Instead, the House creates a bill with all the “fixes” to the Senate bill. They then append the current Senate bill to it. That puts the “fixes” as a standalone item for the Senate to act upon, presumably under reconciliation.
The shallow part of the logic (“I was against it before I was for it”) is that the House can say that they never actually voted “for” the Senate bill, which is replete with campaign-commercial fodder. Voters won’t see the difference in procedure that way – we’re significantly more in tune with WDC games these days.
The games they play, eh?
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I question the legality of such a move based on the standing rules. Can a bill be merged with a bill previously passed and then go through reconciliation? I doubt there is precedent for it, and it is probably illegal, but I’m sure that won’t stop the Dems.
I agree with you, Sal. The House will need to change its rules to even get through it, and then the Senate will need to get through the non-policy reconciliation process intact – or change their rules, too.
Just a sham.
Easy to change the rules in the House – majority vote I believe. In the Senate though, they have the standing rules that require 67 votes to change (or 60 votes to suspend the Byrd rule). However, I wouldn’t put cheating past the Dems.