How could the Democrats use Reconciliation for Health Care?

Reconciliation is a buzz word that keeps on popping up now that Scott Brown has thrown a cog into the Democrats super majority. When it became apparent that the healthcare bill was for all intents and purposes dead, the White House and democrat leaders in congress are gearing up to try to push the bill through by way of reconciliation.

Let’s put aside the repercussions for democrats if they use this tactic, and instead focus on what the process of Reconciliation involves.

What is reconciliation?

Reconciliation is a fast-track legislative process that allows the Senate in a limited time period to pass a bill with the support of only 51 Senators.  A typical Senate bill can be slowed down by a single Senator, and blocked by 41 Senators.  This does not true for a reconciliation bill.

Reconciliation is a budget maneuver that makes the filibuster impotent, and would allow Senate Democrats to pass reform without any support from Republicans, on a simple majority vote.

When it comes to health care reform, some Senate Democrats are attracted to reconciliation because it would allow them to pass a bill even if there are 59 senators that oppose the bill.

How a normal Senate bill works

After debates and amendments if 60 out of 100 Senators decide to close the bill, this is called the “cloture” process, and it’s typically called for my the Senate majority leader. This is done in order to close off debate and place a hard limit on amendments and time.  If 60 Senators vote to “invoke cloture” on a bill, this guarantees that the bill will come to a final passage vote by a time certain.

Obama will stop at nothing to get Healthcare

These are the reasons why there was so much focus on Senator Brown breaking the Democrats super majority.  If all 60 Senate Democrats all vote to invoke cloture on a bill, the 40 Republicans can do nothing about it.  This is why a super majority of 60 Senators is the holy grail to both political parties, as they can act with impunity.

How a reconciliation bill works

The full name of this unique bill is a “budget reconciliation” bill.  It’s purpose is to combine into one bill the work of multiple committees that are changing federal spending and tax laws.  It is an incredibly powerful tool that bypasses the steps list above for a normal bill, but only for very limited purposes.  Senators usually value unlimited debate and amendment rights of individual Senators, and so they allow these rules to be circumvented only for a very specific purpose, in this case, healthcare.

The House and Senate are required to pass the budget resolution in the spring of each year.  In essence, this is the document that lays out how much the U.S government will spend in an upcoming year.  A budget resolution can contain reconciliation instruction(s). In turn, reconciliation instructions create reconciliation bills.

Usually,  you can use a reconciliation bill only to change spending, taxes, or the debt ceiling.  The process was used initially to facilitate deficit reduction. This requires the various Senate committees to produce bills that reduce the deficit by those pre-determined amounts.

A typical Senate reconciliation instruction might look like this:

When the Senate Majority Leader starts debate on this reconciliation bill, there are strict limits, unlike for a normal bill:

• Debate and voting time is limited to 20 hours, no more and no less.
• Amendments and debate must be relevant to the bill, as to use time efficient.

The first point means that a reconciliation bill cannot be endlessly debated or  amended.  Reconciliation means there is never a need to invoke cloture to shut off debate or amendments, as a result the existing majority needs only 51 votes to  pass the reconciliation bill.  Simply put, the difference between needing 51 votes and needing 60 votes is enormous.

Here is what Mitch McConnell had to allow about this process on Sunday’s news show on Fox.

Tags: Congress, health insurance, Healthcare, Reconciliation, Senate

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 at 4:10 pm and is filed under Syndicated News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.