The unintended consequences of reconciliation

Mon, 12/14/2009 - 18:22 EDT story from Ezra Klein  in
 

Joe Lieberman's compromise, it seems, is no compromise. And he's infuriated so many Senate and House Democrats, not to mention so many in the Democratic base, that his bitter reversal might have made the prospects of any compromise a lot more remote. Based on chats I've had today, tensions are higher, both in the House and the Senate. And as the grudge begins to seem more personal, the liberals are both more resistant to being rolled, and more worried about it. It's one thing to swallow your own pride, after all. It's quite another to infuriate your base.

Democrats will look toward Olympia Snowe at this point, but if nothing works out, they may have to open the question of reconciliation once more. The irony is that the strange workings of the reconciliation process would strip the bill of the parts that Lieberman, Snowe and others favor and replace them with the exact policies they oppose.

For a detailed primer on the reconciliation process, head here. The short version is that reconciliation, which short-circuits the filibuster, can only be used for legislation that directly affects the federal budget. Anything that "indirectly" affects the budget -- think insurance regulations, like the ban on preexisting conditions -- would be ineligible.

What would be eligible? Well, Medicare buy-in, for one thing. Medicaid expansions. The public option. Anything, in short, that relies on a public program, rather than a new regulation in the private market. That means we'd probably lose the regulations on insurers, many of the delivery-side reforms, the health insurance exchanges, the individual mandate and much else.

Reconciliation, in other words, tips the bill towards an expansion of the public sector rather than a restructuring of the private sector. That makes it much less congenial to conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans (not to mention more conservative Republicans). But it also doesn't need as many of their votes, as it can pass the Senate with 50, rather than 60, in support.

To be very clear, this is not a trade I'm eager to see reformers make. You lose too much in reconciliation, and gain too little. The exchanges are too important, and so too are the insurance regulations and delivery-system reforms. But if Democrats end up in reconciliation, this bill is going to get a lot worse from the perspective of its skeptics.


Related

  • The Current Thinking on Reconciliation

    Mark Schmitt, whose years on the Senate Finance Committee gave him an impressive understanding of legislative arcana, has written a detailed post on the history, limits and technicalities of the reconciliation process. His conclusion, in particular, is spot-on.

  • The Role of Reconciliation

    I don't think, as Marc Ambinder says, that the "big question mark [in health-care reform] is reconciliation." The people I've spoken with seem pretty unanimous in the belief that if Democrats go to the reconciliation process in health-care reform, they're trying to craft a small win out of a large loss.

  • The Two-Bill Strategy

  • A reconciliation primer

    It is amazing how few reporters understand what the budget reconciliation process is: Either how it works, or what it's traditionally been used for, or what Democrats are proposing to use it for. That confusion creates comical exchanges like this one, where Bob Schieffer and Politico listened to Kent Conrad argue for a reconciliation strategy and walked away believing he'd thrown cold water on the idea.

  • Did the House just release its reconciliation package?

    Nope. The bill on the House Budget Committee's web site that's being called the reconciliation bill is not the reconciliation bill, or at least not what people mean when they talk about the reconciliation bill. It's the bill that will become the reconciliation bill. You see this occasionally in the House and Senate, where the oddities of the rules occasionally make it useful to put a new bill in the hollowed-out shell of an old bill.

  • The Most Powerful Senator

    The breakdown of the "Gang of Six" talks means that you won't seen Mike Enzi or Chuck Grassley sign onto the final bill. But that doesn't mean it won't have any Republican votes. Olympia Snowe remains a possibility, as does her colleague, Susan Collins.

  • Hollow reconciliation threats

    According to ABC's “The Note,” "Senate Republicans say they can get the whole package of reconciliation fixes – the fix-its that make the Senate plan palatable to House Democrats – thrown out with a trump card procedural motion." That trump card? The dreaded 310(g) point of order.

  • The other health-care reform option

    My preference is that House Democrats pass the Senate bill and then run their fixes through the reconciliation process. But I think there is an argument that the current health-care bill has been terribly compromised by the months of controversy, the shady deal with Ben Nelson, the ambivalence of key legislators, the endless meetings with industry players, the wasted time, and the collective freak-out of congressional Democrats in the aftermath of Scott Brown's election. There is another option.

  • Reconciliation for Reconciliation's Sake

    Put aside the manifold problems of using the budget reconciliation process to pass health-care reform. Increasingly, it looks like there will be no choice. And that may be a good thing -- though not for health care.

  • Did Republicans use reconciliation for significantly bipartisan bills?

    Among the odder arguments Republicans are making against the reconciliation process is that the process should only be used for bipartisan bills, and since they refuse to vote for health-care reform, Democrats can't give their package of fixes an up-or-down vote.

 
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