Democrats Consider Drastic Moves to Pass Health Care Bill

In an attempt to achieve final passage of President Obama’s controversial health care bill, Capitol Hill Democrats are considering an unprecedented parliamentary procedure which would essentially enable the House of Representatives to pass the Senate version of the reform package without ever voting on it.

According to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), the procedure would involve a rule change which would deem the Senate bill as having passed if the House simply approves a smaller package of legislative changes to the measure.

“I want to ensure there is an expedited review process to have the Supreme Court look at this. It’s about as unconstitutional as anything I’ve ever seen,” Hatch told Health Care News. “To pass a $2.5 trillion bill without the House even voting on it, by using manipulative parliamentary gimmicks, is just not the right thing to do.”

Forcing Automatic Passage

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and other Democrat leaders have met repeatedly with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel over the past several weeks in attempts to find a parliamentary solution which will allow the health care legislation to proceed.

“Much of this depends on how the parliamentarian rules, but I think it’s safe to assume they are proceeding having worked in concert with the parliamentarian,” Hatch said. “As I understand it, the House will not even vote on the Reid bill. They will instead just vote on the small reconciliation package and try to manipulate the rules so that bill would become law automatically once that package was forced through the Senate.”

Distorting Parliamentary Rules

According to Hatch’s staff, the chief proponent of this new tactic is powerful House Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY), who is seeking a way to push the health care package through the House without a direct vote on the Senate proposal, which contains several aspects deemed unacceptable to several Hill Democrats.

“They are going to distort the parliamentary rules,” Hatch said. “Nancy Pelosi cannot pass the bill through the House without reconciliation. If she could have, she already would have. But instead they need to use reconciliation to buy off the unions and fix the abortion funding problem, among other things.”

Republicans believe the Senate parliamentarian, who serves at the pleasure of the majority but is required to be nonpartisan, would find any abortion amendment to be “extraneous” to a reconciliation package, since reconciliation bills are required to be budgetary in nature. This dramatically restricts the ability of Pelosi to cut a deal with a group of prolife Democrats, led by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), who oppose any taxpayer funding for abortions.

Limits of Reconciliation

Under Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)’s leadership, all 41 Senate Republicans delivered a signed letter to Harry Reid on March 4 stating a commitment to oppose any use of the reconciliation method not tied to budgetary restrictions.

“No matter how you cut it, reconciliation has never been used to pass sweeping social reform which lacked overwhelming bipartisan support,” Hatch said. “Welfare reform had 74 votes, SCHIP had 85 votes, college tuition was around 78. We saw 12 Senate Democrats support the prescription drug benefit plan, and 13 Republicans supported the creation of Medicare. That’s not the situation today.”

Unprecedented Situation

“It is mindboggling what they are considering doing,” Hatch said. “They cannot win by being straight up and honest about it, so they’re going to try to win at all costs and hope this issue will go away. But it’s not going to go away. The American people are up in arms about it. And they should be.”

There is no easy solution for Pelosi, however. According to a memo composed by the offices of the Senate and House Republican Whips, Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) and Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), and obtained by Health Care News, while Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has insisted he intends to consider the reconciliation package in the Senate, that package would be subject to unlimited amendments, virtually ensuring it will be changed in some manner.

The bill still contains $500 billion in Medicare cuts, over $500 billion in tax increases, and multiple back-room deals—including the so-called Cornhusker Kickback, Louisiana Purchase, and Florida Carveout—which will prove difficult for many moderate Democrats in the House to support on an up or down vote.

“If the majority leadership moves forward in that way, we will not only shut down the Senate, but I’m confident the American people will stand up with us. It will not be ‘behind them,’ it will stare them in the face every day if they play the rules like this to pass this bill,” Hatch said.

Polls Support Starting Over

As Democrats consider these history-making moves, new poll data from Rasmussen Reports released on March 10 found 55 percent of U.S. voters think Congress should reject the current bill and start over from scratch.

“This bill reshapes one-sixth of the economy, vastly expands the role of government, raises taxes and cuts Medicare to pay for it all,” McConnell told Health Care News. “Americans want us to scrap the underlying bill altogether and start over with step-by-step reforms that target cost and expand access.”

Benjamin Domenech (bdomenech@heartland.org) is managing editor of Health Care News.