GOP Targets Democratic Vulnerability on Health Care 'Reconciliation'

Health-care "reform" failed months ago. If Obama-cratic authoritarians ram the bill through with "budget reconciliation," there'll be hell to pay come November.

And at the Washington Post, "On Health-Care Reform, Republicans Target Democrats' Division Over Reconciliation":

As Republicans work to prevent a health-care bill from reaching President Obama, they are scrambling to exploit divisions between Democrats in the House and the Senate.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) warned House Democrats that they would be taking a colossal risk if they approved the Senate's version of health-care legislation before the Senate had acted to remove some of the bill's most contentious provisions. Now that Democrats have lost their supermajority in the Senate, some variation of this delicate two-step process is the only way a health-care reform bill can become law.

"House Democrats will have to decide whether they want to trust the Senate to fix their political problems," McConnell said. He listed perks that Senate Democrats won for Nebraska, Louisiana, Florida and labor unions; House members insist that all must be removed through a separate "fixes" bill under special budget reconciliation rules.

"They will be voting, when they pass the Senate bill, to endorse the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, the Gator-aid, the closed-door deal, the special deal for the unions, which may or may not bother any Democrats, I don't know," McConnell said.

Moving the bill under reconciliation is appealing to Democrats because such legislation cannot be filibustered, although it would be vulnerable to parliamentary challenges. The sequence in which the Senate bill and the package of fixes would move is one of the key unresolved issues, much to the consternation of undecided House Democrats. They would prefer to pass the reconciliation bill first and force the Senate to accept their fixes before the House takes up the Senate bill.

But reconciliation rules seem to indicate that the House will have to pass the Senate bill first. Depending on how the Senate parliamentarian rules, Obama may even have to sign the legislation into law before the Senate can consider the House fixes.

That's not how legislation is passed in a democracy.

See also CNN, "House Health Care Vote Waits for CBO, Senate Parliamentarian," via Memeorandum.

Image Credit: The People's Cube.