Health Care

What’s the Deal with Budget Reconciliation?

by Tim Foley

category: Obama And Congress

Published March 19, 2009 @ 09:00PM PT

Until such time as there’s an actual health care bill in Congress, or a more specific game plan than Obama’s nearly two year-old campaign paper, we have no choice but to sift through the cryptic statements that come from the president or his advisors.  Those on the left are concerned that he doesn’t insist in every public utterance that a public option, based on Medicare, is a must in order to have real reform.  But those on the right are equally concerned that Obama won’t rule out using budget reconciliation to pass health care reform.

What’s the big deal about something that sounds as completely boring as budget reconciliation?  In the House, you only need a simple majority to pass any bill.  But the Senate needs 60 votes to cut off debate – the remnants of the filibuster rule and the prerogative for unlimited debate on any topic.  So although a simple majority can pass a bill, you need 60 votes to even get to a vote on it.  There’s one exception to this rule – if it’s a vote on the bill that reconciles the House version of the budget with the Senate version.  That just needs a simple majority – and Democrats already have 58 Senate seats.  Because of this special circumstance, the Obama administration and even some Senate Democrats have refused to rule out the budget reconciliation process as their path to getting health care passed.

The Senate is the graveyard of reform movements, so why doesn’t the budget reconciliation process get used all the time?  Well, for one thing, there’s usually only one budget reconciliation bill per year – you can only cram so much into it.  For another, it’s inflammatory – no matter which part is in the minority, you can bet that they’ll rail against the abuse of power.  It’s pure bullying.  And indeed, the budget reconciliation process has been used to muscle through some pretty progressive-hostile legislation, including parts of the Contract with America in 1995 (vetoed by President Clinton), the first round of the Bush tax cuts, and opening up land in the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve for oil drilling – all of which were met with howls of protest from Democrats.  And all those howls did diddly.

From the moment Obama was elected, we began to hear whispers that budget reconciliation was on the table as a fallback.  It wouldn’t be for Obama’s ambitious energy plan, nor for education, nor for appropriations for Afghanistan, nor for any of the other worthy issues he talked about during the campaign.  Just health care.  Max Baucus hinted at it.  Tom Daschle took a number of questions during his confirmation hearing which he answered collegially – even jovially – but refused to take the option off the table.  Peter Orszag, more recently, has been asked point blank and declined to take the option off the table.  They’ve had every chance to say, “We don’t think that will really happen” or “We want this bill to be bipartisan, so no,” and they’ve passed it up at every chance.

Of all the mixed and muted signals, this has been the clearest.  When it comes to health care reform, they seem to say, we can either work with you or run you right over.  If there’s only one hint I want to pierce through the vagaries and be clearly understood by potential enemies of reform, that would be the one!

(Photo credit:  jrgcastro on Flickr.)