Former Senate parliamentarian questions reconciliation, Senators want public option back

A former Senate parliamentarian said Tuesday that using reconciliation to pass health care reform will be difficult because the procedure wasn't meant to make policy, Politico's Live Pulse blog reports. The former parliamentarian, Robert Dove, who now teaches at George Washington University, said there are many things that cannot be put into the reconciliation bill. "Dove would know. In 1974, in the midst of his 36-year Senate career, he helped design the Congressional Budget Act, which first created the rules for reconciliation. On an afternoon conference call organized by the Galen Institute, Dove pointed out that Robert Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat, narrowed the rules that now would make it harder for his party to ram the health care reform bill through on reconciliation." Rules for using reconciliation require everything in the bill to have an impact — direct or indirect — on federal spending in order to end debate on a bill with only 51 votes. "To achieve its policy objectives, the Senate would need to pass two different bills for the complete package. One would still be subjected to a filibuster." Senate committees on finance and health would also need to report out a reconciliation bill and senators could still offer as many amendments as they want, Politico reports (Hohmann, 2/16).

The Hill: "Not only was budget reconciliation created and modified as a means to enact laws to reduce the deficit, which means all the provisions must result in a change in budgetary outlays, but the parliamentarian wields considerable authority to strip anything from the bill that he or she deems to be extraneous, Dove said." Provisions in the bill that are deemed to write new policy or not alter the budget can be struck down by the parliamentarian (Young, 2/16).

In the meantime, four senators are pressing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to put a public health insurance option back into consideration as part of health reform and to use reconciliation to do so, CBS News reports. Democratic "Sens. Michael Bennet (Colo.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and Jeff Merkley (Ore.) signed a letter to Reid saying they support this plan for four reasons: the cost savings the public option is estimated to achieve, continued public support for the public option, the need for increased competition in the insurance market and the Senate's history of using the reconciliation process for health care reform." The letter says that reconciliation has been used in the past to pass the Children's Health Insurance Program, Medicare Advantage and the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 (Condon, 2/16). 

The Denver Post: "As recently as two weeks ago, Bennet declined to endorse reconciliation when asked how Democrats should move forward on health care. Since then, Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., wrote a letter similar to Bennet's, garnering unexpected support from House colleagues and praise from progressives nationwide" (Riley, 2/17).

CNN: "The letter was co-signed by 119 Democrats in the House of Representatives." Additionally, CNN reports that, although reconciliation advocates cite precedents for using this legislative mechanism to advance reform, opposition continues. "'It looks too partisan,' said Rep. Gerry Connolly, a freshman Democrat from Virginia. Democratic Rep. Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota likened the move to 'legislative trickery'" (2/16).

Politico reports in a separate story that while the senators have decided that the absence of the public option is why there is little enthusiasm from voters for it, "leadership aides have said there is no discussion of returning to the public option, even though it remains popular with members. Senate Democrats have expressed skittishness about using reconciliation, fearing it would open them up to attacks from Republicans. Most Democrats say they are fine with reconciliation only to make narrow fixes to the Senate bill" (Budoff Brown, 2/16).