Democrats consider endgame strategies as bipartisan reform hopes fade

The Associated Press reports that as hopes for a bipartisan agreement on health care reform fade, Democrats are considering many ways to pass reform unilaterally and all of them come with problems.

"Insiders say it's impossible to confidently predict which plan, if any, will prevail after lawmakers return the day after Labor Day." Some possible outcomes include trying to get all 60 Democrats in the Senate to back reform, earning the votes of a few Republicans, using strong-arm budget reconciliation tactics, uniting all Democrats on procedural votes after conference committee or doing nothing.

"All the above options may fail, and partisan clashes could kill the bid to overhaul health care altogether. Top lawmakers consider this unlikely. Democrats control the House, Senate and White House, and they should be able to produce at least a modest bill that Obama could tout as a victory, with hopes of coming back for more in later years. Passing no bill at all would severely wound Obama's image, exasperate liberals and drag Congress' reputation for effectiveness lower" (Babington, 8/21).

Kaiser Health News says trying to avoid a filibuster could bring significant consequences to Democrats: "Resorting to budget reconciliation is the legislative equivalent of breaking out heavy artillery in a pitched battle. Since the early 1980s, budget reconciliation has been used 19 times, primarily to steer controversial fiscal and budgetary policies through the Senate, including former President Bill Clinton's fiscal 1994 deficit reduction and tax package and President George W. Bush's major tax cuts. … Yet the use of this extraordinary rule carries many risks. Lawmakers and policy experts on both sides of the aisle warn that the strategy could backfire on Obama and the Democrats by leaving important provisions of the bill vulnerable to a parliamentary challenge and by making the Democrats appear overly partisan and high-handed" (Pianin, 8/21).

Kaiser Health News has a second story on how budget reconciliation would work: "Every year, the House and Senate draft a concurrent budget resolution - a joint blueprint of anticipated federal spending and revenues for the coming fiscal year. In order to get the reconciliation process going, the House and Senate Budget Committees may include a 'reconciliation directive' in the budget resolution. The budget committees agreed to include a directive for health care legislation last spring at the behest of Democratic leaders and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel." The House and Senate would both have to reduce the deficit to use reconciliation (Pianin, 8/21). KHN also has a glossary of budget reconciliation terms (Verndon, 8/21).

---

This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.