If Reid doesn't get this done, he won't be Majority Leader for long:
Talk about using budget reconciliation to pass healthcare reform in the Senate has faded from public view, but Democratic leaders continue to hang the threat over centrists in private.
FYI: They're not "centrists" - they're corporate conservatives.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) discussed reconciliation with wavering centrists before an important procedural vote to begin debate on healthcare reform.
On Saturday, Nov. 21, three centrists, Sens. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), voted to commence debate, despite heavy pressure from Republicans and conservative groups to oppose it.
Nelson wrote in an op-ed last week that he voted for the motion to avoid the prospect of Reid bringing healthcare legislation to the floor under budget reconciliation, a process with special procedural protections originally intended for legislation to reduce the deficit, such as tax increases or spending cuts.
[...] Under reconciliation, healthcare legislation could pass with a simple majority after a strictly limited floor debate. But lawmakers would have to carve up the bill to eliminate provisions that do not clearly raise revenue or cut spending and therefore would be subject to parliamentary objections. Reid has said that he could pass a government-run health insurance program, known as the public option, under reconciliation.
Jay Rockefeller is actually the chair of the health subcommittee in the Senate Finance Committee. Any "Gang of Six," or really any legislation on the Committee, should at least have his input, if not his controlling hand. Yet Max Baucus froze him out of the legislation in favor of Republicans who will never sign on to the final version and worthless schemes like the Conrad co-op proposal (which is just a thin ploy to get Blue Cross of North Dakota, which controls 90% of the market in Conrad's state, the "co-op" label so it can access federal start-up funds). Rockefeller may have the last laugh when the bill moves into the full committee.
U.S. Senator John Rockefeller, a Finance Committee member and a strong backer of a government-run insurance option, said on Tuesday he will not support the panel's healthcare bill in its present form.
Rockefeller told reporters he was unhappy with the lack of a government-run "public" insurance option in the bill, which is scheduled to be made public on Wednesday, and had problems with some of its changes in children's health insurance and Medicaid, or healthcare for the poor.
In particular, Rockefeller wants a public insurance option instead of the weak co-ops, better affordability provisions so working people can actually use the bill, and changes to the way that Baucuscare deals with the Children's Health Insurance Program and Medicaid.
Rockefeller specifically said "There is no way in its present form that I will vote for it... unless it changes during the amendment process by vast amounts." Now, getting amendments through may not be an easy task. Each Rockefeller amendment in that committee would have to get the votes of all the Democrats plus at least a couple Republicans, if Baucus and Conrad hold firm on them. Considering that 10 of the 13 Democrats on the panel were completely shut out of the process during the Gang of Six talks, I'd expect a lot of support for what Rockefeller wants to do, but Baucus and Conrad can basically nullify anything meaningful on their own, should they want to.
Still, Rockefeller's advocacy is important because it sets the tone for Democrats with the full Senate, where votes like his will be needed. Jon Cohn explains.
A little over a month ago, right before the August recess, I spoke with Rockefeller at some length. And he was clearly wrestling with how to position himself.
No living senator has done as much to promote health reform as he has. It's the cause of his life and, for the first time, the goal is within reach. He admitted that voting against a package, even a flawed one, was difficult to imagine.
But Rockefeller also made clear his frustration with the compromises Baucus was making, whether it was replacing the public plan with a co-op or gradually reducing the subsidies to help people pay for insurance. He was particularly incensed about the changes to Medicaid and CHIP, programs to which he's devoted much of his time--and on which many West Virginians rely.
At the time, it seemed like Rockefeller was still on board, if only to help get a bill out of the Finance Committee and onto the Senate floor. But you got the feeling--well, I got the feeling--that he was near the breaking point.
Sometime since that interview, clearly, he's hit it.
Every vote is precious in the Senate, given that votes on the Republican side other than Olympia Snowe and maybe Susan Collins will not be forthcoming. Harry Reid has laid down the marker that anything less than 60 votes will lead him to go through the reconciliation process (and I don't think Reid's low poll numbers in Nevada will be much of a factor - the consequences of doing nothing on health care would be far graver for him). Therefore everyone in the Democratic caucus, essentially, represents an interest group to be satisfied. Rockefeller is standing up and saying that he's perfectly willing to vote against something that doesn't fulfill the promise of health care reform as he sees it. Bernie Sanders probably feels the same way. Maybe Barbara Boxer does. Or others. Max Baucus and his cronies will have to wrestle with that.
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Rachel Maddow calls out Judd Gregg for his 180 on the filibuster rule and his threat to stall healthcare bill in the Senate. As Rachel noted, the one point of consistency... I.O.K.W.A.R.D.I.
Sen. Judd Gregg has hundreds of procedural objections ready for a healthcare plan Democrats want to speed through the Senate.
Gregg (N.H.), the senior Republican on the Budget Committee, told The Hill in a recent interview that Republicans will wage a vicious fight if Democrats try to circumvent Senate rules and use a budget maneuver to pass a trillion-dollar healthcare plan with a simple majority.
The death of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) leaves Democrats with 59 Senate seats — one shy of the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster. That, combined with the pushback from Republican negotiators, has prompted Democratic leaders to look more closely at using budget reconciliation to push a healthcare overhaul through.
The maneuver was originally intended to help reduce the federal deficit by allowing spending cuts and tax increases to pass by majority vote, but it has since been used to fast-track wider-scope legislation, such as former President George W. Bush’s 2001 tax cuts.
Republicans, however, warn that if Democrats attempt the maneuver, their healthcare bill will end up looking like Swiss cheese.
Gregg said that Republicans could file “hundreds” of points-of-order objections to the bill, each one requiring 60 votes to waive.
“We are very much engaged in taking a hard look at our rights under reconciliation,” Gregg said. “It would be very contentious.”
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From The Rachel Maddow Show April 27, 2009.
MADDOW: As the Republican Party searches for meaning in the political minority, Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire has taken the paranoid hyperbole baton and sprinting with it. Sen. Gregg is all hot that President Obama‘s healthcare reform might be brought up under Senate budget reconciliation rules.
What does that mean? It means that it could pass with a majority vote rather than allowing the Republicans to require a 60-vote supermajority. The man who was almost Obama‘s commerce secretary said about that decision, quote, “I can understand shaking Hugo Chavez‘s hand, but I can‘t understand embracing his politics.”
Of course, Sen. Gregg himself embraced majority rule, the same South American dictatorial politics of constitutionally-approved majority rules back in 2005, when it was President Bush wanting to use those rules to open up the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge for drilling. At that point, he was all for it. You know, Judd Gregg was about half a hair from being Obama‘s commerce secretary. That is the definition of a near-miss.
David Shuster calls out the Republicans for crying about the possible use of budget reconciliation by the Democrats when they themselves used it to ram through the Bush tax cuts and to open the Arctic Wildlife refuge for domestic oil drilling.
Shuster: At the time Republican Senator Gregg, Judd Gregg said "The President (Bush) asked for it, and we're trying to do what the President asked for". Now that President Obama is thinking of the same tactics Senator Gregg said it would be "regarded as an act of violence".
Senator Gregg, an act of violence? Clearly it's frustrating to be in the minority. But Senators given your previous embrace of the fifty one vote threshold when you whine and complain about it now, that's hypocrisy, and it's wrong.
