I’m simply bewildered by President Obama’s strategy for passing health care reform. The House Democrats don’t like the Senate bill, so the White House is promising that the Senate will fix it by passing a second bill using reconciliation.
If the world made sense, the Senate would do the fix first, and then the House would vote on both bills at once. But that’s not what Obama is asking. No, he is asking that the House pass the Senate bill on spec, and trust that the Senate will make the fixes they want afterwards.
This is insane on so many levels:
- Once the House loses all its leverage once it passes the Senate bill. The Senate can simply move on to other things. Is Obama going to veto the bill? Not likely.
- Even if the Senate takes up a fix, will the Senate really fix every problem the House had with the bill? More likely, they would fix some issues and not others.
- Even if the Senate actually tries to fix every single issue raised by the House, who’s to say that it will do so satisfactorily? Legislation is a tricky thing. That’s why you vote on actual language, not vague promises.
- Even if the Senate takes up a fix that addresses every issue to the satisfaction of the House, the Senate Democrats do not necessarily have the power to pass it. The parliamentarian and the Republicans can and will interfere. At the end of the process, the bill will not be the same.
In short, the president is making a promise that is not in his power to keep. It’s not in the Senate Democrats’ power to keep either, even if they earnestly try, which seems unlikely. Why is anyone taking this scheme seriously? Are the House Democrats really this stupid? I guess we’ll see.
But it’s worse than that. It’s obvious that the sensible thing is for the Senate to act first. If they’re not doing it that way, there must be a reason. The most obvious reason would be that they know perfectly well that the Senate can’t do it. If the Senate goes first, its failure sinks the entire endeavor. But, if the House goes first, trusting the Senate to hold up its end, here’s what will happen: The Senate will make a show of trying to pass the fix, but will ultimately fail because of those awful interfering Republicans. Then Obama will sign the Senate bill without the fix.
UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal is thinking along similar lines.
UPDATE: It seems there is another reason for the House to go first that’s not at all obvious. Under the Senate’s reconciliation rules, it cannot consider a fix until the president signs the original bill. So it’s not only bad faith that has the president pushing the House to go first. Of course, this doesn’t at all change the fact that the House would be stupid to go along with it.
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