In another sign that the Gang of Six is fast becoming the Deep Six, Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus today told the AP that while he still has hopes for a bipartisan deal, health care reform is happening this year with or without the GOP.
What caught my eye though this passage down in the story (emphasis added) …
“I think the chances are still good,” Baucus told The Associated Press in an interview Monday. “I talked to them, and they all want to do health care reform. But the sad part is a lot politics have crept in. They are being told by the Republican Party not to participate.”If it falls apart, Democrats will have to turn to the “nuclear option” — forcing through an inferior bill through a process that only requires 51 votes instead of 60, Baucus said.
I don’t want to jump to the conclusion that this was some weird editorial gloss by the AP. Perhaps this is what Baucus said, and he meant that it would not be the ideal outcome, etc. But why would a bill passed through reconciliation be ‘inferior’? And, that’s only half a rhetorical question.
Late Update: A few readers suggest that what they mean by inferior is that a bill passed through reconciliation comes with sunset provisions. So it would have to be passed again or renewed later. Candidly, we’ve spent a lot of time over the last few days going over the intricacies of budget reconciliation and the Byrd Rule. And I confess that at this late hour I do not remember whether the sunset provisions apply regardless or only if the legislation does not meet the budget savings requirements over the different time frames. On top of this, Sen. Conrad wrote the reconciliation provisions for this year to make it particularly difficult to get health care legislation through in this way. More on that tomorrow. In any case, this is a plausible explanation for what the author of the piece meant, though I still have my doubts.
A bit more on the topic of reconciliation though. It’s not just the sunset provisions. What’s not being factored in to a lot of the discussion about pushing the bill through reconciliation is that the procedural hurdles of reconciliation may require that the bill may need to be distorted in some key ways. By ‘distorted’ I mean, changes that don’t serve any particular logic from a left or right perspective but would be required to simply to get passed certain obscure qualifications needed to get you to where you can pass the thing by 51 votes.
