For the emergency election for Ted Kennedy’s senate seat in Massachusetts, scheduled for next week, one poll today has Republican Scott Brown leading Democrat Martha Coakley for the first time. The election will take place before the Senate votes on the healthcare bill again, and if Brown is elected he has promised to be the 41st vote that will enforce a filibuster on it. It suddenly seems like a pretty serious problem for proponents of the bill.
Ezra Klein says the House could pass the bill anyway:
How is this possible? I thought the Senate was entitled to a free vote on the bill after it’s been through committee, regardless of whether they leave it untouched or not? Is there any way Republicans can kill the bill if Scott Brown wins?
Note: Please don’t answer with useless comments about whether you like the bill or not, I don’t really want to know what you think of it unless you’re trying to answer the question.
What I believe Ezra Klien is syaing is the House could pass the Senate bill, unammended. Therefore, no conference is needed to work out the differences , and the Senate doesn’t need to vote on a conference report. The health care bill becomes law as is, and a seperate law would be passed to ammend the enacted law, to get the changes the House wants. Of course, this means the House members who want changes (mostly Democrats, assuming the Republicans don’t want a bill at all), will have to accept in of faith that they will have a chance to do that and a second piece of legislation will pass.
ETA: This is in response to pan1’s comment that both houses need to vote on it again.
Well I guess the point is, the bill hasn’t been altered by the House yet. When the House receives the bill from the Senate, they can do one of two things, they can insist on their version, and ask for a conference with the Senate, or they can agree to Senate amendment. If the later, at that point, no further action is needed, two identical bills have passed both houses of Congress, and the bill can be presented to the President.
(BTW, the vehicle that the Senate used to pass its version of the Health Care bill was a completely unrelated House bill which they replace with an amendment in the nature of a substitute. The Senate has not done anything with the House passed version of the Health Care bill. I’m not quite sure why they chose to do it that way.
If committee amends it, it has to be debated again - that’s why Brown is promising to filibuster it.
So is Ezra Klein’s point that:
a) if the House passes the Senate version of the bill, the Senate doesn’t have to vote on it again; or that,
b) if the House passes the Senate version of the bill, there’s only a straight up-and-down majority required for the Senate to pass it?
The House and the Senate passed significantly different versions of health care reform. The two versions must be “reconciled” into one bill that is then voted on by both houses.
option A. If the house passes the Senate Version, the next stop is Obama’s Desk.
Reconcilliation is when the house and Senate version are not the same. A conference committee of members of both houses makes amendments then sends it back to both houses for approval.
Neither house can make amendments at this time, but they can debate it. And they have to vote on it again.
Apparently the conference committee report can be filibustered. The Republican has already announced that he will help kill the bill if he is elected. At least if Mass elects him they know what choice they are making; he is not concealing this fact. Yes, the house could indeed accept the Senate bill as passed and that would be that.
There was an op-ed piece in the NYTimes earlier this week (or maybe late last week) that argued that the senate rule that allows filibusters is unconstitutional or at least strongly violates the spiirit of the constitution. The reason is that certain prescribed types of actions (e.g. treaties) do require supermajorities and the framers debated and rejected supermajorities for anything else. Since the courts are extremely unlikely to mix itself up in senate rules, it would be up to the president of the senate (and we all know who that is, right?) to simply allow, on a point of order, some senator to move the previous motion. This would all have to have been arranged beforehand, of course, and would raise a considerable hue and cry.
It almost happened during a threatened filibuster over a Supreme Court nomination battle maybe five years ago. This time, it was the Dems threatening a filibuster. The VP was going to rule that the filibuster was out of order on a confirmation debate. They called it the “nuclear option”. Finally an agreement was reached to avoid such an outcome. The Dems would filibuster a SCOTUS nomination only for a truly appalling nomination (such as that Harriet Myers).
Another controversial counter measure - the Dems could change the rules to allow cloture to end a filibuster with 59% of the votes. This vote would require only a simple majority.
Actually, it’s not at all clear what Mr. Klein means by reconciliation process. Normally, speaking you’d be right. But as he’s saying the house could adopt the Senate version bill without change, there is no “reconciliation” per se. That’s why I assumed he meant their differences could be worked out in a new law amending the first law. He could also mean that the bill (current one or a subsequent one) could be considered under budget reconciliation rules- this means the bill is not subject to filibuster under Senate rules as it purportedly reduces the budget deficet (e.g., increases taxes, cuts spending or otherwise reduces the deficet)
It is an interesting irony that Mass. is the state with the most extensive state-level healthcare reform. So Mass. residents have less of a personal stake in national healthcare reform.