No, it is conference committee, which is comprised of members of the House and Senate.
There’s absolutely no reason to suspend the health care debate en toto until Brown is seated. One could perhaps argue – and I am on the fence about it but would probably tend to agree, despite what happened with Coleman and Franken* – that the health care debate should be suspended in the Senate until he’s seated.
Fine by me. The Senate already passed their health care bill; there’s not much left to talk about. As mswas has pointed out twice now, the bill is currently in the hands of the House. If they want to talk amongst themselves and agree to accept the entirety of the Senate bill, why on earth would the presence or absence of one Senator have any impact on that whatsoever?
*There have been numerous, recent examples where a Senator has had to deal with severe illness (Byrd from WV, most recently, I think, and of course Ted Kennedy) or a family emergency (Brown from OH for a family funeral). They don’t suspend the Senate’s activities for such absences… why should Brown have everything grind to a halt for him?
Right, if the House accepts the Senate bill intact, then it goes right to the President for signing.
While I don’t agree that the Senate should stop it’s business for MA, I do believe that if the Democrats choose to push through their legislation in the 2 week window (having the House pass the Senate’s bill then amending it in budget reconciliation), there’s going to be an even more severe backlash. Honestly, I’m torn between the fact that the Pubs have been ruthlessly (and, at times, irrationally) refusing to be part of the debate, but I’ve always been in favor of bi-partisan legislation. Instead, now our options seem to be using some underhanded procedural tactics to get legislation passed or to do nothing.
So it goes.
How is a majority vote “underhanded”? Reconciliation is the route that got us Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy, remember.
There’s a good reason for the filibuster rule, sure, but it has to be just as nuclear an option for the minority as going around it is for the majority. If the GOP really is serious only about making health care reform "Obama’s Waterloo’, then let them show it. Let them read the phone book all night on CSPAN. Reid has permitted mere obstructionism to be far too easy.
No, I believe they skipped conference and instead are informally amending the bill. The talk is that the house may vote on the Senate bill unchanged so that the Senate doesn’t need to vote again.
If that’s the case they’ll likely amend the bill via Reconciliation after the fact.
Either look at the number of senators on your side or look at the number of voters who actually supported senators on your side. Don’t try to pass your hybrid off as more meaningful just because it gives you the best percentage.
I’m basing it off the hunch that if the Dems had won the MA Senate seat that instead of simply passing the bill in the House, that there would have been more debate and reconciliation through (what I view to be) more legitimate means than during a budget discussion. Hence, the use of the word “underhanded,” and I would use the same word to describe Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy (which yes, I do remember).
In a sense, I’m bemoaning the fact that there is no more option for moderate, bi-partisan legislation, and instead the Dems must meet the Pubs with what they’ve been giving: a harshly, highly-partisan, take-no-prisoners approach to enacting legislation for their agenda. And, in having reached this point, that the losers become the majority of Americans.
I have, in my own life, been of the mind that if you’re going to do something, do it honestly and fairly. I’d like to see that applied to our higher government, but I think we all know it won’t be.
If the democrats suspend debate on the bill to appease the republicans, I’m quite sure that there is no way the republicans would ever return the favor. It’s a disingenuous tactic that both sides use and I’m damn tired of it and frustrated by it.
If this is the way that politics are going to be played from here on out, and our laws will be decided not by actual votes of peoples representatives but by procedural rules and technicalities, then we (the dems) might as well take advantage of it. I see no reason to take the higher ground when all that is going to do is get us screwed. The time has long passed for one party to do the right thing and for the other party to see the light and follow. It’s just not going to happen.
Also, just because MA elected a republican, that is in NO way a national mandate that the country doesn’t want healthcare.
Let the process (however fubar-ed it is) continue as is.
Mark
Mass. already has health care better than the bill in conference. If this election was about health care, then it was about a poor bill that caved to Pharm and Insurance Companies. It was certainly not a repudiation of the principle that we should have health care.
Yes, it would be such a shame to spoil all the productive and honest debate over health care reform by passing the bill this way. We wouldn’t want a backlash. (Incidentally, why the hell aren’t there parades in the streets around here? Didn’t these people hear we beat Hitler again? It’s VH Day!)
I’d prefer this handled on the up and up and not through procedural tactics; I don’t like procedural wrangling. But I have to ask: what’s the point of more waiting? This debate has been going on for the better part of a year. It’s lasted a crazy amount of time. As Congressional wrangling drags on and midterm elections get it becomes less and less likely that anything gets done at all, and for all the faults of the bill and the way this has been handled, that would be completely ridiculous.
There has always been that option, but it’s been foreclosed by one party’s refusal to participate. That isn’t about to change unless they get held accountable for it some more in the next elections, just like they have been in the last few.
But I share your deplorement, FWIW.
Yes. That’s what I meant. You’re right that the House is irrelevant to this question.
That’s just more of the idea that if the Democrats accomplish anything they have betrayed the country. It’s nonsense. Bullshit rhetoric. If it doesn’t pass the House now, Healthcare reform is dead for the duration of the Obama administration, and won’t come around again for another decade.
Well it’s relevant if you consider whether or not the bill will get back to the Senate before he’s seated or not.
Not just Brown, but the repubs think they will cut into the dem majorities in the house and senate in 2010. Don’t you think we should wait until those elections, before we move ahead?
Obama and the Democrats campaigned in 2008 for health reform and the bill substantially reflects what they campaigned for. They won the Presidency and a majority in the both the House and Senate. A single special election doesn’t change that mandate.
The Democrats need to fulfill their campaign promise and do whatever it takes to pass health care. The cleanest way is to for the House to pass the Senate bill. But if it takes procedural tactics to pass an amended bill through the Senate again so be it. Using the existing procedures to pass legislation is part of politics and is no more underhanded than using the filibuster to stop legislation.
If health care goes down the Democrats are going to pay a heavy price in November. Their base will be thoroughly disgusted and stay home. The Republicans will be energized and continue to obstruct everything. Their voters will turn out in large numbers and Democrats will be massacred in November; with Democrats in moderate districts being first on the chopping block.
If health care is passed they will pay a short-term price but they will have ten months to explain and promote the bill. Voters will quickly forget any procedural tactics and will mainly be concerned with the economy anyway. Democrats will have an enormous accomplishment with which to rally their base and mid-term elections are usually about doing just that.
I don’t think it’s even a close call. The Democrats have to do what it takes to pass health care.
I don’t think Senator Webb is saying it’s some universal maxim that all debate should stop until a new Senator is seated. I think he’s saying that given the reaction most of the country has had to the health care bill in its myriad forms, it is in the best interests of the country to not pass it through a procedural process that most Americans do not understand or even know about.
He’s essentially making an opinion about how he feels other Senators should represent their constituents. No one is bound by it, but it does suggest that those Senators who are considering using the procedural methods that have been talked about since Brown’s victory may not have enough support in the Senate to make it happen.
The House always has the option of passing the Senate version of the bill with no changes, and then it goes to the President.
It’ll be interesting to see if the House is willing to do that, it would require a hell of a lot of party discipline and some serious power plays by Pelosi. The Senate bill is far too conservative for many in the House, even before Brown’s win we were looking at some significant revisions to the bill. There are serious issues that pro-choice House members will have with the Senate version of the bill.
They haven’t managed that yet, and they’ve had a good ten months already; why do you figure they’ll get finally around to doing so once they no longer need to get it passed?