I understand that 9/30/17 is the expiration date of the budget measure that would allow the Republicans to pass their bill with a simple majority.
Why do we not expect that they would pass a similar budget resolution for the next fiscal year, giving them another year to repeal Obamacare under a similar budget reconciliation strategy?
I understand they’re probably trying to whip up a sense of urgency just to finally get it off their plate, but it seems to keep backfiring on them so badly… why all the urgency if they have another year?
I also realize that in the upcoming election years, congressmen up for re-election will hesitate to take controversial positions. But given that the Republicans ran on Obamacare repeal, wouldn’t it improve their chances to keep trying in 2018?
Note, I’m not a fan of repeal/replace, I’m just asking why nobody thinks we’ll be in for another whole year of these shenanigans.
Senate rules allow for the reconciliation process to be used on only one topic per fiscal year. (It’s actually three, but for technical reasons, all three things generally equal one real bill.)
So Republicans have to decide what to use this silver bullet on. They tried using it on health care reform this year, and it failed. So for next year, they can either expend it again on the shaky hope that they can figure out a health care plan that will pass; or they can use the silver bullet on tax reform.
Republicans would have to have a hole in their head to spend the silver bullet once again on health care, instead of moving on to tax reform.
Very clear explanation. Thank you. Ignorance fought. Though your qualification that they’d have to have a hole in their head is not 100% reassuring, given the way they’ve behaved so far.
Budget reconciliation is an obscure tactic that can’t be subjected to a filibuster, so certain ‘deficit neutral’ laws can be passed with only 50 votes, including the Vice President. It is up to the Senate parliamentarian to decide what can be passed under budget reconciliation.
This confuses me a bit, too, because I thought they said last time that the one vote (where McCain said no) meant the silver bullet was over. They had their one shot, but then lost it. But now they have until the start of the new fiscal year.
What exactly is the limitation? A single topic, as **Ravenman **says? And how does that work?
As I understand it, the timeline hasn’t changed. They could always fire the silver bullet until 9/30/17. It’s just that after firing and missing at healthcare 3 times, everybody thought the last shot would be at tax reform. Instead they’re doing yet another final charge against healthcare. They’ll create a new silver bullet next year, and if Ravenman is right, they’d have to be ker-RAZY to keep firing away at healthcare for YET ANOTHER YEAR when they’ve also promised to make a go at tax reform.
Thanks. Between the two of you, I got the entire answer I wanted, both what the restrictions actually were, and why people thought they wouldn’t try again.
To my recollection, the votes were on amendments to a reconciliation bill. When the amendments failed, the underlying bill was pulled before a vote could occur. Had the bill itself - rather than amendments to it - been voted down, the silver bullet would have been spent.
Of course Republicans could change Senate rules with a simple majority vote if they wanted to. However they seem unwilling to do this so it appears that reconciliation arcana will constrain them for the time being.
Secondly ,despite their problems, they still have a shot at retaining both the House and the Senate and even increasing their majority in the latter given the 2018 map. In that event, Obamacare repeal will definitely be back on the menu.
And that’s why ACA repeal won’t be on the menu next year. Take all the craziness and anger that’s being vented at Congress now, and put it smack dab in the middle of an election cycle. Better to simply lie about how all those tax cuts for the 1% will trickle down on the heads of everyone else.
There is something to this, but for the sake of clarity, the Byrd Rule that limits what the Senate can consider during reconciliation is actually a part of permanent law, codified at 2 USC 644, as opposed to being a Senate rule itself.
There is the possibility of using a nuclear option process to gut the law, though.
9/30 is *not *the last chance for repeal/replace, despite the thread title. it’s just the deadline to do so on a purely partisan fuck-you basis. Unless they eliminate the filibuster altogether, which is certainly possible.
Yes, but if they eliminate the filibuster, it is gone, never to be resurrected. And one day the Dems will have a majority again. Had there been no filibuster in 2009 they would have passed a real medicare coverage for all bill and not have had to kowtow to the blue dogs.
Yes, that’s an important clarification. They could always do it above-board, with normal order and bipartisan support, but I doubt we’ll ever see the Republicans work that way ever again.
I’m assuming that if they try again the House of Reps will have to re-vote as well? They struggled to get a bill through, basically settling on a “The Senate will fix it” bill. I wonder how that will go again.
Yes, if the Senate passed something that is not identical to what the House passed, the expectation is that the House would then vote on whatever passed the Senate and immediately send it to the President.
The Republican leadership does not want to go through the Schoolhouse Rock version of legislative procedure, in which each house passes its own version of the bill, they are sent to a conference committee to iron out the differences, and then the final version must be voted on again by both the House and Senate. Four votes on health care reform is four chances to fail; they’d much rather have three votes (House-Senate-House) if it were possible.
