Posted on 01/21/2010 12:42:19 PM PST by pabianice
A well-informed source tells The Mouth Nancy Pelosi is set to announce the House will go the reconciliation route on health care reform.
Of course, that means using a budgetary procedure that requires a simple majority to pass.
Its still unclear to us precisely what that means would be passed, but possibilities would be creating a national health care exchange and expanding Medicare or Medicaid coverage.
Democrats are caucusing now, so stay tuned.
Update: A second source confirms that Pelosi is presenting a reconciliation plan to the caucus, and making sure they go with something that can actually pass.
Separately, she is meeting with Harry Reid today.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dc/2010/01/its-reconciliation.html#ixzz0dHWS30CN
Old news. Her caucus told her to go to Hell.
But O’Dumbo can always veto the repeal...
Holy !@#$%^&!!
There is an element in the media and the rest of the left that think people are turning against them because the commies aren’t moving fast enough. Even though a majority of people don’t want mandatory health insurance, Democrats think voters are mad at them for not pushing it through. It’s stupid-left-think, part of liberal illness.
There is a confusion of terms. First, the Budget Reconciliation process is NOT the same as the "nuclear option" that is available in the Senate.
If Reid and Pelosi get together and want to ram through something using the Budget Reconciliation process, then substantial changes will need to be made to both the House and Senate bills, due to the limitations of Reconciliation as specified in the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.
If the Dems want to employ the "nuclear option", they would take the House bill to the Senate floor, and through parliamentary chicanery, they would ram through the bill by doing away with the filibuster, and passing it on a simple majority vote. I SERIOUSLY doubt that they could even get a simple majority to engage in such an undermining of the spirit of the Senate.
I also don't think that the Budget Reconciliation process is going to help them that much, again because of the limitation of the CBA of 1974 - but it is a possibility that they could get some things passed - like medicare expansion - using reconciliation.
Given the results of Tuesday's election, I doubt that Pelosi has 218 votes for such a maneuver, and I don't think Reid can scare up 50 votes in his chamber, FWIW.
Not soon enough
Hate to say it but it might just be the spark that starts the Revolution...if they ignore the will of the people, they will suffer the consequences...it will be on their heads...
I thought “reconciliation” was a procedure used in the Senate, not the House. Am I mistaken?
Nonsense. Whoever said this has no idea how reconciliation works. First of all it can only be used in the Senate (the House would be impossible) and since it pertains to Budget Bills only, EVERY SINGLE mention of non-budget policy would have to be eliminated with the rest being voted on and requiring 60 votes to pass. Care to guess how long that would take in a 2000+ page bill?
Not exactly. Reconciliation is a process created in the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 that does affect both the House and the Senate - but, it probably affects the Senate more because it eliminates the filibuster on these very narrowly defined budget-related bills.
The so-called "nuclear option" (a phrase coined by Trent Lott in the first part of the last decade), describes a parliamentary maneuver that dates back to before the 1830s that would abolish, at least temporarily, the filibuster. Such a maneuver could theoretically be used on any kind of bill in the Senate, not just budget bills.
That’s interesting. I thought that reconcilliation would take place in the senate making only 51 votes necessary to pass deathcare as part of a budget related measure. Reid would drive that, not Pelosi. Hmmmmm...
My understanding is that reconciliation is the process by which bills with different language from each chamber are conformed for final passage -- the conference committee. There are some specifics laid out, as OldDeckHand notes, in budget bills, Congressional Budget Act of 1974, due to the necessity of funding the functions of government, can't have it grind to a standstill because the House and Senate can't agree on this or that wording. Because this legislation they are foisting is not budget/appropriations, it has to go through normal legislative process ... unless they cheat, as it seems the Dems are attempting to do here.
i hope they try it .. would be fun to watch us to take this apart...
Thanks ODH — it should be noted that there is a difference between reconciliation and Reconciliation, capital R, that refers, as you point out, to budget-related bills.
Can someone explain (in plain terms) what reconciliation in the house would mean?
I thought it was a Senate ploy and would only apply to budget and tax hike portions of the bill.
9 months 12 days - or 912 - ;-) until November 2 election day then Pelosi will be a lame duck Speaker until January.
Yeah, I think you have the accurate picture here. The House dems are likely not going to vote anything like they did before because of the Scott Brown syndrome.
In other words, Pelosi may not have votes she had before on anything involving healthcare, we can hope.
Setting a precedent that they will regret.
We’d be in our eighth year of ANWR drilling if this had been in force before.
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