He can submit legislation.
The question is can he by pass Congressional committee procedure and attach it as a Reconciliation?
I assume that a Democrat Congressman would be the one to attach it to the budget bill. If somehow that’s a problem, the White House will write the Obamacare bill and Pelosi herself will introduce it.
Don’t know what it takes to bypass committees, but my experience hasbeen that the House and Senate leadership can take something to the floor whenever it wishes to do so. The Constitution does not require vetting by legislative committees.
That being said, Obama and his minions are doing this to appease the Left, since there’s no way that the House will approve this crap. There are currently 218 House members still in Congress that voted for Obamacare in November (1 AYE vote resigned and has not been replaced, and Murtha died). Cao won’t vote for it, so they’re down to 217, the bare minimum they need assumng full attendance of current members. Pelosi would need every single one of them to vote for the bill, which will either (i) include the Stupak language on abortion (which will cause some liberals that had voted AYE before assuming that the anti-abortion-funding would be stripped in conference to vote NAY this time) or not include the Stupak language (which will cost Pelosi the votes of Stupak and up to 30 others). And then there’s the fact that many more House Democratshave realized how voting for Obamacare could cost tgem their seat—do you think that all of those Democrats in GOP-leaning districts will vote for it again? Imagine if the Democrats are one vote away (they won’t get that close, but just imagine) and Brad Ellsworth of IN is the deciding vote. Do you really think that he’ll flush his hopes of winning Bayh’s Senate seat down the drain by voting for a bill that is so unpopular in Indiana?
Scott Brown’s voctiry killed Obamacare, and not just because it cost the RATs their filibuster-proof Senate majority.
I suspect they can find a way to do all of this this within the framework of the constitution. Elections do have consequences.
The bigger question to me is will the party follow him dutifully over the cliff? Last report I saw had the House 100 votes short of agreeing to the Senate version and I seriously doubt the House could pass again what they passed last summer with the mid-term primaries looming and challengers stepping up. We shall see. Still worth while to make yourself heard on the issue!