Ezra Klein on Senate parliamentarian's ruling, plus Kent Conrad's interesting take

[flpoljunkie]

Senate parliamentarian rules that bill must pass before reconciliation can be used

The thinkable has happened, and the Senate parliamentarian has ruled that the president must sign the health-care reform bill before the House and Senate can act on a reconciliation package.

In the Democrats' Senate Caucus meeting today, Kent Conrad apparently argued that this left the Democrats in an even stronger moral position. The reconciliation rider fixes unpopular elements of the health-care bill: the Nebraska deal, the Florida deal, the excise tax and so forth. If Republicans figure out some nuclear level of obstruction that could actually derail the reconciliation process, then they will effectively own the worst elements of the Senate bill, and Democrats can just spend their time hammering Republican obstructionism that has so lost touch with reality that they'd rather keep legislation they're against than let Democrats fix it. Or so goes the argument.

Meanwhile, the hypocrisy that the state-based Senate and the district-based House have embraced in their ferocious denunciations of these deals gets a nice showcase in Rep. Mike Capuano's list of complaints with the health-care bill. Most of them boil down to the need for Massachusetts to have more Nebraska-like deals.

By Ezra Klein
March 11, 2010

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/03/senate_parliamentarian_rules_t.html

[WCGreen]

1. Perhaps providence is working against the holier than thou republicans...

Sweet sweet revenge...

[karynnj]

2. I agree with Conrad

The fixes are cleaning up the bill and for the most part, getting rid of things no one likes. An interesting angle on this is, with the main bill already passed and signed into law, could the Republicans be pushed into voting for the reconciliation package. Imagine how this works for Mr 41, the choice he might have is to either vote against a bill that get rids of the special deals (thus being for keeping them) or he votes for it. It would be funny if the recociliation bill passes with more than 60 votes.

[Mass]

4. Actually, my dear junior senator has no problem voting AGAINST the reconciliation bill,

in particular if it cuts subsidies for states who have already better Medicaid coverage than the rest of the country. He was sent to the US Senate to make sure MA would not have to pay for the healthcare of other states.

[karynnj]

5. Good point - I forgot the MA specific issue

I hope your senior Senator can get them to treat all states the same - which was the whole intent. That would help many blue states.

[Mass]

3. Disagree with Klein. The main complaint of MA is not to get screwed because

of better Medicaid laws than the rest of the country. Same thing goes for VT. What Capuano was asking for is to take the House language that grandfathers Medicaid's subsidies for states who are already at the 130 % of poverty line.

And no surprise to see that Conrad wants this bill, given that he got what he wanted, starting by no public option.

[jefferson_dem]

6. Makes sense to me.

It will be a joy watching the repugs as they desperately toss up every single asinine parliamentary roadblock in order to BLOCK getting rid of the worst bits of reform they have railed against for months. This will illuminate (yet again) their assholery for all to see.