"Parliamentarian in Role as Health Bill Referee"

[Clio the Leo]

Parliamentarian in Role as Health Bill Referee

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: March 13, 2010

WASHINGTON — In the fall of 1968, a serious dark-haired young man arrived in the capital to do what serious young men here do: study law. Alan S. Frumin was calm, analytical and possessed of a dry wit. To his classmates, one trait stood out. He was a whiz at mastering the mind-numbing rules of civil procedure.

Today, Mr. Frumin puts his procedural acumen to use as the parliamentarian of the United States Senate. Most of the time, it is a quiet, under-the-radar kind of job. Not these days.

As Washington enters the final act of its long-running health care drama, Mr. Frumin — a nonpartisan civil servant who got his start as a precedents writer for the House — is in a starring role. His rulings on arcane procedural questions may determine whether President Obama winds up signing a health care overhaul or whether the administration’s signature policy initiative collapses.

By Friday, Mr. Frumin had become a major preoccupation for Democrats and Republicans, as they tried to divine his views on whether Mr. Obama must sign a health bill into law before Democrats can use the filibuster-proof budgetary tactic known as reconciliation to make changes to it. In the weeks to come, there will be a slew of Republican challenges to reconciliation.

Technically, Mr. Frumin’s decisions are not binding. But Senate leaders almost never overrule the parliamentarian, so he will effectively have the final word.

“He’s basically the defense, the prosecution, the judge, the jury and the hangman in this scenario,” said Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the senior Republican on the Budget Committee, whose staff has been meeting with Mr. Frumin on reconciliation matters for months. “It all comes down to him.”

That makes some Republicans uncomfortable. Mr. Gregg calls Mr. Frumin “a very fair and straightforward guy in a very difficult job.” But in a sign of how acrimonious the debate has become, others in the minority party have been insinuating that Mr. Frumin is in the Democrats’ pocket — remarks that amount to a kind of Washington version of working the referee before the big game.

The rumblings began in December when Mr. Frumin sided with Democrats as Republicans tried to delay a health care vote. Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, said in comments published in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call that Mr. Frumin was “clearly biased” — a remark that was apparently too blunt for some of his colleagues, judging by the apology Mr. DeMint later delivered on the Senate floor.

Now, with the White House pushing Congress to act on health care by Easter, the warnings and caveats about Mr. Frumin are flying once again.

“I think he’s an honest man, but we’ll see,” said Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah. “Some people buckle under pressure. He would lose tremendous prestige if he buckles under pressure.”

Asked if he had evidence of partisan leanings by Mr. Frumin, Mr. Hatch shrugged. “I’m sure he’s a Democrat,” the senator said, “but I think he’s an honest man.”

In fact, Mr. Frumin, 63, is a registered independent, voting records show. Parliamentarians are appointed by the party in power; Mr. Frumin, who joined the office as an assistant in 1977, is the only parliamentarian to have been installed in the top job by both Democrats and Republicans. Democrats put him there in 1987 when Senator Robert C. Byrd was majority leader; in 2001, he was reinstalled under Trent Lott, a Republican.

The parliamentarian’s job requires years of apprenticeship, and the work is so obscure that few people in Washington can do it. For much of his career, Mr. Frumin has alternated with Robert Dove, who learned the hard way what can happen to a parliamentarian who irks a Senate leader. He was fired by Mr. Lott after advising Republicans that they could not add a $5 billion emergency allocation to the budget. That Mr. Dove called it “a slush fund” probably did not help.

“I said, ‘You can’t do that,’ ” Mr. Dove recalled, “and I was let go that very afternoon.”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/us/politics/14rules.html?src=twt&twt=nytimespolitics

[justgamma]

1. If there is anything that pukes hate more

than the United States government, it is democracy and rules.

"“Some people buckle under pressure. He would lose tremendous prestige if he buckles under pressure.”

It sure sounds like the only pressure he's getting is from the pukes.