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Special Report: Reconciliation and the right

Posted by: Kate Blocher on Mar 03, 2010

After last week's bipartisan Health Reform Summit, it seems pretty clear that many Republicans are unwilling to help move health reform forward. So what options do Congressional Democrats have? The most likely course of action is to pass the bill through reconciliation. The process would begin with the House passing the current Senate bill, which would then be signed into law by President Obama. Then both bodies would begin the process of passing an amended health reform bill, which has yet to be seen, through both the House and the Senate through the reconciliation process. This is the preferred method as it only requires a simple majority (51 votes) in the Senate and would avoid the inevitable filibuster by Republicans who oppose reform.

Seems pretty simple, right? Not quite. As I'm sure you've seen, read, and heard, opponents of reform are against this option. Many Republicans have been openly criticizing the Democrats for even considering using reconciliation on health reform. According to Orrin Hatch (R-UT), "[t]he use of expedited reconciliation process to push through more dramatic changes to a health care bill of such size, scope, and magnitude is unprecedented."

Not surprisingly though, Senator Hatch's statement is inaccurate both in that reconciliation has been used in the past to pass comprehensive legislation and it has been used to pass health care legislation. Further, many of the bills passed via the reconciliation process were supported by a Republican Administration, Congress, or both. Seems a bit ironic that they're crying foul now...

In light of recent criticism, Families USA released a special report documenting previous support for the reconciliation process by past Republican leaders as well as Republican leaders currently serving. Given their latest course of attack, it's pretty shocking. Not only has the reconciliation process been used to enact major, consequential laws such as welfare reform, but since it was enacted in 1980, 19 reconciliation bills have been enacted into law. Of those 19 bills, 14 of them were signed by Republican Presidents. Further, current Republican leaders have consistently voted for - and supported - reconciliation bills. According to the report, several of the current leading Congressional Republicans, like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl have voted for reconciliation bills numerous times in their past.

But what pokes even more holes in the Republican's argument is that not only has reconciliation been used by Republicans numerous times in the past, but it has been used on health care legislation many times before. The reconciliation process was used to create COBRA, the law that helps you keep your employer's insurance after you leave your job. According to Sara Rosenbaum, who chairs the Department of Health Policy at George Washington University:

"The correct name [for COBRA] is continuation benefits. And the only reason it's called COBRA is because it was contained in the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985; and that is how we came up with the name COBRA, COBRA..., was actually a much larger bill."

But COBRA wasn't the only health care legislation passed through the reconciliation process. Reconciliation was used to expand insurance coverage for low-income children as well as to make several major changes to Medicare. So it's hard to agree when Republicans claim that the reconciliation process has never been used on such major or expansive health care legislation like the health reform bill, because-simply put-it has. According to Sara Rosenbaum:

"[L]iterally we've changed everything about insurance coverage for children and families, and we've changed access to health care all across the United States all as a result of reconciliation."

Regardless of what lies and misinformation the opposition wants to continue to throw out, the bottom line is that it's time to finish health reform. As President Obama stated in his Saturday radio address:

"The tens of millions of men and women who cannot afford their health insurance cannot wait another generation for us to act. Small businesses cannot wait. Americans with pre-existing conditions cannot wait...It is time for those of us in Washington to live up to our responsibilities to the American people and to future generations."

If reconciliation is the way for them to bring affordable, quality health care to all Americans, then it sounds good to us.