Conservative House Republicans are ratcheting up the pressure on House and Senate GOP leaders to go back to the drawing board and write a more expansive Obamacare replacement overhaul bill and ditch the usual Senate rules that limit what Republicans can do.
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., is citing a 1964 precedent from the passage of the Civil Rights Act and a recent Supreme Court ruling to urge his Senate colleagues to overturn Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough’s findings if she rejects a broader bill that includes provisions unraveling the insurance mandate and other big parts of Obamacare that conservatives want to do away with.
“It think it’s well within the power of the chair to overrule the parliamentarian if she doesn’t look at that in a way that has a budgetary impact,” Meadows, who chairs the conservative Freedom Caucus, told the Washington Examiner.
Meadows pointed to historic precedent – when Vice President Hubert Humphrey in 1964 overruled the parliamentarian to overcome segregationist opposition to the law among Congressional leaders.
More recently, he said, the Supreme Court in 2015 in King v. Burwell determined that the bill could not be broken up with parts of it, such as tax credits, jettisoned. The Congressional Budget Office score, released Monday, will help Republican make the argument that the entire bill is budget-related, he said.
“This is not setting a new precedent … I see it as a much more strategic way to hopefully accomplish what the American people want,” he said.
Republicans are using the budget reconciliation process, which requires only a 51 votes to pass the Senate, to move the Obamacare repeal and replacement measure. Under Senate rules, provisions must be germane to the budget — meaning they impact taxes or revenue — in order to use reconciliation as a vehicle, and the parliamentarian could rule any part of the bill out of order.
Meadows previously urged President Trump in private meetings to go much farther in loading up the overhaul measure with provisions conservatives want – and if the Senate parliamentarian rejects the push, tell Republican leaders to overrule her, if necessary.
Republicans expect MacDonough to rule against some or part of their Obamacare replacement measure because she did so during Senate debate on their 2015 Obamacare repeal measure. In that year, GOP leaders ditched some of the provisions in question to ensure it abided by budget reconciliation rules.
But groups on the right, such as Americans for Limited Government, and like-minded lawmakers, including Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, are pressing GOP leaders to circumvent the parliamentarian this year.
They argue that the House version, as written, doesn’t have enough GOP votes to pass, so Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., will have no choice but to add more provisions that Freedom Caucus members want, such as getting rid of the insurance mandate and required “essential” benefits.
Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, an outspoken Freedom Caucus member, said Ryan’s take-it-or-leave-it threats ring hollow because there are not yet enough votes to pass the bill right now.
“I don’t think they have the votes, and we’re trying to help … we’re trying to negotiate and work with the White House and the Speaker so that their bill actually reduces the cost of health care,” he said.
When it comes to overruling the Senate parliamentarian, if necessary, Labrador is 100 percent on board.
“I’m sorry. Did you find the parliamentarian in the Constitution? Because I haven’t,” he told the Examiner. “It’s not even in the Budget Control Act. I haven’t found the parliamentarian. What I found was members of Congress. So let’s do our job.
“I don’t understand why we, as a Congress, have decided to stop everything because an unelected official is saying something that we disagree with,” he added. “If we disagree with it, let’s move forward with it.”
Conservative activists argue that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., an institutionalist, is hiding behind the Senate parliamentarian and that chamber’s rules in order to pass a watered-down replacement bill.
Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., another conservative member, said Ryan and McConnell have not “completely or adequately considered” the option of overruling the parliamentarian.
“Even if your own the town council, and you have an attorney there or at the council meeting and they advise you, you don’t always have to take their advice,” Perry said. “Attorneys don’t always get it right either and neither do parliamentarians or any of us.”
