Senate Republicans will likely move to gut Obamacare after they assume the majority next year by using a parliamentary maneuver that would allow them to skirt an expected Democratic filibuster, GOP sources said.
The Senate’s complicated “reconciliation” rule, designed to ease the passage of deficit-reduction legislation, won’t permit Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act in its entirety. But the tactic will allow them, with the support of a simple majority rather than the customary, filibuster-proof 60 votes, to eliminate key provisions of the law, like the individual mandate to purchase health insurance, so as to render it effectively inoperable.
“That will be one avenue for us,” incoming Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, told reporters on Wednesday, when asked where reconciliation fit into Republicans’ plans to dismantle Obamacare. “Of course, in order to do that, we have to pass a budget, which hasn’t happened since 2009.”
As Cornyn noted, repealing portions of Obamacare using reconciliation is only possible if 51 Senate Republicans (and 218 House Republicans) can agree on a budget resolution. Passing a budget is what makes a reconciliation vehicle possible. That means some of the GOP’s biggest budget hawks — those who often break with their colleagues and oppose spending bills as insufficiently austere — will have to support a consensus budget plan. Democrats are unlikely to help Republicans pass legislation that undermines Obamacare.
The exercise is sure to satisfy the GOP base and many congressional Republicans. All of them either voted against Obamacare when it passed in 2010 or ran in subsequent elections on a pledge to repeal it. However, this strategy carries particular costs.
President Obama is sure to veto an aggressive attack on his signature domestic achievement, and there are not the votes in Congress to override. Additionally, the reconciliation tool can only be used once, in concert with passing a fiscal 2015-16 budget proposal. Using the maneuver to dismantle Obamacare necessarily means it cannot be used to overcome presumed Democratic filibusters to pass other conservative priorities that have tax and spending implications, entitlement reform among them.
A senior Republican Senate aide likened reconciliation to a “rifle shot,” emphasizing that the procedure was not a panacea for passing every policy likely to generate Democratic opposition. That’s why some Republicans in the House and Senate who otherwise support repealing Obamacare are questioning the wisdom of using reconciliation to attack the Affordable Care Act.
“There’s going to be open and vibrant debate over how to use reconciliation,” a GOP lobbyist predicted. “Leadership is going to have to educate members over what can and can’t be done.”
Part of the Republicans’ strategy involves determining how best to harness existing Democratic support to repeal certain pieces of the Affordable Care Act, such as the medical device tax. Republicans are hoping that Obama would be willing to sign such a bill, although he could ultimately veto it on the grounds that the funds the levy raises from U.S. medical device manufacturers are integral to the financial stability of the law.
Republicans also aim to pass legislation eliminating Obamacare’s independent Payment Advisory Board, derided as “death panels” by critics of the law, and to restore the 40-hour work week. Under the Affordable Care Act, 30 hours is considered full-time employment to discourage firms from hiring part-time workers to avoid the mandate to provide health benefits or pay a fine. The individual mandate to purchase health insurance, legally ruled a tax by the Supreme Court, is on the chopping block as well.
Ultimately, GOP sources expect congressional Republicans to target Obamacare through reconciliation because it makes the most political sense.
Republicans campaigned on doing everything within their power to repeal the law. They won a huge victory in the midterm elections, flipping at least eight Democratic-held Senate seats and around a dozen House districts, and most will probably push for the reconciliation route. Likely incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was among those vowing to work as aggressively as possible to undo the law.
McConnell and Cornyn both said on Wednesday that no final decisions have been made on how to pursue a weakening of the Affordable Care Act. The subject is likely to be a topic if discussion over the next several weeks among returning Republican senators and the newly elected who will be seated when the 114th Congress convenes in January.
But given that GOP priorities like tax and entitlement reform would likely run into the same presidential roadblock if the Republicans rammed partisan bills through Congress under reconciliation, a bill to break apart Obamacare and possibly force a public debate with the president on the merits of the law appears to be the likeliest candidate for the one-time maneuver.
“Obviously it’s going to be hard to repeal Obamacare when the man living in the White House is named Barack Obama,” said Sen.-elect Tom Cotton, R-Ark. “But we’ll make decisions about that at a later time.”
