The budget Congress is expected to pass this month will include a provision granting Democrats extraordinary powers to usher through a comprehensive health care reform bill.
Known as budget reconciliation, the rule was included in the budget measure the House passed Thursday. Though the provision is not in the Senate budget, at least one top Democratic senator has signaled it will be inserted into the compromise version that both the House and Senate will vote on later this month.
Once signed into law by President Barack Obama, budget reconciliation would give the majority in the Senate the power to speedily move a health care bill to the floor with the approval of a simple majority, rather than the 60-vote supermajority that is usually required to end debate.
For the Democrats, who control 58 votes in the Senate, this would make it far easier to pass a health care bill without having to modify it in order to appease enough Republicans or moderate Democrats needed to clear the 60-vote threshold.
The move has alarmed conservatives, who say it will lead to a radically liberal health care overhaul because it can clear Congress without Republican input.
“It could lead to more government control, more spending and more taxes,” said Brian Riedl, a budget analyst with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., who will be a chief architect of the health care bill, told The Examiner that the fast-track procedure “will protect one of the president’s top priorities from Republicans who want to block it and who want to stop health care reform, which Americans agree is a critical agenda item.”
Republican lawmakers have decried the move and many Senate Democrats, including Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said they opposed using it to pass a major overhaul of the health care system because it would exclude the minority and fuels partisanship.
But moderates are likely to be overruled by Democratic Senate leaders and Obama, who want to pass health care reform that includes their priorities and know they cannot do it any other way, given the tight margin in the Senate.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said the fast-track provision would only be used if Republicans refused to cooperate on a bill.
“It is a fallback, a last resort,” Hoyer said. “We are hopeful we can work in a bipartisan way.”
Hoyer pointed out that Republicans used the reconciliation process to pass their top agenda items over the objections of Democrats, most notably the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts.
“Republicans are guilty,” Riedl said. “But this will be a very large redirection of the U.S. economy taking place with one-party input.”
Senate Republicans say if the Democrats fast-track health care, they will likely get no GOP input.
“It’s a big gamble, because if you do it with no bipartisan buy-in at all, you own the whole thing politically,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said.
