Battle Brewing Over Reconciliation, Which Is Anything but That

[Zeno Swijtink]

ON THE HILL
Battle Brewing Over Reconciliation, Which Is Anything but That
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/u...web-hulse.html
By CARL HULSE
Published: March 28, 2009

WASHINGTON — The term “reconciliation” typically conveys a sense of rapprochement reminiscent of restored ties between the United States and China or Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. But in Congress, reconciliation can mean the opposite, conjuring up relationships more along the lines of Yankees-Red Sox or Microsoft versus Apple.

Republicans are in a tizzy because Democrats are threatening to use the budgetary procedure known as reconciliation — it reconciles policy with fiscal guidelines — to overhaul the health care system, possibly enact climate change legislation and rewrite education policy.

They have good reason to fret: If Democrats successfully invoke reconciliation, such major bills could pass by a simple majority vote, denying Republicans the filibuster, their sole remaining weapon to influence federal policy given the Democratic grip on government.

“It stinks,” Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said as he pondered the prospect of Democrats pulling the trigger on reconciliation.

But there are a couple of problems for Republicans as they push back furiously against the idea, chief of which is the fact that they used the process themselves on several occasions, notably when enacting more than $1 trillion in tax cuts in 2001.

That means critics can have a field day lampooning Republicans and asking them — as Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, did repeatedly the other day — why reconciliation was such a good idea when it came to giving tax cuts to millionaires but such a bad one when it comes to trying to provide health care to average Americans.

The record is also replete with past statements by Republicans such as Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the party’s leader on budget issues, praising the logic of reconciliation.

“We are using the rules of the Senate here,” Mr. Gregg said in 2005 as he fought off Democratic complaints that reconciliation was wrongly being employed to block filibusters against opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. “Is there something wrong with majority rules? I don’t think so.”

But he and other Republicans, with some Democrats concurring, say that using reconciliation to accomplish Mr. Obama’s sweeping objectives would distort the intent of a procedure intended mainly to lower the deficit, not restructure the national economy.

“It is not appropriate to use reconciliation, which cuts off the role of the Senate, on something as broad and extensive as rewriting the health care laws of this country,” said Mr. Gregg in one of his many attempts to explain why he is against reconciliation after he was for it.

But the long record of Republican support for fast-tracking budget-related bills definitely dilutes their ability to challenge Democrats on the issue. They have to hope that enough Senate Democrats stick to their view that it would be too divisive to use the Senate short-cut on policy as fundamental as health care changes or a new cap on carbon pollution.

Senator Kent Conrad, the North Dakota Democrat who is chairman of the Budget Committee, has taken that position as has Senator Max Baucus of Montana, the chairman of the committee that would have to write a good chunk of any health care measure. Other Senate centrists have challenged the reconciliation notion as well, raising the possibility that Democrats might not be able to pass a final budget if it allows for the filibuster end-run.

The resistance of some Senate Democrats is infuriating many House members and officials of the Obama administration. They believe it would be downright foolish for Democrats to give up their best leverage when Republicans have so far shown little inclination to cooperate with them or Mr. Obama on major legislation.

At minimum, they say, reconciliation has to remain on the table to force Republicans to get serious about working with Democrats. As a result, House Democrats included the possibility of reconciliation in their budget and hope to force it into the final version during negotiations with the Senate.

Some Republicans have likened the building struggle over budget reconciliation to the 2005 Senate fight over Democratic filibusters against judicial nominees chosen by President George W. Bush.

Frustrated at the opposition, Republicans warned they would invoke the “nuclear option” and change Senate rules to ban filibusters against executive branch nominations. Democrats characterized that as an assault on the very nature of the Senate and threatened to bring the chamber to a standstill if Republicans followed through with their plan.

The showdown was averted. But now that they are in the minority, some Republicans have begun suggesting that if Democrats insist on reconciliation, Republicans will gum up the Senate works to the greatest extent possible, using their remaining procedural rights to essentially shut down the Senate.

Democrats note that Republicans are already doing a good job of slowing business in the Senate. They say that maneuvers like forcing clerks to read bills in their entirety and other dilatory tactics would cement once and for all the Republican image as obstructionists.

Republicans have another hurdle as well. The so-called nuclear option represented a change in Senate rules. As Mr. Gregg noted in 2005, reconciliation already is allowed by the rules and Republicans have relied on it many times, a point that Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi intend to make again and again.

“Some of these same people on the Republican side didn’t have a problem with it — and we have their quotes — when President Bush wanted to push forward his tax cuts to the wealthiest people in America,” Ms. Pelosi said.