Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Reconciliation Tidbits (or political spadework)

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And a boo-YA!

“First, reconciliation has been used for major legislation almost constantly, particularly on health-care reform…

“Second, Democrats are not proposing to create the health-care reform bill in reconciliation. Rather, they’re using the process for a much more limited purpose: passing the 11 pages of modifications that President Obama proposed to reconcile the House and Senate bills with each other. This is not a particularly ambitious use of the reconciliation process, and it’s certainly not unprecedented. Republicans are arguing otherwise, of course, but the record belies their rhetoric.”

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  1. The use of reconciliation for “fixing” the Senate bill preemptively before House passage would be a good move. Whereas an attempt to pass an entire health care bill through reconciliation would be tricky, both for policy and political reasons, this strategy makes considerably more sense — particularly since it is unclear that the House will even pass the Senate bill without these changes.

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    p>The first quote from Robert Dove is a good one, though I’d add that (based on my understanding of reconciliation history), the VP rarely if ever overrules the Parliamentarian’s advice on this matter. Doing so would be considerably different than previous Senate practice, even as the use of reconciliation for major bills itself is relatively common.

    • Heh.  Presumably that’s because the Parliamentarian ruled the way the VP wanted him to.  If things were to get to the point where the Dems were actually presenting a bill to be passed via reconciliation and asked for the Parliamentarian’s ruling, surely you don’t think that Biden would not be prepared to overrule the Parliamentarian’s advice if necessary.

      • Yes, it is the same Dove.

        The senate parliamentarian serves as arbiter of the Senate’s rules. Although the vote of 60 senators can overrule the parliamentarian’s decision, that seldom happens. What drew Lott’s ire were the parliamentarian’s decisions that made it easier for Democrats to stall the president’s tax and budget bills. (Senate rules generally prevent filibusters on budget and tax bills. And the GOP leadership wanted those rules interpreted as broadly as possible. But Dove didn’t always comply. Earlier he ruled that only one tax bill a year could be immune to a filibuster. And more recently, he ruled that a disaster relief set aside also wouldn’t be getting the no-filibuster free ride.) Desiring more accommodating decisions, he fired Dove.
        -snip

        But imagine, for a moment, if Daschle and the Democrats had responded to the firing like Republicans. Daschle would have gone on the Sunday shows and decried the parliamentarian’s ouster as a “Saturday Night Massacre” while other Democrats would call the firing symbolic of the rule-breaking, win-at-any-cost political culture the Republicans flaunted in Florida. The press would respond to the charges by placing the story on Page One, and lefty pundits would describe the firing as an example of the president’s willingness to politicize heretofore nonpartisan institutions for immediate political gain–namely the passage of his controversial $1.6 trillion budget. Lastly, Daschle would demand congressional hearings to investigate Dove’s dismissal–anything to keep Bush and the Republicans on the defensive.

        Harris’ Post piece rightly diagnosed the Democrats as suffering from a lack of zeal. But that’s only one of their problems. Modern politics is a 24/7, multimedia game these days, and an essential part of that game is scandal-mongering–90 percent of which is about packaging. And Democrats just don’t seem to have the taste or the talent for this.

      • correct about Biden being prepared to overrule the Parliamentarian if necessary; my point was simply that it would be much more difficult to claim that, like reconciliation, it was a common practice.

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        p>Of course, this point about process is (1) quite likely less important than actually getting this bill done substantively, and (2) undermined by John from Lowell’s reminder that the Parliamentarian was indeed overruled (actually fired) back in 2001 for “wrong” decisions. So playing games with the Parliamentarian, which doesn’t seem procedurally “right” but nevertheless may be substantively necessary, has precedent under Republican leadership.

  2. …but he shouldn’t be a tool of the majority either.  The parliamentarian’s job is (or at least should be) to advise any member of the Senate of either party what the appropriate procedural course (if any) is to accomplish what the Senator wants to accomplish.  A ruling the presider doesn’t like can be ignored, but shouldn’t be grounds for firing.

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