Appearing Wednesday afternoon, surrounded by medical professionals in white lab coats, President Barack Obama laid out his plan for passing health care reform in Congress. It came two days short of the one-year anniversary since the president kicked off his health care reform effort with a summit of medical professionals, insurance heads and other health care industry leaders. Pressing ahead on health care reform, the President announced, will require a final "up-or-down vote," which top administration strategists have said means using the budget reconciliation process in the Senate to force a simple majority vote on health care. But this is likely to be only one of a few stages of the process.
Health care reform has followed the typical route most substantive bills go through in Congress: both the House and the Senate pass their own bill before convening a conference committee, made up of members of both chambers of Congress, which decides on a final bill. That final bill then typically returns to each chamber for a final vote; if passed, the president may sign the bill into law. Before the upending election of Senator Scott Brown (R-MA), Congress seemed poised to follow this path: it had passed a bill in the House and the Senate, and discussions were under way over how to craft a single, ameliorated bill that would receive a majority vote in the House and overcome a Republican filibuster in the Senate.
As many Democrats are beginning to realize, however, their former 60-vote majority in the Senate was a no gift: it created the impression that Congressional Democrats would be able to pass every piece of their agenda with relative ease. But in a caucus where Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) are members of the same party, disagreements are the norm. Many conservative Democrats are more intent on crafting bipartisan bills that will receive closer to 70 votes in the Senate than on passing bills with a party-line vote. And as discussions over creating a single bill continued to get bogged down in political calculation, Democrats began to realize that they could lose their 60-seat majority to a former model named Scott Brown. And they did.
And so the administration changed focus, publicly announcing their new legislative goal was a jobs bill, while privately huddling to salvage health care reform. The health care summit between President Obama, key cabinet members and Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle served as the culminating point of this new strategy. Democrats continually pointed out the many Republican ideas that made their way into the Senate health care bill, while Republicans moaned and groaned over the sheer length and cost of the bill. The preferred course of Republican leaders was to start over from scratch.
Now, it appears that Democrats have finally laid out a path to pass the bill. It starts with Speaker Pelosi passing the Senate health care bill in the House, before changes are made to the bill in the Senate via the budget reconciliation parliamentary tactic. The House would then have to pass the changed Senate bill itself. Republicans, realizing that with only 41 Senators they are powerless to stop the bill's advancement, have cried foul over the reconciliation tactic. Yet, many of these same Senate Republicans, including Senators Judd Gregg (R-NH) and John McCain (R-AZ), defended the use of reconciliation when passing both the Bush tax cut and the Medicare prescription drug plan.
The Democrats will seek to pass the bill on a party-line vote, or perhaps with the aid of a handful of House Republicans. It's doubtful many will cross the aisle to vote in favor of the bill. At the same time, Democrats will continue to stress the bipartisanship elements of the bill, thereby touting the bipartisanship of the legislation itself, if not the final vote count. The hope is that by passing health care, other pieces of the agenda will follow, allowing Congressional Democrats to run on a package of achievements in the 2010 midterm elections.
To be truly successful, Democrats must also highlight GOP obstructionism. Since President Obama has taken office, Senate Republicans have threatened the use of the filibuster more times than the filibuster was invoked throughout the entire 1960s and 1970s (which included countless attempts by southern Democrats to filibuster every piece of Civil Rights legislation). Earlier this week, Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY) threatened to filibuster a bill that extended employment benefits, delaying the bill's passage by a few days. Senator Bunning's filibuster, the Department of Labor has estimated, has put a hold on benefits to over 400,000 workers in the country. If they want to continue to control both chambers of Congress, Democrats should tout their accomplishments and paint the Republican Party as undemocratic obstructionists.
Now, this health care reform bill isn't perfect, but no legislation ever is. But after a year of wrangling over how to pass the bill, Democrats must realize that passing an imperfect bill is far better than letting the bill flounder. They should also remember that in 1994 many of the Democrats who were against President Clinton's plan still lost reelection. Regardless of the content of the bill or the votes for and against it, voters will hold Democrats responsible for the management of the country in 2010. To not pass health care reform after being handed one of the largest Congressional majorities in recent history is not an option. The bill must pass.
Chris Rowe is a member of the Class of 2010.