Hillarysworld

With the Lazarus-like return of ObamaCare, liberal pundits are again touting budget reconciliation as a viable way forward. Blogger Ezra Klein offers an over-simple description of the process.

This is actually the sort of situation reconciliation was designed to address... Budget reconciliation is called "reconciliation" because it's supposed to speed the, well, reconciliation of the differences between two budget bills. That's exactly what's left to do with the health-care reform bills, which were indeed part of the 2010 budget and whose passage is expected in the 2011 budget.

It's more complicated than this, and in important ways. Here's some background on budget reconciliation.

It's a product of the 1974 Budget Act, which in turn was a product of presidential-congressional battles over fiscal responsibility. President Nixon had impounded funds to protest congressional profligacy. The courts ruled against him, but the court of public opinion ruled in favor of him. So, Congress reformed its ways by doing only what Congress can: adding another layer of complications to an already too-complicated process.

It goes like this. Early in the year, Congress passes a budget resolution that sets revenue and spending targets that instructed committees are supposed to meet. The House and Senate Budget Committees can then compile the committee-drafted products into a reconciliation bill. Reconciliation is optional, though in recent years it has become pretty regular.

Reconciliation bills have a privileged status on the Senate floor. There is no debate on whether to begin consideration of a reconciliation bill. Proposed amendments must be germane to the bill. Debate on the bill and any amendments to it is limited to 20 hours. If you've ever heard the phrase "vote-a-rama," this is where it comes from: when the time limit for debate on a reconciliation bill has been reached, remaining amendments are voted on in quick succession.

All of this is designed to facilitate Congress in making a budget plan, then actually sticking to it. Of course, determined congressional majorities, especially when given clear guidance by a determined President, have used reconciliations rules for purposes beyond the original intent. The first notable event in this history occurred in 1981 when President Reagan and the GOP Senate majority used it to cut spending and taxes by a significant amount. As legislative expert Walter Oleszek has written, "Never before had reconciliation been employed on such a grand scale."

Liberals like Klein will suggest that this justifies, in some ethical sense, the use that Harry Reid is now apparently planning for budget reconciliation. Conservatives will use words like "jam" and "ram" and phrases like "the nuclear option" to argue that there is no such justification.

When it comes to legislative procedure, I am a strict Hobbesian. There is what a Senate majority can do, and what it can't do. "Appropriate" or "inappropriate" are not applicable phrases. Congress is sovereign over its own procedures, which are the product of self-interested members working to secure reelection and/or policy goals. Morality doesn't enter into it. (See the note at the bottom of this post for another thought on this topic.)

I'll go a step further to suggest that people with strong policy preferences should rarely be listened to in a debate about appropriate procedure. People who care intensely about the final vote tally often don't care how the votes are counted, so long as they get their preferred outcome. This is why there was no hue and cry coming from most of these born-again majoritarians on the left when the Democrats were looking to filibuster judicial nominees in 2005. It is easy to find numerous examples of conservative hypocrisy on this subject, too.

The better question, then, is whether the Democrats can use reconciliation to get their health care bill through the Senate.

Can they?

Absent a filibuster-proof majority, the Democrats still have a handful of legislative options to pass the bill. They can:

(a) Negotiate with Scott Brown, Susan Collins, and/or Olympia Snowe to find a 60th vote.

(b) Prevail upon the House to agree to the Senate bill without amendment.

(c) Prevail upon the House to pass the original Senate bill, with both chambers passing a reconciliation bill resolving inter-chamber differences.

Let's think about each of these options.

Many liberals suggest that (a) is off the table because Olympia Snowe has magically become indistinguishable from Jim DeMint. I think this is a facile and self-serving argument, designed to pin the blame on polarization exclusively on increased conservatism on the GOP side. No doubt the GOP has moved rightward, but the Democratic Party has also moved leftward - so far to the left, in fact, that a true moderate like Olympia Snowe cannot cooperate with them. And, I hasten to add, ditto 38 House Democrats who defected from the party line in November. Are they part and parcel of Republican extremism?

The fact that (b) is off the table is a signal that the public is not wrong to dislike the proposal as broadly as it apparently does. From what I have gathered from media reports, House liberals are willing to sign on to the Senate bill only if their favored interest groups - labor unions - get special exemptions.

So, the preferred strategy is (c). Ezra Klein wants you to think that this is in keeping with the grandest traditions of the government's estimable budget process (stop laughing!), but that's a stretch. The "original intent" of reconciliation was to help Congress stick to its outlined budget plan, not to aid majorities in resolving inter-chamber differences on divisive, comprehensive reform of 1/6th of the United States economy.

Again, this is not to argue that the Democratic leaders are acting unethically here. The point is that, legislatively speaking, they are looking to put a square peg through a round hole.

Can they? Maybe, but it could be difficult.

More . . .

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A great article where Jay Cost anticipates our questions and presents not just opinion, but also his analysis and thought process of how he gets to those opinions. Love it!

And, I particularly love this note he has added.

While I don't think right versus wrong properly enter into considerations of reconciliation, I have noticed one particularly ridiculous moral argument in favor of reconciliation making the rounds. We are told that it promotes the ideal of a simple majority, which most people believe is normatively appropriate. Indeed, that is the common opinion - but the Senate is not a majoritarian institution! You could have a super-majority of 82 senators whose constituents still don't amount to a majority of the United States population. So, what is the normative value of half-plus-one votes in an institution where votes are not pegged on population?

That goes to the heart of the 2-senators per each state equation that we have that is totally disproportionate in its "equal" representation.