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Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin likes to taunt his Republican colleagues, arguing that ObamaCare can't be repealed because 60 votes are required to end debate in the Senate on any measure.
BUT
The Budget Act of 1974 established the reconciliation process. The House and Senate Budget Committees can direct other committees to make changes in mandatory spending (like ObamaCare's Medicaid expansion and insurance subsidies) and the tax code (such as ObamaCare's levies on insurance policies, hospitals and drug companies) to make spending and revenue conform with the goals set by the annual budget resolution.
For example, under reconciliation the Senate Budget Committee could instruct the Senate Finance Committee to reduce mandatory spending on insurance subsidies and Medicaid expansion. These two items make up more than 90% of spending in ObamaCare. All the changes from all the committees are then bundled into one measure and voted upon. Because reconciliation is protected by the rules of the budget process, it doesn't take 60 votes to bring it up and it requires only a simple majority to pass.
Will this 51-vote strategy work? One long-time GOP budget whiz, embarrassed he hadn't thought of this, told me it would. Another Republican veteran of the budget wars agreed.
But can't Obama simply veto what comes out of this unless there are 60 votes to override him? (I don't know and am just respectfully asking this question) Thanks.
I know that. My point was that they passed the bill and were able to send it to the president's desk using reconciliation. I wasn't even referring to the original senate version prior to the changes the house made to it. I think it was quite obvious that I mean passage of the bill.
No you didn't say that. You said the Dem's had a super majority for a year, and that they used the nuclear option to avoid having to ever have 60 votes to pass it in the Senate. None of that happened. The bill did pass with 60 votes, and reconciliation was used to compromise between the House and the Senate vs. going through another huge fight there--the same process that's been used over and over by the republicans. Your story is changing constantly--read your own posts.
But can't Obama simply veto what comes out of this unless there are 60 votes to override him? (I don't know and am just respectfully asking this question) Thanks.
Obama can veto anything at all--it doesn't matter how many votes. The only problem is if he vetoed something that was popular on both sides of the isle, he'd have to deal with the political fall out.
EDIT--the "it doesn't matter how many votes" was a really dumb comment on my part--the poster below was correct--it takes a 2/3 majority to override a presidential veto, and I actually know that. It's been a long day...
The only thing I was wrong on was being off a few months on the timeline for when the Senate Dem's had 60 votes, because I forgot about Paul Kirk. It takes 1 vote to filibuster, and 60 to end it. The Dem's didn't have 60 votes to end the filibuster until Paul Kirk was sworn in to replace Kennedy, and until Brown was elected. THEY DIDN'T USE the nuclear option. They passed the bill the first time in the Senate with 60 votes to over ride the filibuster, it passed the house with some amendments, and then they used reconciliation (which only requires a simple majority) to conform the Senate and House bills.
Do you just like to argue for the sake of arguing?
Me??? You have GOT to be joking. The only point I was trying to make in this thread is that the republicans were pretty much completely powerless against the democrats. Even when they had filibuster capability, the dems had reconciliation and voted using a simple majority to get around that. And don't lecture me about "THEY DIDN'T USE the nuclear option" when you got it wrong too. We both made the same mistake, and regardless, the semantics do not change the outcome.
I know that. My point was that they passed the bill and were able to send it to the president's desk using reconciliation. I wasn't even referring to the original senate version prior to the changes the house made to it. I think it was quite obvious that I mean passage of the bill.
Using Reconciliation to repeal the entire bill is not going to be as simple as it sounds. First off Reconciliation has certain rules attached to it. The Democrats did use Reconciliation to make the changes to the Senate Bill, but based off the Reconciliation rules they would not have been able to pass the entire bill through the process of Reconciliation. If they would not have been able to pass the entire bill through Reconciliation, I don't see how the GOP can repeal the entire bill through Reconciliation.
Me??? You have GOT to be joking. The only point I was trying to make in this thread is that the republicans were pretty much completely powerless against the democrats. Even when they had filibuster capability, the dems had reconciliation and voted using a simple majority to get around that. And don't lecture me about "THEY DIDN'T USE the nuclear option" when you got it wrong too. We both made the same mistake, and regardless, the semantics do not change the outcome.
The only reason they were able to do so is because the Senate passed HCR reform during the period where the Democrats had a filibuster proof majority.
No you didn't say that. You said the Dem's had a super majority for a year, and that they used the nuclear option to avoid having to ever have 60 votes to pass it in the Senate. None of that happened. The bill did pass with 60 votes, and reconciliation was used to compromise between the House and the Senate vs. going through another huge fight there--the same process that's been used over and over by the republicans. Your story is changing constantly--read your own posts.
NO, NO, and NO! The final vote was 56-43 NOT 60. What part of my 'story' has changed? Yes, we BOTH got the semantics of reconciliation/nuclear option wrong, but that does not change history that the FINAL VOTE ON HCR PASSED WITH A SIMPLE MAJORITY, HENCE FILIBUSTER BE DAMNED, IT DID NOT MATTER DID IT?
NO, NO, and NO! The final vote was 56-43 NOT 60. What part of my 'story' has changed? Yes, we BOTH got the semantics of reconciliation/nuclear option wrong, but that does not change history that the FINAL VOTE ON HCR PASSED WITH A SIMPLE MAJORITY, HENCE FILIBUSTER BE DAMNED, IT DID NOT MATTER DID IT?
Two separate bills. The actual HCR bill passed with 60 votes. The Reconciliation vote was then 56-43.
Me??? You have GOT to be joking. The only point I was trying to make in this thread is that the republicans were pretty much completely powerless against the democrats. Even when they had filibuster capability, the dems had reconciliation and voted using a simple majority to get around that. And don't lecture me about "THEY DIDN'T USE the nuclear option" when you got it wrong too. We both made the same mistake, and regardless, the semantics do not change the outcome.
If the Dem's hadn't had 60 votes to begin with to originally pass the bill through the Senate, they wouldn't have been able to use reconciliation to conform the Senate and House bills. The republicans filibustered the bill the first time around, and the Senate pulled the super majority to beat it. Let me get this straight--you think it's unfair that a bill passed the Senate by 60-40, and that the Dem's used some kind of unfair rule to pass it by that margin? The only thing the Dem's did was to work out the compromise--not the entire bill--with a simple majority vote. As for the confusion between the nuclear option and reconciliation--I knew they had the 60 votes the first time, but in the heat of the moment I called it the wrong thing. You were implying that they never had the votes to begin with. It was still a legitimate use of the Senate rules, and one that's been used many times in the past by the R's.
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It's been a long day...
