JONATHAN CHAIT MARCH 7, 2010
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There are a lot of thorny issues in American politics that require a great deal of concentrated attention to grasp. The controversy over budget reconciliation and health care is not one of them. It's pretty simple, and can be explained in thirty seconds or so. And yet large chunks of the political class seem unable to grasp it.
Before we turn to the principal subject of my latest condescending lecture on this topic, let's briefly review the situation here. Last year, some Democrats considered passing health care reform through budget reconciliation, which would only need a Senate majority. Other Democrats objected, arguing that, since reconciliation bills can only change taxes or spending, it would be very hard to pass a whole health care bill this way. All the features related to regulating insurance companies and setting up exchanges would be stricken out, and the result, as Kent Conrad put it, "would look like Swiss cheese." So Democrats pursued health care reform through the regular process, passing slightly different bills through the House and Senate.
Since a bill can't become a law until the exact same bill passes through each chamber of Congress, and Democrats now lack the ability to break a Republican filibuster, they have a different plan. They'll pass the Senate bill through the House. Then, to appease House members who disapprove of certain Senate features, they'll pass a second bill through reconciliation. This will only address budgetary issues -- some taxes will be raised, others lowered, some spending will be rejiggered. In the grand scheme of things, the changes in the reconciliation bill will be minor. As National Review's Rich Lowry has noted, "Only the House vote matters."
Still with me? Okay. Last weekend, Conrad appeared on Face the Nation to explain this process:
On the question of reconciliation, I have said all year as chairman of the Budget Committee, reconciliation cannot be used to pass comprehensive health care reform. It won't work. It won't work because it was never designed for that kind of significant legislation. It was designed for deficit reduction. So let's be clear.
On the major Medicare or health care reform legislation, that can't move through reconciliation. The role for reconciliation would be very limited. It would be on side-car issues designed to improve what passed the Senate and what would have to pass the House for health care reform to move forward. So using reconciliation would not be for the main package at all.
It would be for certain side-car issues like how much does the federal government put up to pay for the Medicaid expansion? What is done to improve the affordability of the package that's come out of the Senate?
Host Bob Schieffer was totally befuddled:
Let me just throw this in because I'm not sure the White House has the same understanding of this that you do. Because the woman, Nancy DeParle, who is, kind of, in charge of Medicare over there at the White House -- I mean, health care, over there at the White House, said this morning on "Meet the Press" she thought that an up-or-down vote would be the way to go on this.
So, obviously, she's talking about trying to do it through reconciliation, Senator.
And Politico, likewise confused, reported that Conrad "threw cold water on the idea of using the reconciliation process."In fact, Conrad was endorsing the Democratic approach, which is to use reconciliation to make small budget-related changes to a health care bill, but not to pass a whole health care bill.
An irked Conrad commented in an interview with Ezra Klein, "I’ve never seen so much misreporting. It’s like they heard the first three sentences of what I said and not the next three." He proceeded to explain it again:
What I’ve said all year is that reconciliation for comprehensive health-care reform wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t work for two reasons. First, the Byrd rule. The Byrd rule says that only things that score for budget purposes can be in a reconciliation package. If they don’t score, or the score is only incidental to the aims of the policy, they’re subject to strike. That would mean the insurance market reforms and delivery reforms would be stricken. And many of us believe them to be the most important part of the bill. So I never thought reconciliation would work for a comprehensive bill. But we don’t need to use reconciliation for the comprehensive bill. That bill passed with the supermajority, with 60 votes, not using reconciliation.
If the House passes that legislation as well, it can go straight to the president. But there’s a potential role for reconciliation in what we call a sidecar. It’s there to improve or perfect the package, and it only will include items that score for budgetary purposes.
Perhaps suspecting that further explanation was required, Conrad proceeded to write a Washington Post op-ed laying out the distinction one more time:
Reconciliation is not being considered for passing comprehensive health-care reform. Major health-care reform legislation passed the Senate without reconciliation on Christmas Eve. If the House now passes that legislation, it can go immediately to President Obama's desk to be signed into law. What the president and others have suggested is that, after the House acts, reconciliation could then be used to pass a much smaller "fixer" bill to allow for modifications to the comprehensive bill that will have passed under regular order.
When I read the op-ed, I figured it had to be totally redundant. What sentient being who's following this closely could not understand it by now? I give you Politico's Mike Allen, writing Saturday:
When Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) made this confusing argument last week on “Face the Nation,” we weren’t sure he was being deliberately disingenuous. It was, in fact, spin. Now, he’s made the same case in a similarly obtuse WashPost op-ed, “Reconciliation is not an option for health-care reform.” Don’t misread it: It’s an Alice-in-Wonderland argument FOR the use of reconciliation as part of the recipe for getting comprehensive health reform to the president’s desk
Confusing? Obtuse? Does Conrad need to stop by Politico's offices with a picture book and some finger puppets? I understand perfectly well how intelligent people who don't follow this debate closely might not catch on to the distinction. But this is what Mike Allen does all day -- and, as I understand it, much of the night and the wee hours of the morning as well. How can anybody still not understand this? I'm at a loss here. Look, there's an endless list of topics I don't understand at all. I went through an entire semester of pre-Calculus in high school and was never able to understand what a function is. I still don't. It's a complicated subject and I was a lazy student. But this reconciliation distinction is easy, and Mike Allen is (legendarily) not lazy. So, what the hell is going on here?
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22 comments
I'm torn between the stupidity and malice thing. I usually feel it's generous, somehow, to assume the former rather than the latter, but since it's in the political interest of the right to keep this issue confused, it's looking more like malice, with the Democrats' now-outdated idea of using reconciliation to pass the entire thing as a handy hook for misleading the public. Or else they're so conservative that they can't understand that sometimes things change. Maybe that also explains the teabaggers and their tricorn hats -- they think Obama is somehow a stooge for King George III, who must clearly still be around because the founding fathers talked about him.
- frippo
March 7, 2010 at 11:53am
When your predominant focus is on personalities, how they came off, other superficial things, and horse race stuff, you spend little time on substance, on how what politicians will actually do on their job will affect millions and billions greatly. Jonathan, I had a three part series on this with suggested solutions that was featured in mark Thoma's links: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2009/10/links-for-2009-10-18.html I hope you can take a look at it sometime.
- serlin
March 7, 2010 at 11:54am
"Hose Bob Schieffer was totally befuddled:" Hoses often get confused.
- bcbaird
March 7, 2010 at 12:06pm
A function integrates the domain with the codomain, one to one, Jonathan. It is an algorithm whereby an output is derived for each input. It is integral to calculus, which was co-invented by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz; calculus deals with infinitesimals and limiting functions. Speaking of complexity, the most difficult subject that I have ever wrestled with is quantum mechanics, which I have immersed myself in for the better part of your lifetime. I still find it mind-bending. Try explaining the Copenhagen interpretation to someone, or an alternative to it, for that matter. In Niels Bohr's quantum Weltanschaaung, each particle is characterized by a wavefunciton, which then "collapses" upon observation. This was an heuristic device to Bohr, but those who take this collapse literally adhere to the many-worlds interpretation. There is seemingly no causality at the quantum level, which offended the determinist Albert Einstein - he famously objected that God does not play dice with the universe; there is no time-directionality, either. Everything is statistical. And yet somehow, the quantum world in its totality yields the macrostructure of time's forward arrow and of an apparent causality, though the young Hume disagreed with this philosophy and simply talked about correlation (I write here of Hume's anti-causality; he lived long before the quantum revolution of the early 20th century). So by comparison, Jonathan, you are absolutely correct: reconciliation is knockdown easy. We certainly have seen a lot of lazy reporting on this procedure, with journalists from the prestige press being unaware even of what exactly reconciliation is. And then too, we are afflicted by the preposterous attempt to be even-handed when it comes to facts and to error. It is not that reconciliation hasn't been used by Republicans in the recent past; it has been and quite often, too. There is an astonishing amnesia on this by the Republicans, who benefit from selective memory. You expect better from the WaPo and the quality papers (I know, the Post under the editorial page editorship of Fred Hiatt challenges the adjective "quality"). To read so much commentary, you would think that the Democrats are attempting to pull off the equivalent of FDR's ill-fated court-packing scheme of 1937. The most recent ludicrous column by Charles Krauthammer asseverates both that Republicans exhibited great knowledge of health care (what was he watching??) at the summit with Obama and that the Democrats are trying to ram an unpopular bill through Congress. A bill - or rather two bills, have already passed the House and the Senate and reconciliation is simply being used for revenue changes to confect a final bill that both Houses can agree on and send to the Oval Office for Barack Obama's signature. There, how hard is that to understand, Mike Allen and Charlie K and legions of ignorant journaliti? Lastly, thank you for the opportunity to vent on this issue and thank you also for your extremely fine reporting on reconciliation and on everything else, too. You are the most talented political journalist of your generation, and in my estimation, of any generation currently writing. I have learned a great deal from you, and your demolition jobs - such as with Ayn Rand and Naomi Klein, are wonders to behold.
- liberal reformer
March 7, 2010 at 1:49pm
Despite reading my above post twice over after finishing, I winced when I noticed that I misspelled "wavefunction"; I caught my error just after I clicked on the send function. For some reason, the spell check didn't catch my error.
- liberal reformer
March 7, 2010 at 1:52pm
The show should really be called "Faze the Nation". Plus, do not try to ascribe any intelligence to many in the press. There is little to any there. They've been programmed into cowering whenever the GOP says "BOO" and parrot their BS.
- tnmats
March 7, 2010 at 4:09pm
LR: I noticed the lack of paragraphs more than "wavefunciton." Mr. Chait: Thanks for correcting the typo - it besmirched an otherwise fine article.
- bcbaird
March 7, 2010 at 4:14pm
Methinks Jonathan doesn't actually read Politico. Nor actually consume any Washington-based newsmedia product. (And good for him if he doesn't; that crap will rot your brain.) Yes, this is what these people do all day, but no, they do not regard understanding process, facts, or policy as part of their mission. They're sports reporters, and the sport is politics, and all that really matters to most of them, including the entire staff of Politico, is who is winning or losing, how they're winning or losing, and what they're saying about winning or losing. Just like how most sports reporters don't actually have the first clue what a pitcher's job is in baseball or when punting is a good idea in football, so most Washington reporters don't have the first clue how Congress actually works or what policy proposals either purport or are likely to do.
- rhubarbs
March 7, 2010 at 4:21pm
It is still an open question whether the "reconciliation side car" can actually amend the underlying Senate health care bill until it is actually signed into law. But lets leave aside all the talk about the dual bill strategy with a reconciliation side care bill for a moment. You and I and even Kent Conrad is not the Senate Parliamentarian who will make the critical judgements on these issues. The real critical question is do the ends justify the means. For many, many months, the American public through town halls, every public opinion poll, and three critical elections culminating with the Mass. Senate race have clearly spoken that they are against the Democratic version of health care reform. If it is ultimately passed and sign into law, it will be repealed before the entitlements begin in 2014. And guess what procedure will be used to accomplish this goal with absolutely no Byrd Rule violations. In 2013, a repeal should be good for about 1.6 trillion of scorable savings which is just what budget hawks like Kent Conrad should appreciate. Senate Conrad should being spending less time worried about reconciliation side cars and more about how this bill will totally blow up the Federal budget. A few points. Yes their is 500 billion in Medicare cuts. However, the ten year SGR doctor fix will is 370 billion leaving just 130 billion of real savings. Plus read CMS Actuary Report by Rick Foster who states categorically that these cuts will never be sustained. The next joke is the cadillac tax. In its original form it saved 250 billion over 10 years. Its next iteration dropped to 150 billion over ten. Now it is down to 35 billion over ten with an implementation date of 2018 (Ha, Ha!). Does anyone believe that this tax will ever be signed into law??? Then there is the 183 billion of HI taxes on high income individuals. Obama and the Democrats want to double count them -- first in the HI Trust Fund and then as savings for the entitlement expansions. What a joke.
- lawphd
March 7, 2010 at 4:26pm
bc- I noticed the lack of sense more than "wavefunciton," but the lack of paragraphs was a close second. Libref makes me want to be a Republican.
- ratnerstar
March 7, 2010 at 5:33pm
lawphd, if it is going to be repealed anyway, then why not let it pass and just run against it. Why the hysterics? Maybe I am wrong, but I think I understand what Allen really means. "It’s an Alice-in-Wonderland argument FOR the use of reconciliation as part of the recipe for getting comprehensive health reform to the president’s desk" I think this means the entire process, the behind doors agreement between the House and Senate to amend the bill through reconciliation after the house bill passes, so if you add the two together House bill passing contingent on reconciliation later, then reconciliation is part of the recipe for passing the whole bill. Now I think labeling it as Alice in Wonderland is full of shit, in Alice normal rules of logic or reason do not apply, but what the Democrats are doing is legal, logical, and reasonable, because if they do do it they will have utterly and completely destroyed the Republicans, notwithstanding the complete and total delusions of lawphd. Sure there laddie, yeah, it will be repealed...mmm hmm, now here is a nice little firetruck to play with and don't bother us adults when we are talking.
- blackton
March 7, 2010 at 6:11pm
I don't think lawphd has a clue what he is talking about, as the phrase "underlying Senate bill" is meaningless. Either there is a Senate bill, or there isn't, and there is -- passed with a fillibuster-proof majority too. Underlying what?
- ironyroad
March 7, 2010 at 6:40pm
Liberal Reformer, even as a Canadian I don't think you have it right. You say (with some unintended irony): "...A bill - or rather two bills, have already passed the House and the Senate and reconciliation is simply being used for revenue changes to confect a final bill that both Houses can agree on and send to the Oval Office for Barack Obama's signature. There, how hard is that to understand...." Your comment suggests that reconciliation will resolve, "confect"?, the two bills that have now been passed by the Senate and the House. But that's not it, I don't think. The differences between the two presently passed bills are beyond budgetary or "scoring" as I understand it. So the idea is for the House to pass the Senate's bill in its present form, (which in fact would make that bill law on Obama signing it and without the need for reconciliation,) but then use reconciliation to pass some fixes, "sidecars", that will: 1. satisfy the House Democrats as a condition of getting them--if they will- to pass the Senate's bill; and 2. meet the "scoring" test so as to fit within reconciliation. No? Anyone?
- basman
March 8, 2010 at 12:52am
There is something I don't understand here. When Obama says he wants to incorporate 4 Republican ideas, or when House Democrats say, as I heard two say today, that they cannot say yay or nay until they see "the final bill" what do they all mean if the plan going forward is in Chait's words: ....Since a bill can't become a law until the exact same bill passes through each chamber of Congress, and Democrats now lack the ability to break a Republican filibuster, they have a different plan. They'll pass the Senate bill through the House. Then, to appease House members who disapprove of certain Senate features, they'll pass a second bill through reconciliation. This will only address budgetary issues -- some taxes will be raised, others lowered, some spending will be rejiggered. In the grand scheme of things, the changes in the reconciliation bill will be minor. As National Review's Rich Lowry has noted, "Only the House vote matters."...? It may be that the two House Democrats I heard today meant they can't say yes or no until they see what the final bill will look like after they see the Senate's promised "fixes" by way of reconciliation (as a matter of items that can be scored). I can understand that. But I'm still left in the dark as to Obama's talk about a 16 page outline incorporating Republican ideas if the Senate bill must pass as is in the first instance unless his offer was made on the condition that Republican intransigence breaks. But, as I say, I'm unclear about that.
- basman
March 8, 2010 at 1:20am
A bill of amendments that incorporates Republican suggestions is not obliged to go through the reconciliation procedure if it is not filibustered. It can pass by the normal majority-rule process. If it is filibustered and the Republican suggestions are themselves consistent with the rules for reconciliation, then they could be adopted regardless of a Republican filibuster (of a bill that includes their suggestions). Or their suggestions could be taken out and the Democratic changes passed via the reconciliation process without being subjected to filibuster. Or the Democratic amendments might be such that it would be politically impossible for all of the Republicans to oppose them and there would be no filibuster or there would be a successful cloture vote to terminate the filibuster. Reconciliation is an alternative to cloture. Nothing more.
- roidubouloi
March 8, 2010 at 8:14am
basman, you're correct, and libref is wrong. To libref's credit, he is wrong in precisely the same way that the entire Washington media and most of the public misunderstands the process, so libref's ignorance of the facts can be understood as common Broderianism. (Broderianism: n. A worldview based on accepting as true the superficial conventional opinion of Washington's elite media/political establishment about itself.) The plan for reconciliation is for the House to pass the Senate bill, at which point the Senate bill will become law, either when the president signs it or after 10 days without his signature. Then the House will pass a reconciliation resolution amending the healthcare reform law, and the Senate will have a limited ability to pass the House resolution with only 51 votes. Reconciliation does not involve confecting a final bill. The Senate bill is the final bill, the reconciliation process would be used to amend the final bill after it has become law. This is not confecting a final bill; it is amending the law. Rather like the process by which the Constitution was ratified only after several states demanded assurances that it would be amended immediately after ratification, which it was.
- rhubarbs
March 8, 2010 at 8:17am
Personally, although I agree with Jonathan's description of the role reconciliation plays in this process, and I am appalled at how the Republicans have misrepresented the matter, I actually find Mr Conrad's as quoted above to be very confusing -- how he can complain about being misunderstood reflects a lack of awareness of his own contribution to the misunderstanding. Neil
- purcellneil
March 8, 2010 at 3:35pm
lawphd: (Where does one get PhDs in law? The higher doctoral degree is a JSD. But I digress.) "Senate race have clearly spoken that they are against the Democratic version of health care reform. If it is ultimately passed and sign into law, it will be repealed before the entitlements begin in 2014." If you are right - assuming the first sentence is comprehensible to anyone - then surely you should be encouraging the passage of the Bill. Bill gets passed, Democrats lose BIG; Bill is repealed in three months. Right? Except that I have a sneaking suspicion that you know, and I know, and I know that you know, and you know that I know that - you get the picture - that in fact, Republicans fear like the plague passage of the Bill because they would not, under any circumstance, run against an actual program, and win. Right now, it is all abstract bullshit about bipartisanship; then, it will be about taking candy from the mouths of children while kicking them in the shin (a Republican speciality) and advertising it (less so).
- icarusr
March 8, 2010 at 5:02pm
LibRef: "calculus, which was co-invented by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz" ... "In Niels Bohr's quantum Weltanschaaung"... "an heuristic device to Bohr" ... "The most recent ludicrous column by Charles Krauthammer asseverates" ... Are you for real? Why do you do this? That dependent clause about the invention of calculus - does it help your argument? Does it advance the point? Or are you seeking to let us know that you know who and how calculus was invented? Or co-invented? What *is* the point? Weltansschauung? Are a German-speaker? Niels Bohr, in discussing Health Care Reform in the US? "Asseverates"? Wow ...
- icarusr
March 8, 2010 at 5:07pm
LibRef: awesome sendup. Except for collapsing the "wavefunciton" and the amendment vs. confection issue, I don't think your run-on had actual factual errors in it (I looked, although maybe you could have snuck one by). icarusr -- you took it seriously and missed the point!
- JEFF FREY
March 9, 2010 at 12:32am
JEFF: Upon second reading, I see your point. I was thrown off, I admit by "asseverates". And by this gem: "(I write here of Hume's anti-causality; he lived long before the quantum revolution of the early 20th century)." After all, without this interjection, I would have thought that the good boy, who has spent most of Chait's life studying quantum mechanics (suddenly, it all makes so much sense) was talking about Jack Hume, the local butcher, and not the other, "young Hume", who lived "long before" ... not just quantum mechanics, but "the quantum revolution of the early 20th century." But I see your point now. If he can fool me, though, then he must be good. Awesome, indeed.
- icarusr
March 9, 2010 at 9:13am
icarus -- even the best can get fooled sometimes!
- JEFF FREY
March 9, 2010 at 3:29pm