Senate parliamentarian: House must pass — and Obama must sign — Reid’s bill first

Rep. Paul Ryan says that Democrats are ready to ram a “shell” health care bill through the Budget Committee, on which he serves as ranking Republican member, to use as a vehicle to impose national health care.

In a phone interview with TAS Thursday afternoon, Ryan said that he expects Democrats to begin the complex process on Monday, under which they would have the Budget Committee approve a phantom bill by midnight, which they will then send over to the Rules Committee. At that point, the Rules Committee will strip out all of the language in the phantom bill, and insert the changes to the Senate bill that Democrats have negotiated.

“They don’t have the votes right now, but they’re creating the vehicle so that they can airdrop in whatever changes they want,” Ryan said.

He said that Republicans are outnumbered 2-to-1 on his committee and don’t have the votes to stop the bill there. Democrats will also be able to prevent Republicans from offering any amendments, but GOP members will be able to offer “motions to instruct” the Rules Committee, that Ryan said will be used highlight problems with the “unprecedented” step that Democrats are taking.

He said he expected Democrats to dust off last year’s health care bills from the Education and Labor and Ways and Means Committees, to use as the vehicle for reconciliation changes.

Ryan said that the Senate parliamentarian’s ruling that President Obama must sign a health care bill into law before the Senate can change it through reconciliation largely renders moot the attempt by Rep. Louise Slaughter to shield members from a direct vote on the Senate health care bill. He said the idea would also violate Obama’s call for an up-or-down vote. “That’s not an up-or-down vote, that’s sweeping it under the rug and into law,” Ryan said.

He also warned against focusing too much on the reconciliation process in the Senate. “Reconciliation is a distraction,” he said. “Once the House passes the Senate bill we have the massive new entitlement.”

Amspec blog.

Wethal on March 11, 2010 at 5:36 PM

As far as I understand the shell bill bit, wouldn’t the Senate bill be changed in the House, so the Senate would have to vote on it again by regular procedure, and get past cloture? It doesn’t sound like the House is voting on the unchanged Senate version.

Wethal on March 11, 2010 at 5:38 PM

“Here’s what they’ll do: They will take the House health-care bill and mark it up so that it can become a reconciliation vehicle. Republicans will make runs at this via motions to instruct, but since we’re outnumbered, their package will get through the committee. Then they’ll send that shell of a bill to the House Rules Committee. The rules committee will then gut the budget committee’s reconciliation bill and drop in all of the deals that Speaker Pelosi arranges with members who vote for the Senate health-care bill in the House.” Those deals, he adds, “will be hard to scrutinize, and we may never know their full extent, since many of them will be orchestrated outside of health-care legislation.”

Regardless of how bad a reconciliation package looks, Ryan says it is the passage of the Senate bill in the House that troubles him the most. “The Senate parliamentarian made it clear today,” he says. “The Senate bill has to become law before reconciliation can be taken up in the Senate. Knowing this, the Democrats are doing whatever they can to convince House members to walk the plank. But let’s be very clear: If the Senate bill passes in the House, it’s not just some setup for reconciliation — it’s a huge, new federal entitlement that’ll be signed into law.”

“To get that, they need to make promises to members about what’ll come next, so look for them to thread the needle on policy changes and abortion in the budget and rules committees,” Ryan says. “Reconciliation is a distraction for the Democratic leadership — something to talk about with members while keeping their eye on the main prize, which is passing the Senate bill.”

NRO.

Apparently this new bill is the reconciliation one, and the House Dem leadership still thinks it can pass the unchanged Senate version, and hide all the crooked deals in other bills, so they are not obvious, like the Cornhusker Kickback, etc., were in the text of the Senate bill.

Waxman was bragging that they had the votes for the Senate bill.

Still don’t see how reconciliation gets through the Senate, so the original Senate bil is signed by Obama and becomes law. So the fixes must just be bribes to get them to vote for the Senate version, without Stupak.

Wethal on March 11, 2010 at 5:52 PM