McConnell's Obamacare gambit

In a session with about a dozen senior GOP aides last month, the staff director for Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee privately laid out various scenarios that could occur when the Senate’s parliamentarian weighs in on the GOP’s Obamacare moves.

And the conservative Senate Steering Committee has put together three giant binders of information detailing the budget wars dating back to 1986, turning piles of data into a 28-page PowerPoint presentation being distributed to senators and staff laying out the kinds of procedural hurdles that could thwart their efforts. The process they are considering, known as “reconciliation,” has been used by Congress in the past to avoid a minority’s filibuster of controversial bills, including Obamacare itself.

While no one believes repealing the Affordable Care Act is feasible with President Barack Obama still in office, Republicans are eager to use a special procedure that might let them kill at least a large piece of the law — potentially the Medicaid expansion, subsidies for purchasing health insurance or even the individual mandate — with only a simple majority.