Howard Dean, DFA, Launch Campaign Encouraging 51-Vote Health Care Bill. That headline should scare you.

If we ignore the following strategy to stop the 51-vote option to pass healthcare (known as reconciliation), we do so at our country’s peril. It would be a real tragedy if all the battles we have won – the town halls, the march on DC – all the efforts that went into stopping ObamaCare, were for naught. We can still lose the war. This is one way to help guarantee this will not happen, but it will require a little work on the part of the reader to follow closely the arguments below. They are not difficult and can be summarized neatly as follows:

• Reconciliation is a way to require only 50 votes to pass legislation, with the Vice President breaking the tie. It does have downsides, but they can be overcome with future legislation. It only requires patience.
• Think of the below as pressuring Republicans to force the Democrats into a defensive public relations posture – not as a parliamentary maneuver.
• Do NOT allow Republicans to avoid this strategy by claiming it makes them look obstructionist. They have the outline of a bill.
• Keep in mind that reconciliation is possible and no matter what the downsides appear to be, they can be overcome in the future. Anyone who tells you otherwise is politically naive.
• Only the grassroots has the power to make this happen. The same people that marched on DC, went to town halls, and stood up for this country have the power to realize this strategy
• Republicans are not necessarily your friends on this. Lump them together with the Democrats. The only difference is how the strategy is used to pressure each party.

Keep the following in mind as you continue reading: FORCE THE DEMOCRATS TO DEFEND IGNORING A RULE THEY AGREED TO AND THEY HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO GROUND TO STAND ON. You will see this again below.

For completeness, here is a description of Senator Demint’s amendments:

During deliberations on the Senate Budget Resolution earlier this year, Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) introduced a point-of-order amendment that would require a 60-vote majority to pass “any bill, joint resolution, amendment, motion, or conference report that eliminates the ability of Americans to keep their health plan or their choice of doctor (as determined by the Congressional Budget Office).” The Senate approved the DeMint Amendment unanimously.

Subsequently, before the Senate Budget Resolution went to a Conference Committee where differences with the House Budget Resolution were to be worked out, DeMint offered a motion to instruct the Conferees not only to insist on retaining the 60-vote provision in the final Conference Report but also to widen the scope of the provision to cover any provision and so forth that decreases the number of Americans enrolled in private health insurance while increasing the number enrolled in government-managed, rationed health care. The Demint motion to instruct passed the Senate by an overwhelming vote of 79 to 14.

As a matter of congressional comity, the House ordinarily would have been expected to accede to the Senate provision since it affected Senate rules that applied only to the Senate. Remarkably, Senate Budget Committee Chairman, Kent Conrad, allowed the Demint 60-vote requirement to be removed from the Budget Resolution in Conference.

Often, I will hear the tired old argument that these amendments are a non-issue. The false assumptions are usually presented by a detractor mired in parliamentary maneuvering and unaware of the public relations side of the strategy to use the above amendments to stop reconciliation, which would only require 50 votes to pass healthcare reform. The argument goes something like this:

The instruction was not in the Budget Conference Report but it passed anyway. The other amendment appears to rely on a CBO finding that hasn’t happened yet on a bill that hasn’t had a floor vote yet.

Another argument I often hear, and one I myself am guilty of propagating, is that reconciliation would amount to a Swiss cheese approach to legislation, with only some pieces of legislation meeting the criterion for consideration under this maneuver. I won’t go into the details here as to why, there are plenty of articles and posts written on the subject. The author of such an argument often goes on to say that, because of this shortcoming, reconciliation is not to be feared. This is patently false and politically naive. Allow any scaffolding, foundation, or skeleton of ObamaCare to pass via reconciliation and I will bet you the farm that later down the line that Swiss cheese morphs into a full-block of all you eat ObamaCare cheese. Liberals are patient – very patient. Give them the scaffolding and foundation and they will legislate full-blown ObamaCare into existence. It will only be a matter of time. So enough of this “do not fear reconciliation” nonsense. Take it off the table.

Once again it is up to the grassroots to get involved and put serious pressure on the Senate concerning these amendments and make known our expectation that these amendments be adhered to because of the promise by unanimous vote in one case and a vote of 79-14 in the second. If we shame enough Democrats the possibility increases that votes will be lacking in the Senate even for Reconciliation. It is up to the us to pressure Republicans to make this an issue. Republicans, as we all know too well, are prone to rolling over and need prodding on a regular basis. To borrow a Texas phrase, it’s like herding cattle.

The amendments passed. Therefore, if the Senators wish to be seen as men and women of character, they should follow the rules they set out for themselves. No more rules for thee (you and me) but not for me (the elitist politicians). No more spineless non-responses and no more pompous attitudes. If the 9/12 DC march taught Republicans and Democrats anything, it is the grassroots is real, we are big, and we will vote.

Here is an outline of the facts. Here is an outline of how to use the reality that these amendments were voted on in the past with the purpose of stopping reconciliation and preserving minority rights in the Senate to stop Democrats from forcing tremendous changes to 1/6 of our economy.

• The Senate insiders have tried all along to dismiss the DeMint provisions on technical grounds by ignoring the facts that got us to the current situation. The grassroots must be ruthless and relentless in pushing the Republicans to do the right thing and make this an issue.
• It is all about constructing the right narrative.
• If we start listening to excuses from insiders, our movement will be hijacked by the establishment (beltway insiders, including politicians of both parties), which is exactly what they will try to do.
• The establishment’s attempt to hijack the movement is less about elbowing for who gets credit than about herding us so we don’t rock the boat and make life uncomfortable for them. What they fail to realize is they are the cattle and we are the cowboys. We herd them, not the other way around.
• First, by any stretch of the imagination any bill currently under consideration by the Senate satisfies the conditions set down in the original DeMint Amendment that passed by unanimous consent. I would love to debate anyone arguing otherwise.
• We can argue all day whether or not CBO would rule otherwise but that gives up the fight before it even begins. The CBO doesn’t have to rule on anything since the provision has been stripped. I suspect any detractors of this strategy of talking to a Republican insider or getting their information from one second or third hand.
• Of course CBO hasn’t yet ruled whether or not a bill satisfies the DeMint conditions, because it is not law yet. But the pertinent point is that the DeMint Amendment is not law precisely because it was dropped unceremoniously in conference contrary to the will of the Senate as evidenced by a huge bipartisan majority (79 votes). How did that happen? The Senate Budget Committee Chairman who voted for the measure twice on the floor of the Senate and was under instructions from his Senate colleagues to insist on the Senate provision in conference turned his head.
• The establishment would love to make this about a parliamentarian maneuver rather than what it really is – a public relations disaster – one that would force any Senator to explain to their constituents why they voted on an amendment to protect minority rights and stop reconciliation and then subsequently chose to ignore that very vote. This is a favorite technique used to keep strategy control firmly within the hands of the insiders.
• That is why we have to construct the narrative and control it from the outside rather than allowing the insiders to set the terms of the debate.
• This is a very simple story. The Senate made a rule and then broke other rules in the dead of night to throw it in the garbage. The Senate passed a rule committing itself not to consider under reconciliation any healthcare reform bill that satisfied certain conditions. It left it to CBO to determine whether the bill would satisfy those conditions but it is self evident that any bill currently under consideration does satisfy them. The Senate then instructed its conferees to insist on retaining that amendment in conference.
  

  The Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad betrayed his colleagues and acted contrary to their instructions. We know for a fact that it was he because the House conferees had no political purchase on the provision. It could only be stripped out with Conrad’s acquiescence.

• Now someone wants to turn around and argue that the DeMint amendment doesn’t apply because it is no longer in the Budget Resolution and, oh by the way even if it were still in the Budget Resolution it wouldn’t make any difference anyway because CBO would not certify any current bill under consideration as satisfying the conditions established by the amendment.
• Of course the DeMint amendment doesn’t apply, but they had to cheat to strip it so that it wouldn’t apply
• We should not allow ourselves to be conned into defending status quo rules when other rules and long tradition of the Senate had to be broken to get us to this status quo – this is so Republican.
• Instead, we should be arguing that the Senate should abide by the rule it adopted for itself anyway because it should still be in the resolution and would be in the resolution if the Democrats hadn’t played games and the Republicans hadn’t slept through them.
• As for CBO, we must simply assert that the only way CBO could possibly not certify a bill as satisfying the conditions of the amendment is if they were being manipulated by the Democrats. This is not as far fetched as you think. Recall Obama met with the CBO director – the first time a President has ever done that.

In closing:

• The Republicans have the rules and the politics on their side, and they have simply been unwilling to pick up the ball and run with it just as they were unwilling to fight ObamaCare and RINOCare until we made it impossible for them not to.
• We have to stick the ball in their hands and push them out front so either they run with it or get crushed. We have to re-focus the debate on fairness, abiding by the rules.
• We have an ally. Oddly enough, Democrat Robert C. Byrd provides us the best arguments for not passing healthcare reform under Reconciliation.

The establishment knows how to play the game and that is why they take us to the cleaners on a regular basis – in the past. Now its our turn. Spin cycle anyone?

It’s up to us, the grassroots. We can’t go all wobbly on America now.

The American people will want to know why was it stripped to begin with? More importantly, why wouldn’t the Senate abide by its own rule? The House has no say in it. FORCE THE DEMOCRATS TO DEFEND IGNORING A RULE THEY AGREED TO. THEY HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO GROUND TO STAND ON.

Kill ObamaCare. Hit the reset switch. Then we can do it right. Simple free-market solutions exist which can drive down costs without liberty destroying legislation that favors big government and/or big business and without the budget busting price tag attached to all these proposals.


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This entry was posted on Monday, September 21st, 2009 at 3:27 pm and is filed under General Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.