Political Hay
Irreconcilable Differences
What Kent Conrad could learn from Robert Byrd.
This week, there was a major development that could give one political party carte blanche to remake the country’s health care system. No, it was not Arlen Specter’s decision to bolt the Republican Party and caucus with Senate Democrats. For the time being, at least, Specter remains an unreliable supporter of President Obama’s domestic agenda.
Instead a procedural vote occurring with much less fanfare increased the likelihood of a federal government takeover of health care. Both houses of Congress passed a $3.5 trillion budget resolution. Included in the conference report was reconciliation language that would allow health care legislation to be rammed through the expedited budgetary process with no amendments, no filibusters, and minimal debate.
The fun won’t necessarily stop with health care reform. In addition to restructuring the 17 percent of the American economy represented by health care, reconciliation authority could also be used to raise taxes and revamp the energy sector via cap and trade. No filibusters allowed, just 20 hours of debate before the final up-and-down vote. As few as 50 Democratic senators plus Vice President Joe Biden would be necessary to prevail.
Reconciliation was designed as part of the Budget Act of 1974 to help the federal government save money and reduce deficits. Republicans, no strangers to legislative shenanigans themselves, have used the fast-track process to cut taxes, reform welfare, and drill the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But health care reform has legal implications beyond the budget and will cost vast sums of money.
That’s why some leading Democrats didn’t think it was a good idea to use the reconciliation process for health care reform. One of them was Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who hails from a state carried by George W. Bush and John McCain. For months, Conrad argued that the normal Senate rules should be followed.
“I’ve been as clear as I can be publicly and privately that I don’t think reconciliation is the right way to write fundamental reform legislation,” the Wall Street Journal quoted Conrad as saying. “It wasn’t designed for that purpose.” Conrad was similarly emphatic when interviewed on ABC’s This Week.
“Well, look, I have said for weeks, I don’t think it would be wise to use the reconciliation process to write major legislation, reform legislation,” he said. “That’s not what reconciliation was designed for. It was designed purely for deficit reduction.”
As a member of the conference committee that approved the final budget outline, Conrad was in a position to do more than opine on the wisdom of using reconciliation to force through major legislation. He was in a position to stop it. Yet he meekly acquiesced to Democratic leaders, who may crow that they are nearing a filibuster-proof Senate majority but don’t seem to want to take any chances.
It didn’t have to end up this way. In 1993, a new Democratic president wanted to use reconciliation to pass his wife’s ambitious health care reform plan. Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W. Va.), the powerful champion of the Senate Appropriations Committee and defender of Senate traditions, went to the White House and told Bill Clinton: Not gonna happen.
Byrd pointed out to the president that reconciliation was designed to save money, not spend it, to hammer out the federal budget, not federalize one-seventh of the American economy. Clinton backed down. Writes Jennie Kronenfeld in The Changing Federal Role in U.S. Health Care Policy, “The failure to convince Byrd to add the health care plan to the reconciliation bill may have doomed the reform.”
When it comes to Obama’s health care and cap-and-trade plans, the old man still hasn’t changed his mind. In April, Byrd wrote that such a use of reconciliation “would violate the intent and spirit of the budget process and do serious injury to the Constitutional role of the Senate.” He continued: “Reconciliation was intended to adjust revenue and spending levels in order to reduce deficits. It was not designed to cut taxes. It was not designed to create a new climate and energy regime, and certainly not to restructure the entire health care system.”
For this reason, Byrd voted against the budget resolution. While he is no longer in a position to do much to halt the process, a rule bearing his name does offer some potential for containing the damage. Senators will be allowed to challenge provisions of the legislation as extraneous to the budget process. If the procedural objection is upheld, the item will be stripped from the bill unless a filibuster-like supermajority of 60 senators waives the Byrd Rule.
Robert Byrd won’t be remembered as a champion of liberty and limited government. But his stalwart defense of Senate traditions and public debate has often put a brake on both parties’ ambitions. Would that Kent Conrad and today’s senior Democrats show similar resolve.
About the Author
W. James Antle, III, author of the new book Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped?, is editor of the Daily Caller News Foundation and a senior editor of The American Spectator. You can follow him on Twitter @jimantle.
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jack| 5.1.09 @ 6:28AM
Isnt Conrad one of the Countrywide 6? He took bribes from the tan man to look the other way as countrywide sold all their sub prime and fraudulent mortgages to fannie. this low life destroyed the US financial system for a few thousand bucks a year!
Robert| 5.1.09 @ 10:49AM
Such usurpation of legislative process to Rahm through socialism must be challenged in the courts! This stealth nationalization through budget reconciliation cannot be allowed to become established law. There is NO limit to what the socialists will attempt to do through this reconciliation process if they succeed.
Precedence is 9/10ths of the law and the Supreme Court will not challenge precedence. The trick is to PREVENT precedence from happening!
Nick in Virginia| 5.1.09 @ 10:59AM
When the Republicans were contemplating the "nuclear option" for ratification of judicial appointments ONLY, it seems to me that virtually every Democrat and every left-wing news reporter (I know, that's redundant) were having conniptions over such an abuse of power. It was finally settled by McCain, Graham, and a bunch of Democrats in the "Gang of 14".
How is this "reconciliation" any different than the nuclear option?
And I can guarantee you the Democrats won't reciprocate on McCain's "Gang of 14". They'll just say "Too bad, sucker" and go their merry way.
JP| 5.1.09 @ 11:01AM
Unfortunately Robert this isn't a legal matter, but a procedural one. The Constitution says nothing about filibustering. There was a time when both Houses of Congress had filibuster laws. The House dropped it I believe in 1902 or 1903. The Senate, always mindfull of its tradition as the "World's Greatest Deliberative Body", kept it in place. Reconciliation was intended only as a tool of last resort. In the past, even partisans as diverse as Mitchell and Dole were loathe to use it.
My own take on this is one of pessismism. The current generation of senior liberal lawmakers come from a group known for its destruction (Baby-Boomers). Power is the only thing they know and understand (not to mention money).
What is good for the goose is good for the gander. My fear is that a backlash will evolve; first with the electorate, and then with a future crop of newly elected Republicans. The average Joe does not follow events, and therefore has no idea what is in store for him/her. What the President and his party do not quite realize is that they are imposing an entire new paradigm on everything from finance, healthcare, and energy (and soon taxes). When it finally hits home, a very large segment of this nation will sour on not only the Dems but the President as well.
Paybacks can be painful. Esp in politics.
Son Of Sam | 5.1.09 @ 11:16AM
You've hit on it precisely, JP! The ObamaNazis want to put people on trial because they were "too rough" on bomb throwing terrorist scum? Well then, its trials for all of THEM when their turn comes. Just as Hitler got crushed for trying to beat us into submission, so we must do the same to his modern day heirs, the so called "progressives"
I say that we don't rest until every America hating liberal scumbag is in the ground, in prison or in exile.
stay strong until freedom dawns
Son Of Sam
http://www.geocities.com/samadamssos
Blacque Jacques Shellacque| 5.1.09 @ 12:33PM
Republicans, no strangers to legislative shenanigans themselves, have used the fast-track process to cut taxes, reform welfare, and drill the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
That sure worked out pretty well, didn't it?
Marc Jeric| 5.1.09 @ 1:29PM
The cost of health care (this should be called sickness care) approaches $3 trillion/year. Half of that cost is due to trial lawyers who can sue anybody but, if losing, bear no cost. Ours is the only civilized country where anybody can sue but suffers no cost wnen losing. Malpractice insurance and defensive medicine, together with fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, not to forget free medicine for illegal aliens, take almost one half of the total health care cost. Japan, Germany, and Great Britain together have some 35,ooo lawyers - we here have over one million lawyers! But then a lawyer losing a suit in one of these countries must automatically pay all costs, direct and indirect, of the defendent and the court.
Anthony| 5.1.09 @ 2:54PM
JP, You are correct about the Constitition and its silence on the use of filibusters. Unfortunately, and especially with Obama in charge, and retirements announced, I must still maintain that the use of a filibuster for judicial nominees is unconstitutional. As I've said hear at TAS, the use of an arcade Senate rule for cloture, requiring 60 votes to obtain a vote to confirm a judicial nominee runs afoul of Art.2 Sec.2, which requires a simple majority vote.
That said, since I'm a nobody with no say in this matter, if Republicans have the guts to do the same to Obama, as D's and the gang of 14 did to Bush, I say go for it. It's time we conservatives took a page out of the leftists playbook. The ends justify the means!! Power to the People!!! Obama lied people died!!!
Anthony| 5.1.09 @ 2:57PM
Sorry, that's arcane rule, not arcade. Stop the war, stop the lies!!!
JP| 5.1.09 @ 3:58PM
Anthony,
I agree with you, in that the filibuster was never established to interfere with the President's duties and obligation to appoint justices and judges. I was mainly thinking of legislation in general. It is too bad that there is probably only a few on SCOTUS who would agree (maybe Scalia and Thomas. I don't know about Alito and Roberts).
The Democrats are opening up a pandora's box, from which there will only be more mischief. Our whole system of federalism is vanishing, and being replaced with nothing more than a pure, brutish, Neitzschean power struggle.
My guess is that there will be many new faces in the GOP in years to come, and they won't those "moderates" which the Dems loved to kick around. With all of the old rules and traditions gone, there will be little holding them back. And it will be difficult for the Dems to complain after the shennanigans of Pelosi and Reid.
A Bunker| 5.1.09 @ 7:56PM
America will pay for letting a African in the White House. Letting a black have all that power is going to destroy the country, now we have socialism and soon fascism.
whiterb| 5.1.09 @ 10:01PM
The GOP could sure use a couple or three RINOS right now. Gordon Smith, Dewine, Sununu, Dole, Heather Wilson(A SURE WINNER IN NEW MEXICO CLUB FOR GROWTH-YA wrecked THAT seat too. Look at you silly dopes crying in your beer, dreaming of some big surge in 2010. Still believing some rotund, cigar chomping, delusional college drop out who lives the most detached from reality existence imaginable is gonna lead you to the promise land. Will SOMEBODY start a third party for real. We gotta save America. The GOP is stuck on stupid.
Frankg| 5.2.09 @ 2:00AM
Bunker...
I don't care what he looks like or where he's from I don't agree with what he DOING.
If I wasn't excited about the first black president from the left, its because all the backhanded remarks, put-downs and insults hurled by the left at conservatives/republicans of color over the years.
Obama takes your mama| 5.2.09 @ 2:23AM
The fun won't necessarily stop with health care reform. In addition to restructuring the 17 percent of the American economy represented by health care, reconciliation authority could also be used to raise taxes and revamp the energy sector via cap and trade. "
Thats good fucking news. This article is only good news. For once you did it right.
Hey, I know there is a much more popular UK site with the same name, but just forget them, theyre jerks.
Frankg is a baby ass| 5.2.09 @ 2:27AM
If I wasn't excited about the first black president from the left, its because all the backhanded remarks, put-downs and insults hurled by the left at conservatives/republicans of color over the years.
Jesus Frank G, get out your hankie. Now, cry into it.
Hey, let me ask you this FrankG, what is the difference between a conservatives/republicans of color?? The difference is that you are a racist! You win, afterall you read this site. It's no surprise. Do you get it? You actually said this:
conservatives/republicans of color...
You just fucked yourself in the ass
Frankg is a baby ass| 5.2.09 @ 2:27AM
If I wasn't excited about the first black president from the left, its because all the backhanded remarks, put-downs and insults hurled by the left at conservatives/republicans of color over the years.
Jesus Frank G, get out your hankie. Now, cry into it.
Hey, let me ask you this FrankG, what is the difference between a conservatives/republicans of color?? The difference is that you are a racist! You win, afterall you read this site. It's no surprise. Do you get it? You actually said this:
conservatives/republicans of color...
You just fucked yourself in the ass
Frankg licks dicks| 5.2.09 @ 2:34AM
conservatives/republicans of color
!!!
Frankg licks dicks | 5.2.09 @ 2:39AM
conservatives/republicans of color. Man you just maede it all clear. A republican of color can never be a conservative. Now we know why they all vote against you, even though you are the southern party. Yeah, cause you hate their guts. Its all so clear now.
!!!
Frankg licks cunts | 5.2.09 @ 2:41AM
conservatives/republicans of color. Man you just made it all clear. A republican of color can never be a conservative. Now we know why they all vote against you, even though you are the southern party. Yeah, cause you hate their guts. Its all so clear now.
!!!
Antle IV| 5.2.09 @ 2:45AM
These differences are irreconcilable William. Take your party and go down to no one gives a shit Gerogia and fuck yourself in the ass. See ya William, but I know you'll love it.
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