Reconciliation Farce

So as I understand it, and I could be wrong, the House has to pass the Senate bill as it stands and the President has to sign it into law. Then, and only then, can the Senate take up the issue under "reconciliation".

So here is the problem as I see it. Once the house votes for the Senate bill as written and the President signs it into LAW, what motivation is there to revisit the issues the house democrats have with the bill? This is a big wink and nod from a President that does not have a very good reputation of telling the truth or acting consistently on any issue. Do you really think the Senate is going to spend any political capital on a bill that is already law?

In the end the Senate may just give in an stop trying and guess what? The Senate bill will be law. That is of course if the house democrats that have issues with the Senate bill are stupid enough to buy the wink and nod.

The Reconciliation Game | Erick's blog: "The Reconciliation Game

Posted by Erick Erickson (Profile)

Thursday, March 4th at 10:27AM EST
19 Comments

For all the talk about the Republicans having used reconciliation more than the Democrats, it is important to remember a few things:

* Each time reconciliation was used, it was used to fix legislation already enacted into law.
* What the Democrats want to do is use reconciliation to fix legislation before it is enacted into law.

And guess what? The Senate Parliamentarian is telling everybody that won’t work. According to the Parliamentarian, reconciliation can only apply to fix legislation already signed into law by the President.

In other words, Blue Dogs in the House are going to have to actually pass the Senate legislation, have Barack Obama sign it into law, then hope the Democrats still want to fix the legislation and that the fix is deemed only a deficit neutral financial fix for purposes of reconciliation.

There are a lot of ifs in that scenario."