In what some are declaring an historic vote and after 24 consecutive days of debate, the United States Senate has voted 60-39 to pass their version of health care reform. It will now go to be reconciled with the version passed earlier this year by the House of Representatives. That process could take until mid-February and there are signs that members of both the House and the Senate are not willing to accept the other’s version without major changes. Here is what one Senator had to say.

North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad, chair of the Budget Committee, has already warned that if the final bill “isn’t close to the Senate bill, there will be no way to get the 60 votes here” to shut off debate and pass the final product. But many House members, led by Michigan Rep. John Conyers, are insisting on major changes in the Senate’s version.

If the usual reconciliation steps are taken, this is clearly not going to be an easy process.

As noted in an earlier article, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid did a pretty clever song and dance routine to get the 60 votes he needed to shut off debate and bring the bill to the final vote. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi did the same thing as she barely gathered the votes to pass the House version by a slim margin of five votes. Where will it leave them if they have to go through the tedious conference committee process of getting enough votes to pass a final version through their respective part of Congress?

According to an article from the Wall Street Journal, they may both be willing to bypass the usual conference committees and negotiate the final version behind closed doors. If that happens, I think I can safely promise you this. After seeing how Harry Reid worked the reluctant members of the Senate to get the needed votes and how Nancy Pelosi strong-armed the House version into being, do you know anyone who actually trusts these two? Public support for these reforms, which has already slipped drastically, will take another nosedive.  Here is what they are likely to do, starting with some background on how the Democrats have worked the reconciliation process before.

When Democrats took over Congress in 2007, they increasingly did not send bills through the regular conference process. “We have to defer to the bigger picture,” explained Rep. Henry Waxman of California. So the children’s health insurance bill passed by the House that year was largely dumped in favor of the Senate’s version. House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel and other Democrats complained the House had been “cut off at the knees” but ultimately supported the bill. Legislation on lobbying reform and the 2007 energy bill were handled the same way — without appointing an actual conference.

Rather than appoint members to a public conference committee, those measures were “ping-ponged” — i.e. changes to reconcile the two versions were transmitted by messenger between the two houses as the final product was crafted behind closed doors solely by the leadership. Many Democrats grumbled at the secrecy. “We need to get back to the point where we use conference committees . . . and have serious dialogue,” said Rep. Artur Davis of Alabama at the time.

But serious dialogue isn’t what Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid are interested in right now. Look for the traditional conference committee to be replaced by a “ping-pong” game in which health care is finalized behind closed doors with little public scrutiny before the bill is rushed to the floor of each chamber for a final vote.

So now we have two versions of health care reform, both of which are drastically different than the other. Some members of the Senate say they can not vote for the final passage of a bill that is not close to their own and certainly not for a version that is close to that of the House. The same is being said by members of the House in reference to the Senate’s version.

Both Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid have already shown their disdain for the American people in the way they have handled this process. Even so, they may have to resort to going behind closed doors, if they hope to produce a final version of health care for President Obama to sign. If they do so, all bets are off as to what the final version will look like and their disdain for the American people and for the legislative process will be even more evident. I shudder to think of what they may come up with.

For more information on the rift that is growing and what may possibly happen, go to America’s Watchtower.

Tags: Congress, Harry Reid, Health Care Reform, House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, President Obama, Reconciliation Process, United States Senate

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 24th, 2009 at 6:36 am and is filed under News/Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.