Reid Open To Fast-Tracking Health Overhaul

WASHINGTON — Majority Leader Harry Reid indicated Wednesday he's willing to move sweeping health care legislation through the Senate with a procedural maneuver that would block a GOP filibuster. The prospect of the controversial tactic has already ignited Republicans' ire, and key Senate Democratic chairmen have said they don't want to do it.

Reid, D-Nev., took a different position on a conference call with reporters.

"I think it's something we need to consider," Reid said.

At issue is a so-called reconciliation bill, which could pass with a simple majority of 51 votes and without Democrats fearing a GOP filibuster. Democrats would struggle to gather 60 votes needed to break a filibuster for something as complex as a plan to meet President Barack Obama's goal of overhauling the nation's health care system to cover 48 million uninsured Americans.

Revising health care via reconciliation has been viewed favorably by House Democrats. The House Budget Committee included language providing for the method in its annual budget resolution released Wednesday. Reconciliation is not favored by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and was not part of his committee's plan.

White House officials reiterated Wednesday that it's not their preferred method but they don't want to take it off the table.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., is attempting to write a bipartisan health care bill with his committee's top Republican, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. Baucus has said he doesn't want to resort to reconciliation.

"We have to give this bipartisan effort of Sen. Baucus a shot," Reid said, before enumerating the ways reconciliation could be done: either in a House-Senate conference committee convened to merge the chambers' budget resolutions, or by having the Senate pass a second budget resolution.

"There are a number of different ways that can be accomplished, if in fact we decide we need to do that," Reid said.

Reid also offered a novel proposal for paying for redoing the nation's health system.

He suggested using $646 billion that would be collected under a controversial Obama proposal to auction off greenhouse gas pollution allowances.

"That's exactly how much we need for the first phase of health care reform," Reid said.

Obama wants to use the $646 billion to cover extending his middle-class tax cuts _ a $400 tax credit for workers and $800 for couples _ beyond 2010. That tax cut for two years was part of the $787 billion stimulus bill Congress passed last month.

Comments

[JimR]

So the most signficant health-care reform legislation in the history of the United States, and we are going to limit debate on it and ram it down people's throats.

This can't possibly end well.

[FightingTheRight]

It's a way around the obstructionist Republicans, who still, after all these years of it being proven wrong, believe that a for profit, free market health insurance industry running things, will bring the cost down and increase availabililty.

[Icantbelieveher]

It wouldn't be necessary if republicans would stop blocking everything at all costs! They know that if President Obama is able to pass health care reform, it will be a cold day in he11 before they ever get the majority or the white house ever again!

[greatlardini]

Just for this once, Senator Reid, grow a pair and do it! Point out to the GOP that they did this same thing many times over the past few years, and if they don't like it--T.S.!!­!!!!!!!

[IowaKid]

Amen...... Senator Reid DON'T let us down again.

[JimR]

Well, that's mature. "Oh yeah, well you poopyheads did it! So there!"

[aOsO]

Do it Reid!

[joebloe]

Don't forget

Years Republican majority used budget reconciliation to avoid filibuster
1980,
1981, 1982, 1983, 1985, 1986, 1987,
1989, 1990,
1993, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000,
2001, 2003, 2005

[1dogs2]

Not only did they use it, but they used it to pass the very measures that led in large part to the present economic meltdown, including, e.g., Reagan's tax cuts for billionaires as part of his disastrously stupid "trickle-down" theory of economics.

Come on, Harry. Don't "consider" it. DO IT. It's called "karma."

[Nonamnesiac]

What goes into a Budget Reconciliation Act shouldn't be limited to health care and the budget. Reregulation, EFCA, green jobs, global warming and everything else in the Obama agenda must be included in the next Budget Reconciliation Act so they go up and down on a 51 vote instead of a 60 vote majority. And majority forces within the Democratic coalition (Labor, environmentalists, civil rights forces, womens movement forces, etc.) should quietly but undeniably set the so-called Democratic Party" centrists" (servants of the financial institutions and corporations) right about how they must vote -- both to include everything in the Budget Reconciliation Act for a 51 vote instead of 60 and how they must vote once those items are in the Budget Reconciliation Act.

[SurrealPumpkin]

The health care plan is the one that's at risk. Reconciliations have a draw back, they're temporary, only last 5 years, so it's really just pushing the debate down the road.