The two chambers of Congress still remain adversarial over their competing healthcare reform bills, and current events are keeping things looking hairy. Tomorrow, a crucial Senate race will be decided in the state of Massachusetts over the deceased (long-term Democrat stronghold) Ted Kennedy’s open seat. Today, however, the White House and its Democratic allies are quickly and aggressively rallying the troops for a battle plan to safeguard their hard-won healthcare proposal from disaster in the event that a Republican candidate wins and enables the Republican Party to block the Senate from moving further on the insurance plan.
Should Republican candidate Scott Brown beat Democrat Martha Coakley in the special election tomorrow, the House Democrats will be in the unenviable position of being compelled to approve the bill that the Senate passed last month in spite of their multiple deal-breaking objections to it. The empty Massachusetts seat holds the potential to become the crucial forty-first Republican Senate voice that the GOP needs to filibuster the healthcare measure and sink the House/Senate medical insurance compromise that has been so delicately spun together for months. It’s well known that Republicans are not fans of the Obama administration’s healthcare initiative, and have been praying for an excuse to shoot it down before final passage. Should Brown pull off a victory, this could be their fateful chance to do just that.
President Obama himself appeared at a rally for Coakley in Boston yesterday, seemingly well-aware that the initiative that has to date defined his whole administration is at risk. Telling supporters that he needs them “more fired up in this election” than in any before, Obama admitted that the whole future of the country’s healthcare policy could hang in the balance: “whether we’re going forward or going backwards,” in other words. Massachusetts has long been a Democratic stronghold, but the fact remains that voters are dispirited in these troubled times. Brown intelligently downplayed his party affiliation during the campaign process as a Republican siding with special interest groups, and Coakley has run something of a nasty campaign at times. It’s hard to say whether the people of Massachusetts will go the same way that they normally do.
The Senate bill remains a tough sell for House Democrats. The more liberal of the base believe strongly that the Senate bill is nowhere near progressive enough to constitute true reform. In not providing for the creation of a public healthcare plan, it goes against a lot of what liberals had hoped for. Many say that the plan does not go nearly far enough. Through the Senate’s version of healthcare reform, only ninety-four percent of all Americans would be covered and provided with health insurance, as compared with ninety-six percent under the House’s version of the same. The Senate plan would place an unpopular tax on so-called “Cadillac” healthcare insurance plans, like those enjoyed by union members and corporate executives, to raise money. In lieu of this, the House bill would raise money by raising taxes on millionaires – a provision very popular with middle-class America.
Because of the major disputes between the House and Senate versions of the bill, Democrats on both sides assumed that the two houses would eventually merge the bills to combine the best parts of both. If Coakley wins the Massachusetts seat, this compromise seems very likely to happen at this point. If Republicans win the day tomorrow, however, those dreams will have to die since there will no longer be enough Democrats in the Senate to guarantee passage of any healthcare bill. House Democrats would have to suck up their regrets and reservations and accept the Senate healthcare bill exactly as-is and without any chances, since the bill at this point could be passed with the House’s approval to President Obama for a final signature without going back to the Senate and risking being thrown out.
The House’s last chance at a bill that would meet everyone’s approval would have to come under a complicated process called budget reconciliation. The Senate could be compelled to make changes to the law by the House with a simple majority, but there are plenty of problems with taking that approach. House Democrats are already testy about changes that the Senate insisted upon in their bill, and might just get vindictive and decide that they’d rather have no reform at all than to suck up the Senate’s bill. Also, some moderate Democrats might jump ship if they see a GOP member sitting in Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat.
Republicans are actively calling the House’s bluff, saying that Democrats will never settle for the Senate’s highly contentious version of the healthcare bill even if Brown does take the Senate seat in Massachusetts. But Democrats risk so much more if they do not take action – what message would that send to the voters who voted to put Democrats in control of the House, Senate, and White House back in November? Obviously, the race has not yet been decided. But the Obama administration and his closest allies are reportedly considering several options in the event that Coakley loses.
One option would undoubtedly incite a political firestorm and criticisms of sneakiness, but Congress could rapidly try to negotiate a compromise between House and Senate Democrats over the bill before Brown were to be sworn into office. On the plus side, a bill better than the current Senate proposal might be made law. On the negative side, Republicans would have even more fuel with which to attack Democrats with their accusations of a lack of transparency in the law-making process. Also, Democrats could try to get at least one Republican to cast the all-important sixtieth Senate vote. Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine is considered the closest thing the GOP has to a fence-sitter, but not everyone is sure that she’d actually cave and vote against her party’s line. Or, lastly, everyone could start over and pass a new, scaled-back health bill using budget reconciliation, which requires a simple majority of Senate votes that Democrats could easily achieve. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has again and again refused to call for a House vote on the Senate’s version and gossip says that Washington officials have raised concerns about asking the rank and file to vote on a bill containing provisions that might prove problematic in the midterm elections. Nobody wants to approve a less-than-satisfactory measure with their own reelection on the line in November, even if the future of American healthcare hangs in the balance.
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