WASHINGTON, DC -- Virtually all of the oxygen in Washington, DC went to congressional action on health care, and the Sunshine State played a rather dominate role in this legislative process.
First, Florida received major TV airtime when the U.S. Senate was debating the health care bill last December. It was then that the "gator special" deal was born. That deal, negotiated by Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, was included in the Senate health care bill in exchange for his vote last Christmas Eve. The "gator special" allows Florida Medicare recipients, who signed up for Medicare Advantage, to stay in the program, while retirees on Medicare in every other state would lose the option. It is my understanding that this "gator special" will be dropped if the Senate and House pass an anticipated health care correction bill later in this very messy legislative process. I will outline this rather bizarre legislative process further.
Secondly, there's the role of our attorney general to consider. Attorney General Bill McCollumis planning to launch alegal challenge to the constitutionality of the health care bill, believing the mandate to force everyone to purchase health insurance violates our U.S. Constitution. McCollum was quoted saying: "I have grave concerns about the constitutionality of this mandate, and I invite other attorneys general to join this investigation."
I spoke to somefriends at the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) Friday morning. They told me they expected huge support for the McCollum initiative.
Now, let me outline how this health care bill might be passed and signed into law in the coming week.
The House already has in its chambers the Senate-passed health care bill. This is the bill the Senate passed with the "gator special" among other sweetheart deals,on Christmas Eve. The House of Representatives needs to change the Senate-passed bill to remove some of thesweetheart deals and add more budget items. However, the normal process of amending the Senate bill with House changes and passing the bill back to the Senate for their approval won't work in this new environment. You see, the Senate lost its 60-vote filibuster-proof membership with the January 2010 election of Sen. ScottBrown, R-Massachusetts, who filled the vacancy caused by the death of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy.
Since returning the bill back to the Senate with House changes will cause a GOP filibuster it looked like the health care bill would die. However, Speaker Nancy Pelosi decided to use a budget procedure known as reconciliation to create a second bill designed to correct the Senate health care bill, so that her members could vote for it and send it off to the president for his signature.
This reconciliation procedure creates a bill with some nice features, one of which is that it only requires50 votes (Vice President Joe Biden could break the tie) to pass. Another very nice feature is that a time limit for debate is set at 20 hours.However, there is a glitch to this process too. After the 20-hour debate, senators may still offer amendments. They just can't debate them, because the debate time will have run out.
So, typically, the Senate will grant 30 seconds for the presenters of any amendments to describe the text and then a vote occurs. This can result in days and days of back-to-backroll call votes, creating what is known as vote-a-rama. Another glitch to this process is the fact that the speaker is going to have to ask her members to approve the Senate health care bill, thus sending it to the POTUS for signature into law -- before the Senate can consider and pass the reconciliation-correction bill.
Faith and trust are at a premium in DC this weekend and will be all next week as Congress puzzles through this process. But, that isn't theonly glitch. With the speaker having to beg 216 members of the House to trust her, and to also trust the Senate, in this two-step legislative process,she is considering passing a rules gimmick, so that when her members vote to pass the corrections bill, that vote would count as the vote on the overall Senate health care bill too.
This gimmick may help her garner the 216 votes needed by allowing some House members to make the claim they didn't actually vote for the health care bill. This "deeming" process has been demonized by the public and political pundits on both sides of the aisle. Notwithstanding the criticism, the speaker may have to resort to this slight-of-hand to cajole enough members to vote for health care.
Here is how the schedule will work over the weekend and beyond.
The House:
Saturday at 9 am the House Rules Committee will meet. The committee must report out the "rule" for consideration of the Senate health care bill and the corrections bill (reconciliation). This is also where the Speaker might include the provision that if the House passes thecorrection bill, then that vote must also count as a vote to pass the Senate health care bill. (This is the deeming process described above.)
Sunday, the House will debate the "rule" for the health care bill andthe correction bill. They will vote on the rule, and then, depending on how the rule is constructed, they will need to pass the health care bill and the correction (reconciliation) bill. Assuming the Speaker can muster the 216 votes needed to pass these bills, then the House will sit and watch while the POTUS signs into law the Senate health care bill, and the Senatebegins the debate on the correction (reconciliation) bill that makes the changes to the health care bill.
The White House:
Sunday night (or Monday), POTUS signs into law the Senate health care bill. He awaits the second bill to come to his desk. The second bill, the corrections bill, is meanwhle awaiting Senate action (having also passed the House on Sunday).
The Senate:
Monday, approximaley 7 pm, the Senate will vote to pass the reauthorization of the Federal Aviations Administration bill. The FAA hasn't been fully funded since 2007. Congress has been unable to agree on language, so the agency has been operating on extensions. The reauthorization measure provides stronger rights for airline passengers, airplane repairs schedules and pilot "cooling off" periods that designate when pilots must rest.
After the FAA bill, the Senate is expected to begin consideration of the correction (reconciliation) to the health care bill. This bill has 20 hours for debate. By midweek, the 20 hours will have been exhausted.Theback-to-back votes begin. Thisvote-a-rama process couldcontinue for several days and very late into each night.
By the end of the week, expect the Senate to finally pass the correction bill to the health care law. The question will be if the Senate made any changes to the bill. If they did, the correctionsbill must return back to the House. If the Senate passes it clean, without changes, then the bill goes directly to the POTUS for signature.
Prediction: Members of the House and Senate and all Capitol Hill watchers will be completely exhausted by week's end. The health care legislative process will be on-half complete. The Senate health care bill will be the law of the land. However, the Senate will have made changes in the corrections bill, so that further House action is required. Watch a video on the reconciliation vote-a-rama using actual Senate footage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA-KKJxXbBQ
Stay tuned.
Elizabeth Letchworth is owner and founder of GradeGov.Com and was four times elected United States Senate Secretary for the Majority / Minority (retired), and is a senior legislative advisor with Covington and Burling LLC in Washington, D.C..
