Ping Pong Update
| Sun Jan. 3, 2010 10:16 PM PST
Will House and Senate Democrats convene a conference committee to hash out differences between their healthcare bills? Or will the House simply vote on the Senate version and be done with it? Jon Cohn says it's going to be neither — and both:
According to a pair of senior Capitol Hill staffers, one from each chamber, House and Senate Democrats are “almost certain” to negotiate informally rather than convene a formal conference committee....“There will almost certainly be full negotiations but no formal conference,” the House staffer says. “There are too many procedural hurdles to go the formal conference route in the Senate.”
....“I think the Republicans have made our decision for us," the Senate staffer says. "It’s time for a little ping-pong.”
“Ping pong” is a reference to one way the House and Senate could proceed. With ping-ponging, the chambers send legislation back and forth to one another until they finally have an agreed-upon version of the bill. But even ping-ponging can take different forms and some people use the term generically to refer to any informal negotiations.
If this turns out to be true, then presumably one chamber or the other will pass the renegotiated bill and then send it directly to the other chamber. At least, that seems more likely to me than literally ping-ponging the bill back and forth several times.
In any case, this seems like a reasonable plan. Republicans have made it clear that they plan to erect every possible procedural hurdle they can think of, even including objections to routine things like naming conference committee members. So, since they've plainly given up on trying to influence the bill itself and are merely trying to obstruct and delay, there's really no reason why Democrats shouldn't play by the same rules and try to avoid obstruction any way they can. Congress has other things to do, after all, and spending weeks playing procedural games with Republicans keeps them from getting to it. It's time to put healthcare to bed and start spending time on climate change, financial regulation, and the 2011 budget instead. Enough's enough.
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Comments
Yep, gotta hurry up before
Submitted by Adam Herman (not verified) on Mon Jan. 4, 2010 2:38 AM PST.
Yep, gotta hurry up before the people weigh in again in November.
WATB alert
Submitted by RZ (not verified) on Mon Jan. 4, 2010 4:03 AM PST.
Those evil Democrats are going to advance a bill without conference committee! This has never been done before in the history of mankind! (excepting all those times the Republicans did it under Bush that we didn't get worked up about).
I'm sure Fox News will be all over this one.
Nothing evil about it, it's
Submitted by Adam Herman (not verified) on Mon Jan. 4, 2010 4:13 AM PST.
Nothing evil about it, it's actually a pretty well-established procedure. I'm just observing that ever since the Democrats got a whiff of how public opinion had turned against them, they suddenly had to make a decision that speed would be of the essence.
Personally, I'd work on trying to mend fences with voters, rather than assume a 2010 debacle, but Democrats have made their choice: get everything they can done, because it will be a long time before they get another opportunity.
You can say a lot of things about Republicans, but they generally aren't in the habit of passing bills that poll badly. That's why Social security privatization got spiked early and a bill wasn't even written.
Polling badly
Submitted by Michael Robinson (not verified) on Mon Jan. 4, 2010 11:48 AM PST.
Yeah, it polls badly. But do check out the cross-tabs.
This thing polls badly because the Democratic base is pissed off at the blatant sell0ut to corporate interests to buy off a tiny handful of right-wing Senate votes.
A bill that only needed the votes of the 51 most liberal Democratic Senators would actually poll much better than the bill we've got.
Yes, and resolve to fix the
Submitted by bob h (not verified) on Mon Jan. 4, 2010 5:49 AM PST.
Yes, and resolve to fix the bill in the future with targetted reform bills that can be passed by reconciliation. No more Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, or Olympia Snowe.
I would give the Republicans a choice-either stop the obstructionism now, or face the likelihood that the 60 vote cloture rule will be either taken away entirely or sharply restricted.
Sounds like the all need to
Submitted by Nazgul35 (not verified) on Mon Jan. 4, 2010 8:14 AM PST.
Sounds like the all need to read Barbara Sinclair's book "Unorthodox Lawmaking" to figure out what to do.
I figured the fact that the
Submitted by Luther on Mon Jan. 4, 2010 8:34 AM PST.
I figured the fact that the country is broke would finally force fiscal conservatism, but they're just too irresponsible in Washington. Drunks. Drunk on spending. Pinning their hopes on get-rich-quick schemes. Tax breaks. Stimulus. "If we just cut taxes, or print money, growth will pay for $150 trillion in unfunded liabilities."
A trillion is a thousand billion, folks. Where ya gonna get 150 big ones?
150 trillion? Just how far up
Submitted by dob (not verified) on Mon Jan. 4, 2010 9:21 AM PST.
150 trillion? Just how far up your ass did you have to reach to pull out that inane figure?
Isn't it obvious?
Submitted by Douglas McClean (not verified) on Mon Jan. 4, 2010 11:54 AM PST.
Isn't it obvious? You just take the usual CBO/OMB practice of citing budget impacts on a 10-year time horizon and extend it to, say, a 1000 year time horizon. Make it 1001 years. Since the rapture is coming "any day now", those 1000 years will cover the corruption of the "Democrat party" during our lord's glorious millenial reign. Voila! 150 trillion in unfunded liabilities. More if our brilliant commenter could just convince those damn pencil pushers in OMB that a good chunk of the really productive tax paying merikun types are gonna be raptured, blowing a whole in their revenue projections.
What's the difference?
Submitted by Alex (not verified) on Mon Jan. 4, 2010 9:06 AM PST.
It's not exactly clear to me what the difference is. Almost all conference committees are behind-the-scenes informal negotiations, with the conferees procedurally signing off at the end. Yes, there are procedural hurdles involved in a conference...but 60 votes is 60 votes, right? What am I missing?
One way or the other, the bill is going to be almost identical to the Senate version, with only minor or superficial changes made to appease House Democrats. The simplest route would be to simply take the Senate version, and force the House to vote on it. The main challenge--the only challenge--is getting House Democrats to sign off on the more centrist bill.
If they go thru any time of conference, informal or formal, at all, then there are two challenges: Getting House Democrats to sign off on it, and making sure that you've still got 60 votes in the Senate. To me, it seems like that is the biggest threat--that some change, no matter how inconsequential, will be just the excuse Joe Lieberman or Ben Nelson needs to kill the bill. That's basically the risk in any strategy that sends the bill back to the Senate for another vote--whether through a conference report or a "ping-ponged" bill. When you think about it, there's really very little difference between the two, in terms of result.
So those are the two main hurdles--getting 50 percent of the House and keeping 60 votes in the Senate. All the rest is noise.
Shorter Kevin Drum: We should
Submitted by Alejandro (not verified) on Mon Jan. 4, 2010 9:30 AM PST.
Shorter Kevin Drum: We should short-circuit deliberation over the most significant healthcare bill in decades.
Deliberation?
Submitted by jrw on Mon Jan. 4, 2010 11:23 AM PST.
Your "conservative" heroes have made it more than clear that they are not interested in deliberation on any aspect of health care or health insurance reform, only in defending their corporate special interests and obstructing virtually anything else. So, just shove it with your crocodile tears and phony concern about a lack of deliberation.
Alejandro: Are you aware that
Submitted by Alex (not verified) on Mon Jan. 4, 2010 9:39 AM PST.
Alejandro: Are you aware that conference committee proceedings are secret? They are "deliberations," yes, but the deliberations will be focused on one, and only one, thing: the best strategy for getting the Senate version of the bill through both chambers and on the president's desk. That's just the way it works. I don't see any problem, in terms of the health of democracy, in short-circuiting that process, and indeed it happens often.
Look...it pissed me off that the final language of the bill had only been available for hours before it was put up for a vote. There is legitimate griping about that. But those who claim that the conference committee is some necessary ingredient to a just legislative process are just fooling themselves--and others.
*****You can say a lot of
Submitted by Jasperr (not verified) on Mon Jan. 4, 2010 11:24 AM PST.
*****You can say a lot of things about Republicans, but they generally aren't in the habit of passing bills that poll badly. *****
Right. The GOP is the party of pandering. Tax cuts, tax cuts and MORE tax cuts. And just give the bill for imperialist wars and big pharma subsidies to our grandchildren. Hey, as long as it helps you win elections...
*****Shorter Kevin Drum: We
Submitted by Jasperr (not verified) on Mon Jan. 4, 2010 11:26 AM PST.
*****Shorter Kevin Drum: We should short-circuit deliberation over the most significant healthcare bill in decades.*****
Shorter Alejandro: Sixty years of debate about how to provide universal access to healthcare should be extended as long as possible so as to insure failure yet again.
Perhaps the Health Care
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon Jan. 4, 2010 6:42 PM PST.
Perhaps the Health Care Reform Bill would have been better served had it been a rider to the Defense Budget Bill passed in December in just THREE DAYS!
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