It's been One Week Since Sen. Reid Started Merging the Bills (why the PO is more likely than not)

[berni_mccoy]

Reid had a few options in merging the HELP and Finance Committee Bills. He could have:

1. Used one or the other as is
2. Presented both to the floor in either order
3. Merged elements from either bill into the other

It's clear he isn't going with option 1 or 2 as these would have taken very little time to consider and pass on to the Senate. He would have been done by now. If he is considering these options, then he's not doing anything legislative and working the politics to see how many votes either bill will get.

One thing he could not do was create a new bill or create new elements of the bill or mechanics for the sake of adding them. These new elements would have had to have been added, as markup or as amendments, in committee. This is why it is difficult for Reid to add a trigger or opt-in/opt-out plan outright. If someone in the Senate objects to the added element, it would require 60 votes to pass (the same way that an amendment to the bill would require 60 votes on the floor).

I suspect that this is why it is taking Reid a very long time to merge the bills. Reid probably believes he needs a compromise to get the bill to pass, but there are no compromises in either bill. And these bills look relatively impossible to merge. The entire premise of the HELP committee bill is an Exchange with a Public Option. If you leave out the Public Option, you basically gut the entire HELP bill. And that takes us back to square one, which is why hasn't he just passed on the Baucus bill for a vote? He knows that won't work. An individual mandate with no employer mandate is a gift to the health insurance industry, and no wonder as Baucus has received more campaign contributions from the health insurance industry than any other member of Congress. But if Reid starts with the HELP bill, there is very little from the Baucus bill that will add value for the taxpayer. Again, he is stuck with a one-or-the-other type of approach.

He has to know that pushing the Baucus bill will be political suicide if it did pass, but in reality has no chance of passing. If he pushes the HELP bill, he'll have at least 50 Democratic Senators willing to support it. It would also allow for some Dems cover to support a compromise like the trigger or opt-in-or-out options since none of these will pass as amendments would require 60 votes.

Reid would need to force procedural votes to avoid filibuster and since we know Baucus and Lieberman would likely help the Repubs filibuster, he'd have to go the route of using Reconciliation to pass it. In order to do that, he's probably going to have to pull one or more less offensive parts of the Baucus bill over in order to justify the financial procedure. In the end the HELP committee bill is the bill with the least resistance and the most support from the House. If a bill is to reach Obama and it has to cross both the Senate and the House, you've got more support for a Public Option than not. Reid knows this. It's just a matter of how to do it now and is why we have heard very little out of his closed-door committee yet.

[Myrina]

1. Or he could just be stalling because he doesn't give a shit ...

:shrug: He's shown himself to be one of the most useless people in DC. And THAT'S saying alot.

[berni_mccoy]

2. I believe that is unlikely. He cancelled the Oct. recess to pass this. He's not going to just

sit on it for no reason.

[thereismore]

3. You are making sense. He is merging the bills. You can't merge them by dropping the PO

from HELP. You can merge them by adopting a lot of smaller provisions from the Baucus bill into the HELP bill, which would preserve the PO. I think some form of PO will remain, but will it work in the end?

[berni_mccoy]

4. I have a hard time seeing any of the Baucus bill working in the HELP bill

But that's just me. I'm thinking he needs something from it to allow for reconciliation, but there are no rules as to how much, if any are required. The HELP bill is already weaker than HR3200, so I'd rather not see it weakened further and then also, we need to see what will come out of the Conference to merge the House and Senate versions.

[Pab Sungenis]

5. Or you can move a few smaller measures from HELP

over to the Baucus Bill, which is more likely from what Reid has said in the past.

[thereismore]

6. Fuck. It's hard to live in this country. nt