Obamacare

The New York Times' Hypocrisy on Budget Reconciliation to Repeal ObamaCare

Democrats used it to pass parts of ObamaCare in 2010 without being denounced.

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The editors of The New York Times are running an editorial today warning "Republicans Are Courting Disaster on Health Care" that generally decries the "repeal and delay" strategy for eliminating ObamaCare that appears to be emerging among the GOP denizens of Capitol Hill. And surely there are concerns about how such a ploy would affect insurance markets. The editors are especially in high dudgeon over a parliamentary strategy to which the Republicans in the Senate might have to resort in order overcome the cloture requirement for 60 votes to end debate and take a vote on legislation. From The Times:

With a narrow 52-to-48 majority in the Senate, Republicans are seeking to evade a Democratic filibuster by instructing congressional committees to draft a budget reconciliation bill to effectively repeal the tax and spending provisions of the A.C.A., gutting the law and increasing the deficit. … It should perhaps come as no surprise that zealots would resort to using a budgetary maneuver to fundamentally change national policy.

Of course, this is precisely the same manuever that Democrats used back in 2010 to pass vital parts of the legislation that created the structure of ObamaCare. Briefly, versions of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. ObamaCare) passed in both the Senate and the House of Representatives when the Senate Democrats had 60 seat majority which enabled them to avoid a Republican filibuster. However, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) died and Republican Scott Brown won his seat.

Generally, differences in House and Senate bills have to be hammered out in conference committees and then voted on again. In this case, the Democrats knew that since they no longer had a 60 vote majority, they would not be able to pass a bill that had undergone the conference committee process. So the House Democratic majority voted on March 21, 2010 to accept the Senate bill without any changes on condition that the Senate would pass another bill that incorporated the changes that the House Democratic members wanted.

In order to satisfy the demands of the House Democrats, the Senate Democrats cobbled together the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act and passed it as a budget reconciliation bill which takes only a simple majority to pass. That "budget reconciliation" passed both Houses on March 26, 2010. In other words, the Democrats in 2010 used the same procedure to complete ObamaCare that The Times is now denouncing the Republicans for planning to use to repeal aspects of ObamaCare.

Back in February 2010, The Times reported:

White House officials and their allies in liberal advocacy groups are making an all-out push to persuade Congress and the public that budget reconciliation is a legitimate procedure used often in the last 30 years to pass major legislation, including President Ronald Reagan's domestic agenda in 1981, an overhaul of welfare programs in 1996 and President George W. Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003.

Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Finance Committee, said he knew those precedents. But, he said, they amount to "peanuts compared with this total restructuring of one-sixth of the economy."

The No. 2 Republican in the House, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, asked the House Democratic leader, Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, to renounce use of the budget reconciliation procedure for health care. But in an exchange on the House floor on Friday, Mr. Hoyer refused to do so.

Use of the procedure is "in the Republican tradition," Mr. Hoyer said. In any event, he said, Senate rules requiring a 60-vote majority to cut off a filibuster "are impeding the work of the American people."

I may have missed it, but my search to find a op-ed from The Times in 2010 denouncing Democratic "zealots" for using this procedure to complete ObamaCare has turned up empty. If you happen to come across one, please let me know and I will update this post.