Washington D.C. – President Obama has made it clean that it is time for a simple up and down vote on his healthcare plan, noting that Americans are “awaiting for us to act.”
But getting to the vote might not be so simple.
Republicans continue to voice their opposition to the reform bill. Some, such as House Minority Leader John Boehner, have called for scrapping the bills entirely and starting over.
2 Democratic aides said the goal is for the House to vote on the Senate healthcare bill and a vote on reconciliation instructions before Obama leaves on March 18 for his trip to Commonwealth of Australia and Republic of Indonesia.
But House Democrats do not alike aspects of the Senate’s version — particularly the absence of a government-run public healthcare option — so they will unlikely just pass it without making some changes. That would mean a possible separate package would be introduced.
Democrats are planning to push those changes through without Republican votes using a process known as reconciliation — a parliamentary procedure that allows a measure to pass on a simple majority vote of 51, rather than the 60 needed to break a filibuster.
The rules of reconciliation, though, limit the scope of what Democrats can do. Namely, it was designed to pass budgetary items, such as the Bush tax cuts and spending bills.
Reconciliation “cannot be used to pass comprehensive health care reform,” Sen. Kent Conrad, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. He added that it’s unlikely to work because reconciliation “was never designed for that kind of significant legislation.”
Democrats have said the first step, and key to success, is getting a package of changes just right in order to muster enough House votes.
At her weekly press conference, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said 80 percent of the House Democrats‘ concerns regarding the Senate bill have been eliminated.
read more at http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/03/04/health.care.next/index.html