Maybe I'm missing something here, but I think a major element of President Obama's health care reform strategy is emerging. I've wondered for a while how meaningful reform legislation could possibly get 60 votes in the Senate. After all, it's no secret how much Republicans fear universal health care enacted by a Democratic President. Back in 1993, Bill Kristol sounded the alarm:
"The plan should not be amended; it should be erased," Mr. Kristol advised the GOP. And not merely because Mr. Clinton's scheme was (in Mr. Kristol's view) bad policy, but because "it will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests."
Historian Rick Perlstein suggests that this memo is "the skeleton key to understanding modern American politics" because it opens up a fundamental conservative anxiety: "If the Democrats succeed in redistributing economic power, we're screwed."
But guess what? We won't need 60 votes this time. The key is reconcilation.
Essentially, reconciliation is the legislative procedure that prevents budget bills from being filibustered in the Senate.
As Chris Weigant recently explained:
[B]udgetary bills that go through the reconciliation process cannot be filibustered in the Senate.
Which means both Obama and the Democrats in Congress may be able to totally ignore the congressional Republicans of both houses -- since these Republicans will be utterly powerless and utterly irrelevant to the discussion. The ramifications are enormous.
Knowing this, I'll be surprised if Obama doesn't include the primary (and most controversial) foundations of health care reform in the budget bill that he's preparing to submit to congress. Especially since, according to Ezra Klein, Democrats know how essential this strategy is:
In 1994, the Clintons wanted to use reconciliation to pass health care, but Robert Byrd, the Senate's hallowed parliamentarian, said no. Clinton has said that his worst mistake in health care was not fully appreciating the blow his strategy had been dealt. But Byrd is older now, and less powerful. Some say he regrets blocking the use of reconciliation.
[...]
Moreover, Congress in the Bush years normalized the procedure, using it for everything from tax cuts to drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. But reconciliation remains an aggressive tool for something as controversial as health-care reform. (It's also an uncertain one: Republican opponents could use the rule that bears Byrd's name to mount a parliamentary challenge.) So I ask Baucus whether he could imagine running health care through the budget-reconciliation process. "Yes, I can," he says without hesitation. "The goal here is to get results.
I really hope this is what Obama (and Rahm) have in mind. Because leaving the GOP no options for stopping health care reform is the only way it's going to happen.
UPDATE:
Apparently, Daschle was seriously considering using the reconciliation process to pass health care reform.