Reconsidering Reconciliation

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In this morning’s Washington Post, Senator Hatch highlights the misuse of reconciliation procedures that the President and Senate Democrats are considering in order to pass a health care bill that cannot muster 60 votes. As we previously discussed here, reconciliation procedures were designed as a set of specific rules to facilitate passage of legislation to reduce the deficit. As Senator Hatch notes, “This use of reconciliation to jam through this legislation, against the will of the American people, would be unprecedented in scope. And the havoc wrought would threaten our system of checks and balances, corrode the legislative process, degrade our system of government and damage the prospects of bipartisanship.”

Because reconciliation procedures were designed for the limited purpose of passing budget legislation and were never intended to pass substantive legislation outside of the budget arena, it’s an abuse of the process to use the same rules to pass a monumental overhaul of the health care system simply because it’s politically impossible to garner the necessary votes to pass it otherwise.