send to a friend | print | comment

Fighting fire with fire: The critical week for health reform

Several months ago, I had a conversation with Senator Arlen Specter along with a few other political bloggers, where we asked him about his position on using reconciliation if the Senate was unable to pass the health care reform bill on a simple up or down vote.  I reported that:

On health care reform, Specter agreed that at some point, Democrats may need to “fight fire with fire” by pursuing passage through the controversial process of reconciliation—but emphasized that this would only happen as a ‘last, last, last resort,’ and is by far not his preference.

It appears that, the Senator’s preferences notwithstanding, reconciliation is currently the only means by which Democrats will be able to get health care reform passed. This confusing procedural rule allows the Senate to bypass the filibuster and pass legislation with a regular 51 vote majority. Pressure is at an apex in the wake of a guarantee by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs this past weekend that health reform will be “the law of the land” by the following Sunday.

We all know that Senator Specter will vote with the Democrats on the health reform bill if and when it comes time for a vote, and in so doing, he will be fulfilling a commitment he made not long after becoming a Democrat to supporting the President’s initiative on this historic legislation. It appears Democrats have followed Specter’s logic and, seeing nothing but intransigence from the GOP, are finally “fighting fire with fire.”

March 16, 2010 at 6:15 pm

--Adam Schwartzbaum

comments

comments [0] | post a comment