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Thursday, March 18, 2010 | 2 a.m.
Harry Reid
Sun archives
- House holds key to unlocking health care reform bill (3-3-2010)
- Nevadans support Democrats' strategy on health care (2-26-2010)
- A Vegas-style gamble on Obama’s agenda (2-25-2010)
- Harry Reid: 'There is no rush' on health care reform (1-26-2010)
- As attention shifts from health care, a new focus for Washington: Jobs (1-25-10)
- Reid, Democrats consider health care reform options after losing supermajority in Senate (1-21-2010)
- Senate casts historic vote on health care reform (12-24-09)
One of Harry Reid’s great political strengths — his ability to cut deals — is now among the Democrats’ chief liabilities in the health care debate, as House Democrats are unwilling to pass the Senate majority leader’s bill that is loaded with extras.
It has House Democrats considering an obscure but not unprecedented procedural maneuver: Move the health reform legislation as part of a package and avoid a stand-alone vote on the Senate health care bill that many House Democrats are reluctant to take.
Experts differ on whether this maneuver — known as a “self-executing rule” or “deemed passed” — would hold up in court even though it has been used since 1933.
Republicans used it in 1996 to pass one of the tenets of their Contract With America — the line-item veto — that President Bill Clinton signed into law. (The courts later struck down the line-item veto.) Democrats used it to approve the Family Medical Leave Act in 1993.
The bipartisan popularity of this procedural tool has not stopped Republican opponents of health care reform from attacking it in harsh — and humorous — tones.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky called it “deem and scheme.”
Rep. Dean Heller of Nevada called it an attempt to “hide the vote.”
Rep. Michael Turner of Ohio invoked the Saturday morning cartoons that explained civics to a generation: “There is no deeming a bill passed in ‘School House Rock.’ ”
Republicans, who just a week ago were decrying Democrats’ plan to use the budget reconciliation process to pass the bill with a simple majority, are longing for that up-or-down vote.
All of this might have been avoided, if only Reid had not loaded the Senate bill with favors that House Democrats, and even President Barack Obama, say are unbearable.
Then again, without the deals Reid cut with senators, “there wouldn’t be a Senate bill,” said Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
“This is standard legislative practice,” Ornstein said. Both chambers have long histories of deal-cutting to pass legislation.
What’s changed? The unending news cycle and a Republican Party that has found political success in railing against the deals.
Now, even Obama says the Cornhusker Kickback (which boosted Medicaid funding for Nebraska to secure a vote from Sen. Ben Nelson) and other deals must go.
“Is it backfiring now? Sure it is,” Ornstein said. “The opposition is very effective.”
House leaders have not decided whether to use a self-executing rule to pass health care reform.
George Washington University Law School professor Alan Morrison, who argued the court case that overturned the line-item veto, said the courts rejected the bill content, not the process.
The courts in 2001 declined to rule on a challenge to the House’s self-executing rule.
Still, Morrison thinks Democrats are playing with fire.
If this tool is used for the health care bill, he thinks it would be ripe for court challenges — and today’s more conservative Supreme Court may be less friendly than in years past.
“Maybe you could get away with it,” said Morrison, who helped found the watchdog group Public Citizen with Ralph Nader. “But the fact that it has yet to be stopped in the past 80 years doesn’t make it constitutional.”
Reid for his part has left it to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her leadership team to find the best route forward.
House Democrats face the task of trying to pass major legislation without a single Republican supporter. “Reid knows they are committed to passing this bill in a responsible way,” his spokesman said.
Besides, Reid will face his own challenges in coming days, if the bill returns to the Senate for final passage.
YES OR NO TO HEATH CARE. bye bye Reid to long for Nevada.
Reid is HISTORY!!
The next 6 years of Majority Leader Harry Reid will be even better than the last.
Senator Harry Reid is good for Nevada.
Good for my Business
Good for my children's future
At 70 years old, and polling BELOW Sharron Angle, he needs to retire something awful...42% of Nevadans don't even know who former assembly woman Sharron Angle is.
Reid is just another example of what went wrong in Washington.
Well needless to say I disagree with most comments here so far. The Republicans had decades to reform healthcare and did NOTHING. I think Reid has showed he is is committed to doing whats right rather than whats easy. Healthcare reform is definitely the right thing to do. None of the Republican (corporate shills) have the nads to do anything!
I liked the part "deem and pass isn't even mentioned in school house rock". If it can't go through the House or Senate with only a vote, drop it, change the contents, etc. Let Congress do what they were voted into office to do, then they will have to accept what the voting citizens have to do.
Next time maybe they'll make sure that a bill that is good enough to be ACCEPTED by the majority of the citizens of the United States, that is FOR the citizens of the United States and that will BENEFIT the citizens of the United States, at that point should be brought up and voted on.
Also, NO MORE PORK FILLED BILLS!
Lisa M., I'm very surprised and very happy with your article. KUDOS!!!!
Don't worry RSN assures us that the Louisiana Purchase will be good for Hawaii and Nevada. Reid and Ensign should be tarrerd, feathered, and ridden out of town on a rail. Perhaps Nevada should revert to territorial status, leaving the U.S. with only 56 states. We then could have an appointed Territorial Governor instaed of one annointed by Sig RINO Rogich and the eternally greedy fat cats.
The Democrats will be "deemed" out of office in November. There is a sea change coming to Washington.
"If this tool is used for the health care bill, he thinks it would be ripe for court challenges -- and today's more conservative Supreme Court may be less friendly than in years past." - Hmmm. Haven't Republicans for years been decrying NO LEGISLATION FROM THE BENCH?
In one way or other it's going to pass. If the Supreme Court in a future case says it's unconstitutional that doesn't mean it still won't be law - because after all - what's the punishment supposed to be to the federal government if they continue to use the Bill? The National Guard storm into Congress and arrest EVERYONE? As much as a lot of us might like that idea, you may as well call us Fascist right now then.
Harry "Backdoor" Reid has always been a shady politician. It's just finially beening highlighted by his sheer arrogance and total disdain for us in Nevada. He's doing whatever the hell he wants without regaurd to us. Can't wait for the Headline on November 3, 2010, Your Fired!
I know this country NEEDS a health care program and did long ago but Socialized Medicine isn't the answer. Also, if you want something not Socialized why use just the Democrats and never invite the rest of the Democracy to write and discuss the bill? The real answer should be starting with limits on lawsuits, lowering malpractice rates (even by govt paying part if necessary) and lowering perscription drug prices to what other countries that buy their drugs from us pay. Then give employers tax breaks for paying for their employees health insurance and those who pay for their own should get full credit off their taxes instead of using schedule a/b on taxes reducing their deduction. Let's start seeing some real democracy as the Obama administration promised and as I pray for daily.
This country DOESN'T NEED a healthcare bill that dilutes the ability of the healthcare insurance companies to collect premiums from individual and small businesses and corporations for whatever purpose they want to purchase it for: employee coverage, individual coverage, schoolkid coverages, etc. This country DOESN'T NEED government meddling in private enterprise's business. They have meddled so much, their programs like Medicare and Medicaid are bankrupt, poorly administrated, with zero oversight or audits of any kind, needing the kind of oversight that puts crooked doctors and providers in jail for fraud. Leave it alone!
Fourteen comments? Geeze, Reid is so passe.
If, as appears very likely, this health care bill will pass the House, Harry Reid's work on its behalf will end up being remembered as one of the greatest bits of legislative/congressional work by any party leader ever. I'm serious, and I don't mean this as a Reid supporter. To get 60 members of the Democratic caucus, with varying views and constituencies, to go along with this bill was miraculous. Yes, he had to give people things I would rather that he had not given them. But he got their support for the bill. That is how it has been done in Congress since the beginning (for a nice example, Jefferson and Madison traded support for Hamilton's economic plan to get Washington, D.C., built near their property). If you don't like it, you might as well give up on representative government and, for that matter, human relations.
Back door deals and bribes are real "assets" for Reid. Just think how he's used that asset - to help Obama forced Obamacare down our throats. Oh yeah, Reid is such an Ass!et. Of course Reid and his wife will never have to suffer Obamacare. Pity!
VOTE FOR A REID-FREE AMERICA!!!!!
Harry the "Deemer" is toast in Nevada. He and Deemer Titus will be forever reviled in this state. Their memories will be spat upon by future generations of Nevadans and all true Americans.