{"id":362470,"date":"2010-02-25T13:38:23","date_gmt":"2010-02-25T18:38:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/health\/2010\/02\/25\/reconciliation-going-too-far\/"},"modified":"2010-02-25T13:38:23","modified_gmt":"2010-02-25T18:38:23","slug":"reconciliation-going-too-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/362470","title":{"rendered":"Reconciliation: Going Too Far?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post by WSJ’s John D. McKinnon also appears on the Washington Wire blog.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"capitol\"Is the budget-reconciliation loophole being stretched too far by the current Democratic health-care legislation?<\/p>\n

Maybe. But it\u0092s only the latest chapter in a long-running narrative that both parties have taken part in.<\/p>\n

After losing their filibuster-proof 60-vote Senate majority in January, Democrats began planning to move much of their health-care revamp using budget procedures that require only 51 votes \u0096- a simple majority \u0096- in the Senate.<\/p>\n

At today\u0092s health summit, Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee complained that that\u0092s going too far. Yes, Republicans have used the budget-reconciliation process, too. But \u0093it\u0092s never been used for anything like this,\u0094 he said.<\/p>\n

In broad terms, that\u0092s probably true. Of the 19 previous successful uses of reconciliation since 1980, nothing quite matches the current health-care overhaul in terms of sheer magnitude and impact.<\/p>\n

But both sides have used the procedural maneuver for some pretty far-reaching measures. Some of the first bills passed under reconciliation in the early 1980s were among the most far-reaching, making cuts to welfare programs and significantly raising taxes, for example. A 1985 bill established the Cobra health-insurance program.<\/p>\n

Changes in 1986 narrowed the scope of reconciliation somewhat. But many of the biggest bills continued to pass under reconciliation -\u0096 the big deficit-reduction bills of 1990 and 1993, for instance. Welfare changes and the Children\u0092s Health Insurance Program both passed under reconciliation in the 1990s.<\/p>\n

President George W. Bush\u0092s big tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 also passed under reconciliation, as Democrats often point out, even though they actually reduced government revenues rather than shored up the budget.<\/p>\n

But critics say there has been a worrisome trend lately that the health-care bill might expand \u0096 the use of reconciliation to push through major rewrites of federal programs that make only minor impacts on the budget. That began in earnest in 2007 with a student-aid overhaul that Democrats pushed through under reconciliation. The health-care revamp would take that trend another step, the argument goes.<\/p>\n

Supporters of the Democrats\u0092 health-care rewrite argue that the short-term budget savings might be minor, but the longer-term savings \u0096- those beyond the first decade \u0096- could be much larger.<\/p>\n

Here’s a Q&A<\/a> with more on how reconciliation works.<\/p>\n

Photo of the Capitol dome by alykat via Flickr<\/em><\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post by WSJ’s John D. McKinnon also appears on the Washington Wire blog. Is the budget-reconciliation loophole being stretched too far by the current Democratic health-care legislation? Maybe. But it\u0092s only the latest chapter in a long-running narrative that both parties have taken part in. After losing their filibuster-proof 60-vote Senate majority in January, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":792,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-362470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/792"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362470\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}