Time Running Out for Reconciliation On Obamacare

**Zippyjuan** · 09-19-2017, 03:03 PM

September 30th is the last day they can use Reconciliation rules to try to pass a healthcare bill or repeal Obamacare which would let them pass legislation with a simple majority or 50 votes. After that, it will require at least 60 votes. They have been struggling to get that simple majority. Reconciliation runs out with the end of the fiscal year.

http://www.npr.org/2017/06/18/531088...ur-congress-is

This process, invented in the 1970s and first used extensively in the early 1980s, is how big tax cuts were passed in the first year of Ronald Reagan's presidency and again in the first year of George W. Bush.

It's part of how the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) got through in 2010. And it's important to everything else the Congress will or won't get done this year.

It allows bills that affect revenue and outlays to pass both House and Senate by a simple majority vote with no filibusters allowed. That means a mere 51 votes are required in the Senate, instead of 60 that would otherwise be needed to advance a bill.

The majority Republicans of 2017 can legislate fiscal policy without a single Democratic vote, so long as they stay within the limits and rules of the reconciliation process.

You may have noticed that the 60-vote requirement to defeat filibusters has been in the news lately. That is because the majority Republicans changed the rules regarding filibusters to get President Trump's first appointee to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, confirmed.

Reconciliation only would allow them to try to change parts of Obamacare- not to repeal the entire thing. It can only be used on portions which effect spending in the Federal Budget.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.423df866bfdb

The some-or-all approach required by reconciliation basically comes down to this reasoning: If a policy directly affects the nation's economic bottom line, you can use reconciliation to pass said policy with a simple majority. If a policy doesn't directly affect the nation's budget, you have to follow the regular rules for passing legislation.

And these days,” regular rules” is synonymous with a 60-vote filibuster in the Senate by the minority party (especially on a bill as controversial as health care). In 2017, that means 52 Senate Republicans would need at least eight Democrats to join them — which, under this bill, is about as remote a possibility as President Trump giving up Twitter.

The alternative is to pass some Obamacare changes that affect the nation's budget now using the simple majority vote afforded by reconciliation, and worry about the rest later. That's actually how Democrats passed major parts of the ACA in 2010, and it's how Republicans passed some of the Bush-era tax cuts a decade earlier.

The same deadline would effect the votes needed for tax reform too.