Republicans work to split Democrats, block health-care bill
Source: Shailagh Murray/The Washington Post
As Republicans work to prevent a health-care bill from reaching President Obama, they are scrambling to exploit divisions between Democrats in the House and Senate.
Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) warned House Democrats that they would be taking a colossal risk if they approve the Senate’s version of health-care legislation before the Senate had acted to remove some of the bill’s most contentious provisions. Now that Democrats have lost their Senate supermajority, some variation of this delicate two-step process is the only way a health-care bill can become law.
“House Democrats will have to decide whether they want to trust the Senate to fix their political problems,” McConnell said. He listed a series of perks that Senate Democrats won for Nebraska, Louisiana, Florida and labor unions that House members are insisting be removed through a separate “fixes” bill under special budget reconciliation rules.
Moving the bill under reconciliation is appealing to Democrats because such legislation cannot be filibustered, although they are highly vulnerable to parliamentary challenges. The sequence in which the Senate bill and the package of fixes would move remains one of the key unresolved issues, much to the consternation of many undecided House Democrats. They would prefer to pass the reconciliation bill first and force the Senate to accept their fixes before the House approves the Senate bill.
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