Keep your Obamacare powder dry, Mitch

LeRoy Goldman OPINION

January 24, 2015

Ashville Citizen-Times

The newly minted Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), is an insider’s insider. He’s been around a long time. McConnell was first elected to the Senate in 1984. He is Kentucky’s longest serving U.S. senator.

Last year the Democrats believed that they just might send him packing. They nominated Kentucky’s Secretary of State, Alison Lundergan Grimes, and throughout most of the campaign the race was too close to call. But, even with the active support of both Bill and Hillary Clinton, Grimes proved no match for the wily McConnell. When she refused to tell the voters for whom she had voted for President in 2008 and 2012, McConnell turned her into a punching bag. On election night Grimes only received 41 percent of the vote.

In his victory speech McConnell promised to end gridlock in the Senate. He said the Senate would “return to regular order” when the 114th Congress convened in January. And thus far he has been true to his word. The Senate is now debating the Keystone XL Pipeline bill, and McConnell is permitting the Democrats to offer amendments to the bill. That is what regular order is all about, and that’s exactly what McConnell’s predecessor, Democrat Harry Reid, would not allow. The Senate will pass Keystone. It will be approved on a bipartisan vote. Whether that vote will be sufficiently large to muster the 67 votes necessary to override a likely veto by president Obama is uncertain and unlikely.

And, if major bills like Keystone can’t be enacted because of veto after veto, then we’re right back to gridlock. There is, however, a way around the gridlock. It’s called Budget Reconciliation, and it was created when the Congressional Budget Act was passed in 1974. The budget reconciliation process is arcane and unknown to most Americans. Understanding it requires venturing into the tall weeds where Senate politics and Senate procedures intersect.

The fundamental advantage that attaches to budget reconciliation is that it enables the Senate to pass a piece of major legislation with only a 51-vote majority. Thus, it precludes the minority party from filibustering the bill to death. But there are significant limitations on the use of Budget Reconciliation. It is limited to a single measure, at the beginning of each year and that will require McConnell to carefully choose among competing pieces of legislation. In addition, even if a major piece of legislation clears Congress under the expedited reconciliation process, the President still retains the option of vetoing the legislation.

McConnell faces a fateful choice. It appears clear that he will soon decide to use budget reconciliation either to repeal much of Obamacare, or use it to enact major tax reform. The case for tax reform is by far the stronger. The Democrats blundered badly and unnecessarily in 2009 when they chose to make health care their central issue in the face of an imploding economy.

Although the economy has begun to rebound, there is still considerable malaise in middle-class America. Wages remain stagnant, and far too many Americans either have inadequate part-time work, or have stopped looking for work altogether. Comprehensive tax reform can and should be written in a way to directly alleviate these major economic challenges facing the nation. Comprehensive tax reform is likely to attract Democratic votes in Congress, maybe not many, but enough to make the bill bipartisan. Thus, there is some chance that when confronted with such a bipartisan bill that the president might sign it into law. And, if he vetoes it, the GOP will have at least demonstrated to the American people that it made a good faith effort to deal with a major issue in a bipartisan manner.

On the other hand choosing to waste budget reconciliation on the repeal of Obamacare is a loser. The House has already voted to repeal or gut Obamacare more than 50 times. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is a good working definition of insanity. And there is good reason to believe that Obamacare’s days are numbered anyway.

In March the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on King v. Burwell. The case will be decided by this June. If Chief Justice Roberts joins the four conservative justices and rules that Obamacare premium subsidies cannot be provided in the 36 states that chose not to establish a state exchange, Obamacare will implode.

Keep your Obamacare powder dry, Mitch. Help is on the way.

Goldman lives in Flat Rock. He was member of the federal government’s Senior Executive Service for many years.

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