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Democrats Plan to Ping Pong Health Care Bill
Jan 13, 2010
President Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi have come up with a new trick to try and get their long-overdue health care bill passed: skip the conference committee.
When the House and Senate pass different versions of a bill, typical procedure is to reconcile the legislation in a conference committee. Appointed members of both houses come together to offer resolutions and vote on the combined legislation.
Democrats know going to conference would put their highly unpopular health care bill in serious jeopardy by giving Republicans any number of opportunities to derail it and causing them to miss their new February deadline.
Instead of following protocol and publicly vetting their bill, Democrats will attempt to resolve the bill’s differences through informal talks. Pelosi and Reid will do their best to strike closed-door deals with key lawmakers once Congress is back in session. Once all negotiations are settled, the bill will then go back to the House and Senate for passage – a so called “ping pong” legislative path.
This maneuver would obviously allow Democrats the opportunity to privately resolve some of the current sticking points between the House and Senate bill such as federal funds for abortions, the “Cadillac Tax” on high cost insurance plans, and of course, the highly-debated public option without the transparency that President Obama has repeatedly promised.
Several members of the GOP, including Minority Leader Boehner, and C-SPAN – which would normally televise the conference committee – are now asking that cameras be allowed in the negotiation meetings in hopes of bringing transparency to the health care overhaul process.
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