The latest dispatch from Tokyo Rose McConnell comes via subscription only Roll Call:
The Senate Parliamentarian has ruled that President Barack Obama must sign Congress’ original health care reform bill before the Senate can act on a companion reconciliation package, senior GOP sources said Thursday.
The Senate Parliamentarian’s Office was responding to questions posed by the Republican leadership. The answers were provided verbally, sources said.
It's amazing that the parliamentarian, who does not talk to the press, is reported by anonymous Republicans to have verbally told Republicans exactly what those Republicans wanted Democrats to hear.
Could it be true? Sure.
But it's also the opposite of what former Senate parliamentarian Bob Dove said, and he said it on the record:
Dove says the Dems' planned use of reconciliation is highly unusual. "I've never seen a two-bill strategy" where reconciliation is used to fix another piece of legislation, he says. "It's permissible, I've just never seen it."
Why would he say that? Because the law appears to say so, too:
§ 641. Reconciliation
(a) Inclusion of reconciliation directives in concurrent resolutions on the budget
A concurrent resolution on the budget for any fiscal year, to the extent necessary to effectuate the provisions and requirements of such resolution, shall—
(1) specify the total amount by which—
(A) new budget authority for such fiscal year;
(B) budget authority initially provided for prior fiscal years;
(C) new entitlement authority which is to become effective during such fiscal year; and
(D) credit authority for such fiscal year,
contained in laws, bills, and resolutions within the jurisdiction of a committee, is to be changed and direct that committee to determine and recommend changes to accomplish a change of such total amount;
As does the Congressional Research Service (PDF):
Congress and the President could use reconciliation procedures to quickly make any adjustments in existing law or pending legislation that were required to achieve budget policies as they changed between the adoption of the spring and fall budget resolutions.
Could the current Senate parliamentarian just see things the exact opposite of the way the former parliamentarian sees it? And opposite the way the law appears to read? And opposite the way CRS reads it?
Sure.
But Republican Senate aides, who want more than anything to avoid the use of reconciliation, would prefer that you just stop asking. Thanks!
UPDATE: The strongest case, in my view, for what's purported to be the parliamentarian's insistence that the reconciliation bill address current law rather than pending legislation is that the instructions authorizing the use of the expedited process contained in the FY10 budget resolution call for "changes in laws," and not changes in "laws, bills and resolutions" as the Budget Act appears to allow.
I have three more things to say about that:
- The instructions in the budget are part of a concurrent resolution, which does not have the force of law, whereas the Budget Act is in fact statutory law. Still, the budget resolution is arguably a set of instructions specific to this year and this Congress, whereas the Budget Act is a more general framework.
- On the other hand, the instructions also call for "changes in laws to reduce the deficit by $1,000,000,000 for the period of fiscal years 2009 through 2014." Would the parliamentarian disallow a reconciliation bill that reduced the deficit by $2 billion simply because the instructions call for a mere $1 billion? Not likely, and yet this is no more restrictive a reading (especially given the more flexible wording of the Budget Act) than the one he supposedly endorsed today.
- With all due respect to Senator Conrad, it's pretty clear that he'd very much like for the House to pass the Senate bill first, and he's told the press twice before that that was necessary based on two different reasons that haven't held up all that well under closer examination. First it was the false paradox that you couldn't pass amendments to a law that "doesn't exist," (though as we've reasoned, if you believe a law doesn't exist without the president's signature, then you can't believe the amendments exist, either, until they're signed, so the paradox undoes itself if the bills are signed in the correct order). Then it was the claim that the reconciliation bill couldn't be ruled on by the parliamentarian until it was scored, and that the reconciliation bill couldn't be scored until the Senate bill was passed by the House. That turned out not to be true, either, since the Senate bill hasn't been passed, but the CBO was reported to already be at work on scoring reconciliation.
So it seems at least reasonable to me that we spend some time probing the latest Conrad assertion. At least if we think that having the option of passing reconciliation first helps net Democrats any votes for passage of the Senate bill in the House. If not, then perhaps there's little point in the exercise. But if there are votes that can be moved this way, then yeah, it probably pays to know what you do and don't actually have to do.
UPDATE 2: Adriel Bettelheim, Managing Editor at Congressional Quarterly, Tweets this:
Senate parliamentarian telling hill staff that GOP aides misinterpreted his opinion on health care + reconciliation process. #hcr
So, you know, I'm kinda curious about that.
UPDATE 3: CQ (subscription) now reports:
Republican aides, reporting the decision, interpreted it to mean the House would have to clear the Senate bill and President Obama would have to sign it before the reconciliation bill could be passed. House leaders had been hoping that the two bills could be passed almost simultaneously.
The parliamentarian, however, later reportedly clarified his position to Senate aides, saying that the reconciliation bill could be written in a way that would not require Obama to sign the Senate bill into law before the reconciliation bill is voted on.