“Trust but verify.” This famous quote most often attributed to the late President Ronald Reagan is quickly becoming a resounding mantra for the Democrats in Congress, especially those that serve in the House of Representatives. trust is what the speaker of the House must sell to a minimum of 216 members of the House in order for her to garner the needed votes to pass the Senate health care bill through the House chamber in order to send the health care bill to the president to become law. This trust factor is hampering her ability to secure the magic number of votes to pass the bill. You see, the trust factor not only applies to the speaker and her word, but it extends to actions of the U. S. Senate.
In order for the speaker to secure the votes to pass health care, she must also pass a bill that will fix some of the problems that exist in the eyes of some members of the House with the Senate health care bill. Not only do members of the House have to trust the speaker, members must trust and believe the Senate Democrats. In order for a common sense member of the House to commit his/her vote for the Senate health care bill, a promise must be made that these undisclosed changes will be made to a second bill, to their liking. This is potentially easy for the speaker to produce in the House, via a reconciliation bill, but passing that identical bill through the Senate, unchanged, is where the verify part gets shaky. The Senate must clear several hurdles to declare the new fix bill a privileged reconciliation bill. Doing so would allow the Senate to avoid many of the common road blocks available to the GOP for stalling or stopping the final vote of this reconciliation bill. If the Senate can overcome these roadblocks, members of the Senate must pass the bill without changes, thereby, sending this second bill to the president to also become law. This is a lot to swallow for members who might have heard the speaker say on March 9, 2010: “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it.”
In the works right now are the finishing touches on the compromise language of this reconciliation/fix bill and the constructing of a House enrollment gimmick that might afford the speaker these various parliamentary steps to pass this one-two bill enactment. After spending 26-plus years on the floor of the United States Senate, I have been involved in crafting enrolling gimmicks, deeming consents, correcting resolutions, binding/committal letters and the like. These “agreements” between the House and Senate, require a vast amount of trust and faith between the two chambers. At the end of the day, I believe the speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader can craft all of the necessary chair rulings, germaneness waivers, committal motions, dilatory precedents and enrollment gimmicks that need to be invoked to get this process through the Congress. That is not the real question. The real question is …. can members of Congress not only trust but also verify? Only time will tell.
Stay tuned.
Elizabeth Letchworth is the owner-founder of GradeGov.com, four times elected United States Senate Secretary for the Majority/Minority, U.S. Senate-retired, presently senior legislative advisor at Covington & Burling, LLC.