By: Cliff Smith
After looking dead on arrival several times, President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Company are trying to pass Obamacare again. Their only path is to pass it with a bare minimum in the House and, after losing their supermajority in the Senate because of the election of Scott Brown, to rewrite the Senate rules for “reconciliation,” which allows a simple majority to pass legislation.
The Senate already passed a health bill on Christmas Eve. But there were too many sticking points with the bill for it to clear a vote in the House. A plausible scenario exists in which the Senate might push a few amendments through reconciliation to pacify House concerns, short-circuiting usual procedures, particularly for a bill of this scope. This approach would certainly spark anger across the aisle and controversy across the country.
The public opposes Obamacare in every poll taken, sometimes by a margin of 3 to 1. The legislation has no Republican support and there is widespread bipartisan opposition to it in the House. No program of this size and importance has ever passed without widespread bipartisan support. Nonetheless, the Democrats seem hell bent on doing so and have large majorities in both Houses of Congress and control of the White House. So if they can get their troops in line, they will have the numbers to pass Obamacare.
The opposition zeal among Congress and the public is consolidating a major movement for repeal of the legislation if it passes by bare majorities. Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander, hardly a partisan bomb-thrower, recently endorsed such a movement.
But liberal Democrats pushing the legislation don’t seem too concerned. They believe that once the bill is passed, it will gain popularity and develop its own constituency to protect it. Like other government social programs, once people rely on it, they will defend it and not let it undergo significant changes or repeal. Many right-leaning pundits seem to agree. “Once government infiltrates, it rarely retreats,” says David Harsanyi of the Denver Post.
Repealing Obamacare is far from a sure bet. Romneycare in Massachusetts is not popular and Tenncare in Tennessee was such a disaster that it was repealed with the help of a Democratic Governor. Nonetheless, under normal circumstances with normal legislation, I would agree with those that see repeal as unrealistic. The federal government doesn’t have to balance the budget the way states do and the constituency for a national program is generally more powerful than a state constituency. President Reagan couldn’t even get rid of the Department of Education when it was only a couple of years old.
But these are not normal circumstances and this is not normal legislation. Passing Obamacare under the current circumstances could backfire, creating a repeal movement that could destroy the Democratic Party. The key difference between Obamacare and other major programs that have been implemented, besides the lack of bipartisan support, is that Obamacare’s benefits will not be realized until four years after the taxes and Medicare cuts have begun. The pain starts before the pleasure.
Thus, a strong protection constituency is highly unlikely in the four years after Obamacare’s passage. Instead, public opposition is likely to increase as people are taxed for benefits they aren’t receiving. So, what is boils down to, is even if the bill gets passed, Republicans will be able to run against Obamacare for two election cycles before it actually gets implemented.
It’s not totally clear how the Republicans will do in the upcoming midterm elections, but they are widely expected to do well. The estimates range from the picking up anywhere from 15 to 65 seats in the House and 3 to 10 seats in the Senate. Assume that Republicans perform somewhere in the middle. Perhaps Republicans gain 6 Senate seats and 32 House seats. They will remain 3 seats short of a majority in the Senate and 8 seats short in the House.
Assuming that happens, Republicans will be favored to take over the Senate in 2012. This is because Republicans had horrible cycles for the Senate in both 2000 and 2006, so they will have very few seats that are vulnerable compared to a large number of Democrat seats that are likely to be vulnerable. At present, there are no more than four Republican seats that have a realistic chance of being vulnerable in the 2012 cycle but there are 14 Democratic seats that realistically may be vulnerable.
That certainly gives the Republicans a very realistic shot to gain control of the Senate, regardless of what happens in House elections or the race for the White House. Prior to the new precedent being set with regard to reconciliation, repealing Obamacare would require 60 votes in the Senate. But if the Democrats are going to use reconciliation to pass the bill, the Republicans can certainly use reconciliation to repeal it.
Of course, Republicans will also have to win a few more House seats and also win the next presidential election in order to ultimately repeal Obamacare. It is likely that control of the House will fall with whatever party wins the Presidency. At this time, such Republican victories are obviously far from certain.
But consider what the Democrats will have given the Republicans to use against them! Before the benefits take effect, the public will be paying taxes and seniors will endure cuts in Medicare for a program they opposed by a wide margin – yet was passed by the narrowest possible margins! I imagine any Republican presidential nominee would be happy to run on a platform of “Elect me and my Republican allies in Congress this term, and we’ll repeal this bill that you didn’t want and refund the taxes you’ve been paying for a benefit you haven’t gotten.” This is not a difficult message to sell and I predict it will be one with potency.
The long and the short of it is that the Democrats may well be fighting for an illusory victory that lacks a firm foundation. They are overextending in order to win and are putting themselves in a bad position to defend their gains and in so doing may be greatly weakening their future prospects.
Is it a complicated path to repeal the bill? Yes. But it’s significantly less complicated than Democrats’ path to pass the bill. And the Democrats don’t have the public on their side.
A Seattle, Washington native, Cliff Smith worked for the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Senate Committee on Finance. He also worked on numerous campaigns in his home state. Cliff holds a law degree from Catholic University, a Master's in Public Policy from Pepperdine and a BA from Washington State. 
The Repubs are taking a huge risk w/their blanket negativity. Most major elements of the bill are highly popular, and voters understand that Health Insurance companies and Pharma are rationing services for their own benefit, and raising costs wildly. If this does NOT pass, premium increases will cause incredible sticker shock.
Further, President Obama’s serious effort to combat rampant waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicare and elsewhere is just what the doctor ordered. More and more Americans are losing their healthcare—there is no doubt the figure exceeds 50 million, and adds stupidly to costs by forcing primary care into emergency rooms and giving short shrift to real wellness and prevention. This will pass, and Repubs will be stuttering to a public who craves actual solutions to the severe problems that confront us.
For one thing, “We’ll refund taxes you didn’t want for a program you haven’t benefited from,” isn’t a negative message to anybody who doesn’t want the bill to pass. It’s a very positive message, actually. Not everybody, indeed, not most people, measure positive outcomes by how much the federal government is doing for them.
Second, the D’s are fooling themselves if they think “major elements” of the bill are popular, thus the bill will be popular when people “understand” it (presuming, of course, that they don’t already, which is suspect in and of its self). That’s simply not the case. “Major elements” of eating four courses of all the best food at the fanciest restaurant in town are popular until you get the bill and step on the scale the next morning.
Third, medicare fraud is a problem that can be confronted totally independently of Obamacare, which just shows that he’s not really selling solutions, he’s selling an ideological system people don’t want.
I think your poll numbers are way off — honestly, Cliff, I don’t see how you can believe you are being fair in claiming numbers like “3 to 1 against”. What polls are you reading? http://www.pollster.com/polls/us/healthplan.php If you’re intending just to give the most biased Republican spin on polling data, I guess that’s your business, Cliff, but usually you’re a lot more balanced than that.
And I think it’s a real misreading of the process to claim that “Democrats will pass the bill using reconciliation” and that, therefore, Republicans can repeal it using reconciliation. Again, Cliff, you are so much more informed and educated than I am about politics that I cannot believe you’re allowing yourself to talk about the process this way. Reconciliation is only being targeted at certain spending measures–it’s not being used to pass the whole reform, it’s being used to modify certain elements of the reform (like the kickbacks to Nebraska and Louisiana….which as I recall you’d be in agreement with). Anyway, even if you think this is awful, the Democrats have intentionally not claimed that the vast bulk of the bill can be passed through reconciliation, which is why they didn’t do it in the first place. So to claim that Republicans can repeal the whole thing using reconciliation is, I think, disconnected from what is actually happening on Capital Hill. Again, you have every right to oppose passage of the bill and wish it repealed (just as I have every right to support its passage and oppose its repeal). But I know you, and you’re normally a lot more even-handed than this in talking about politics.
I’m trying not to get into this stuff with you, since I think it’s better for our friendship if we don’t. But I guess I followed the link from your Facebook page and saw too many things that made me have to speak up. I hope you feel I’m being fair — I’m certainly not going to claim that the majority of Americans right now support the health care reform as they understand it, and I’m not going to claim that Republicans couldn’t work around the edges of reform using reconciliation in the same way that Democrats are. But I think you’ve made some claims that are wrong and need to be stated differently, and I guess I thought I owed it to you to say so. If this kind of thing pisses you off, let me know and I’ll stop reading your columns.
If I could delete the above comment, so you know, I would. I’ve decided you aren’t posting links to articles clearly intended for a Republican audience so that your crazy liberal friends can come here and give you crap about it. Sorry.
I’ve realized it’s not realistic to hold you to the same standards you would use in talking to me when you’re writing a column for a partisan audience. I don’t think the things I said are wrong in fact, but in this context, I don’t think you were inviting them, and I don’t mean to be impolite.
Please! Same old buzzwords, “Obamacare”, and erroneous, fear-mongering talking points, “particularly for a bill of this scope” (how about the Bushie tax cuts?) etc. Your poll numbers are OOTA (out of the air). Either give us something new, or give it a rest.
James,
I don’t take offense to either post, but the problems you cite are not things I made up, nor are they partisan hackery.
I can’t find the link to the poll right now although I’ve found links to a couple of blogs discussing it, but I think it was a CNN poll that found that roughly 50% of the people wanted Congress/President to “start over” with a new Health Care bill, roughly 25% wanted them to “do nothing” while roughly 25% favored the current bill. That is the poll I was referring to.
If you poll something more generic, or don’t give “starting over” as an option, health care indeed is more popular, but in just about every poll I’ve seen, about 10% more oppose it then favor it. The most recent one I’m aware of has opposition at 53% and support at about 40% There hasn’t been a poll taken in months that shows it even getting 50/50 support.
Second, I was not the one who was claiming that the bill could be repealed through reconciliation. Senator Alexander was the one making that claim, I was merely repeating his claim. I don’t think Senator Alexander is anywhere near the far-right fringes of his caucus. If someone like Senator DeMint were making such a claim, I might be more skeptical. But if Senator Alexander is saying that, I find it hard to think he’s engaging in pure partisan hackery. I wouldn’t expect such a thing from someone like Senator Feinstein either, someone I’ve grown to admire even while I usually disagree. I actually think Senator Alexander and her are in a way mirror images of each other.
But the bottom line is that the democrats are clearly warping the rules and pushing parliamentary procedure to it’s limits to get what they cannot get through the way things have traditionally been done. And this is necessary because the Public is not on their side. You can hardly blame Republicans for playing tit for tat when the public is on their side.
While he takes a somewhat different take, Craig Crawford is making essentially the same point I am in this article in a recent CQ post.
http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2010/03/insurance-mandate-political-ti.html
It’s worth noting that Crawford is a former Carter official and openly gay. So I don’t think seeing this vulnerability is some right-wing fantasy.
Barack Obama in addition to the rest of his liberal cronies need to be embarrassed with themselves. This is certainly a complete outrage. I used to be under the impression that the moment the president takes office he must declare an oath to support along with defend the constitution of the usa. Nowhere within the Constitution does it provide the federal government the power to be able to enact or impose laws and regulations such as the healthcare reform bill. There’s no doubt that that these power mongers are going to be in for a genuine shock around November. Congratulations over the decline of your political future.
Here’s an article that makes essentially the same point I’m making but is more comprehensive:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/03/30/four_reasons_repeal_of_health_care_bill_isnt_out_of_the_question_104976.html