Congress To Broker Health Overhaul Informally

If you weren't completely asleep during high school civics, you might remember that after the House and Senate each pass different bills on the same subject, say health overhaul just for fun, they reconcile them in something called a conference committee.

We wouldn't blame you for dozing because it is hugely formal process, with each chamber appointing a certain number of Democrats and Republicans, and a complex set of rules governing those appointments and actually getting the bills into conference.

So more and more often, Congress fudges the whole conference thing by just conducting its negotiations informally, outside the "official" conference process. And it's looking like that will be the case with health care overhaul , too. How come? Well, Democrats need to get cracking if they stand a chance of giving President Obama a health bill to sign in time for the State of the Union address, which he'll probably give later this month or possibly early February.

 

The last time this happened on a major health bill was a big overhaul of the Food and Drug Administration in 2007. There was also no conference to reconcile the competing House and Senate versions of the mental health parity bill in 2008. Instead, that bill ended up as the vehicle to enact the massive financial bailout.

Skipping a formal conference speeds lawmaking along. Frequently, if there are only a few or minor differences between the House and Senate versions of a bill, lawmakers will simply write an amendment to the bill clearing up those differences, then add it to the bill, which is sent back to both houses for a pretty routine approval.

Then there's the other reason for skipping conference— or at least avoiding the creation of the official conference committee — to prevent opponents from throwing roadblocks in front of a bill. That's pretty much what's happening in the case of the health bill. Simply getting conferees appointed by the Senate requires several steps that can be filibustered and require 60 votes and potentially hours and hours of debate.

And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's parting words to the chamber just as the Senate prepared to pass the bill Christmas Eve made it clear his forces weren't laying down their arms. "This fight is long from over," he vowed. "My colleagues and I will work to stop this bill from becoming law."

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, in a meeting with constituents this weekend at home in Los Angeles, acknowledged that a formal conference is all but impossible, because in the Senate all the various motions "would need 60 votes all over again," reports firedoglake.com.

So how much faster could this non-conference conference produce a deal?

There's still lots of issues to be settled: how exactly to finance the bill, touchy abortion language, and whether to have a government-sponsored public option. Well, probably not, on that last one. But it will take at least a few weeks to iron all those things out.

Then again, President Obama told the Newshour's Jim Lehrer he'd like to have the negotiators down to the White House to do some of their talking where there can be arm-twisting at the same time.

Perhaps that can speed the process up some?