More than four years after they chastised Democratic lawmakers for using a special legislative process to pass the Affordable Care Act, some Republicans are mulling over the use of the same strategy to dismantle the 2010 health care legislation.
If they use it, the method known as “budget reconciliation” would allow Senate Republicans to present a budget that includes anti-Obamacare provisions. Budget reconciliation would also limit the floor debate to 20 hours. Since it remains unlikely that Senate Republicans could muster up 60 votes against Obamacare, this process serves as the only filibuster-proof option for members of the party. But they still need to hash out the details of a budget bill, especially since Senate precedent limits the number of reconciliation bills — one of each for taxes, spending, and raising the government borrowing cap.
“At some point we’ll decide if we’re going to have reconciliation and if we do, we’ll make some decision much later on,” House Speaker John Boehner told reporters last week.
When Democrats employed budget reconciliation to pass the Affordable Care Act in 2010, many GOP lawmakers said they couldn’t imagine using the process to push through government health care policy. Then-House Minority Leader John A. Boehner called it “the ultimate Washington power grab.” Sen. John McCain even threatened future GOP inaction in lieu of Democrats’ use of budget reconciliation.
GOP lawmakers aren’t strangers to the budget reconciliation process, however, especially when it comes to addressing matters of fiscal policy with their Democratic colleagues. In 1997, Republicans used budget reconciliation in a bipartisan move with then-President Bill Clinton to advance a balanced budget bill. The Senate also used it in 2001 and 2003 to pass then-President George W. Bush’s tax cuts.
During a recent GOP retreat in Hershey, Penn., House Budget Chairman Tom Price (R-GA) said that while the budget reconciliation process would be effective, it wouldn’t be a “silver bullet.” However, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, seemed set on executing the tactic and finishing the budget by April 15. For Enzi, accomplishing this feat would help him meet his goal of reining in federal spending.
“We have the opportunity this year to put our country on not just another course, but a better course,” Enzi said in a statement to the press released on the day that he assumed the Budget Committee chairmanship. “For more than six years, deficits have soared when compared to the past with little regard to what future generations will have to do to pay for the things we decided not to pay for today… A little pain now pays dividends for the future. I look forward to working with Chairman Price as well as Senator Sanders and the rest of my colleagues on the committee. As the first accountant to ever be Chairman of the committee, I’m ready to dig into the numbers.”
Not everyone is pleased with the GOP’s ongoing assault on the Affordable Care Act. During her appearance at the New America Foundation last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell said that Republicans should work across the aisle to solve what she considers to be more crucial public health matters — including the ongoing Ebola epidemic, the threat of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and opioid abuse.
“There are many things that I believe we have an opportunity to get done in this New Year working across the aisle and different sectors,” Burwell told the audience. “Efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act are happening despite evidence that the legislation is working… people who were uninsured are better off as a result. I believe this firmly and I’ve been told by people that they’re not concerned by the next headline. They want us to stop the back-and-forth [and] move forward.”
For now, it remains to be seen whether GOP lawmakers will heed Burwell’s advice. The budget reconciliation process can move forward once the House and Senate agree upon a budget resolution, a measure that sets parameters for spending, revenues and curbs to Medicare, Medicaid, and other benefit programs. While there’s support for using budget reconciliation to attack Obamacare, some GOP lawmakers — including Sen. John Thune (R-SD) — worry that a probable Obama veto will ultimately waste the party’s limited use of special budget rules.
“I’d like to get tax reform done. I think we could do infrastructure in that process. And I think that’s something that could actually get enacted,” Thune, chairman of the Senate Commerce committee, told the Associated Press. “I mean we’re going to have a lot of Obamacare votes one way or the other.”