With his own reelection all but certain this year, Eliot Engel is free to focus on the Democratic party’s big campaign picture.
Engel thinks “the likelihood is quite good” that Congress will pursue reconciliation in an effort to get its stalled Health Bill to President Obama’s desk. With the loss of the Democratic “super-majority” (by way of Scott Brown’s special election victory last month), passage of the controversial bill suddenly became a complex matter.
According to the New York Times, since reconciliation is reserved for budgetary matters, House and Senate Democrats have…
concluded that the only way to overhaul health care, in a comprehensive way, was by pursuing a complex two-bill strategy.
First, in negotiations with the Senate and the White House, they would agree on changes to the Senate bill. These changes would be incorporated in a separate “budget reconciliation” bill. The House and then the Senate would pass the budget bill. The House would pass the Senate health bill. The two measures would be presented to the president at about the same time.
Despite the protestations of Republicans, reconciliation makes a lot of sense for a Democratic party concerned with mid-term elections. While Republicans are set to hammer the majority party for pushing through legislation they say is unpopular, it would be more damaging for Democrats to approach November as the party that can’t get anything passed.
Engel and other supporters of reconciliation know that it’s tough to rev up the “get out the vote” machine, when your platform is “we’ll keep trying to get something done.”