Think Tank West

By Michael F. Cannon

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) government takeover of the health care sector grows less popular by the day:

The more the American people learn about the Democrats’ government takeover of health care, the less they like it.

Rather than go back to the drawing board and write a better bill, Reid instead did something that much of the U.S. Constitution and the rules of the U.S. Senate exist to prevent: he quickly rammed a sweeping and unpopular bill through the Senate, so he could win passage before any more of the American people learned how this bill would affect them.

Reid’s strategy was as cynical as it was undemocratic. When even moderate Republican senators like Maine’s Olympia Snowe decry how the bill was crafted “in the shadows, without transparency, just to garner the necessary 60 votes and nothing more” and protest that “legislation affecting more than 300 million Americans deserves better than midnight votes on a bill that cannot be further amended and that no one has had the opportunity to fully consider,” you know you are witnessing a raw partisan power play.

Reid’s power play succeeded, if that’s the right word.  Around 1am this morning — day 185 day of Congress considering the Obama health plan without a complete cost estimate — and after buying off several senators with billions of the American people’s tax dollars, Reid cleared the toughest procedural obstacle to approving the bill.  He cleared it on a strict party-line vote, without a single vote to spare.  Barring some unforeseen snag, the Senate will approve Reid’s bill before Christmas.

But this thing ain’t over.  The Reid bill must be reconciled with the House bill, which passed by a similarly narrow margin, in a House-Senate conference.  And there are significant differences between what the House and the Senate seem willing to support — on taxpayer funding of abortions, on taxing union health plans, on creating a government rationing board, on subsidies for undocumented workers, and (let’s not forget) on creating a so-called “public option.” Every step of the way, Democrats have tried to portray this thing as being inevitable.  The House vote, the Senate vote, and the remaining tensions scream that it’s not inevitable.

That conference process will take weeks.  During that time, the American people will do what Reid does not want them to do: they will learn more about how his bill would affect their health insurance premiums, their tax burden, and the quality of their care.  If so, it will be harder, not easier, for Reid to get 60 votes the next time around.

Filed under: American Foreign Policy, American Domestic Policy by