Left Commentators Call Hatch on His Lies Regarding Reconciliation
by Matt Canham
Salt Lake Tribune
Washington » Liberal commentators have pounced on Sen. Orrin Hatch, calling him a hypocrite and a liar for his attack on the legislative shortcut Democrats favor to pass health reform.
But Hatch, R-Utah, isn’t about to back down. He said left-wing TV personalities and Democratic operatives are just “whining.”
“They can’t stand to have the facts pointed out to them,” he said.
The D.C. dust-up is in reaction to a column Hatch wrote for Tuesday’s Washington Post , stating his case against relying on an infrequently used Senate rule called reconciliation to stop Republicans from talking health reform to death.
Designed for budget-related items, reconciliation bills can’t be filibustered and allow for limited debate, moving quickly to a final vote that takes only 51 senators, a simple majority, to pass.
Senator Hatch, for his own political purposes, has distorted to the point of lying about the history of reconciliation and totally ignores his own role in using reconciliation. This is pure hypocrisy—the stuff that has ruined America’s respect for its political leaders. Here is Senator Hatch, a supposed statesman, who speaks proudly of his Mormon Church, who can’t speak the truth unless it works to his advantage.
Naturally, Republicans are not keen on the idea and no one has been as outspoken in his opposition as Hatch, who first argued against this route a year ago in a letter to President Barack Obama, well before the debate turned intensely partisan and bitter.
The closer Democrats have come to a reconciliation vote, the more Hatch has turned up his rhetoric. Consider this paragraph from his Post op-ed: “This use of reconciliation to jam through this legislation, against the will of the American people, would be unprecedented in scope. And the havoc wrought would threaten our system of checks and balances, corrode the legislative process, degrade our system of government and damage the prospect of bipartisanship.”
The liberal reaction was swift and fierce, led by MSNBC personality Rachel Maddow, who spent eight minutes on an MSNBC nightly program to denounce senior Republicans, such as Hatch, for using arguments she said were disingenuous and irresponsible.
“You are a family values chastity lecturing lecher,” she said. “You are hypocrites.”
Like other critics, she discussed Hatch’s votes on previous reconciliation bills pushed by Republicans. And in particular, she took issue with Hatch saying the rule has been used for substantive legislation only when it had “significant bipartisan support.”
“That is a total utter complete 100 percent unambiguous lie,” she said.
Whether you side with Hatch or Maddow comes down to your definition of “substantive,” because Republicans have used reconciliation to pass and extend the controversial Bush tax cuts on partisan votes and a deficit reduction bill in 2005 that cut Medicare and Medicaid. The tactic was also used on welfare reform and the bill creating COBRA insurance, though the final votes on those items were not as close.
Bloggers for The Huffington Post, Talking Points Memo and even Washington Post columnists piled on, all noting what they considered errors in Hatch’s argument or blatant hypocrisy.
Hatch read their criticism and even watched Maddow’s commentary, which he called “pretty low-brow stuff” and “out of line.”
“The left has gone berserk over this,” Hatch said. “I have to admit I’ve written a lot of op-ed pieces over the years but this one has created more debate and more antagonism than anything I’ve ever written — which means it must be pretty good.”
Hatch faced criticism from more than just political opponents. Thomas Mann has studied Congress for decades as a scholar with the nonpartisan Brookings Institution and he also took issue with Hatch’s argument, particularly the senator’s claim that using reconciliation in a bill like health reform is unprecedented and an abuse of the rules.
“Talk about hyperbole,” Mann said. “Both parties and most senators have situational ‘principles’ when it comes to the use of reconciliation.”
He said the Democrats’ plan is “a modest use of the procedure, one fully within the law, Senate rules, the history of the process and the Framers’ intent for the Senate.”
And it wouldn’t be needed, Mann said if the Republicans hadn’t “decided early to reject any version of the comprehensive reform that Obama and the Democrats ran on.”
Hatch termed Mann’s argument “pure bunk.”
The House and Senate have already passed their own version of health reform. Under normal circumstances, a conference committee would meld them into one and both bodies would take a final vote. But the surprise election of Republican Scott Brown in liberal Massachusetts threw a road block across the normal route.
With Republicans universally opposed, Senate Democrats are one vote short of being able to fight off a filibuster. The Democrats’ new plan, which is fraught with political difficulty, is to bypass the Republicans by asking the House to pass the Senate version.
Then the House would pass a second bill loaded with agreed-upon changes, which the Senate would move under reconciliation.
Mann, along with Democratic operatives, say this second bill of fixes is a legitimate targeted bill that fits within the rule’s limits, but Hatch disagrees.
“That is a gimmicky thing the Democrats are using to pass the whole bill,” he said. “It is the only way it could pass.”
And he believes if Democrats are successful in using reconciliation to push such a major change in federal law, it may become a common legislative tactic undercutting the minority’s ability to filibuster and decreasing the forced bipartisanship now created by Senate rules.
The Senate has only used reconciliation 19 times since 1974, often on highly contentious issues. Senators designed the rule to ensure legislative gridlock didn’t cripple the federal budget and hurt the nation’s economy, but it has been used on other social legislation such as welfare reform.
Sara Rosenbaum, a health policy expert at George Washington University, said: “Virtually every health policy advance — including the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which covers millions of children and which Hatch championed — has been a product of the reconciliation process.”
Others include the creation of COBRA insurance for those who lose their jobs and hospice coverage in Medicare.
“It’s true there have been some health things done, but nothing this big or this controversial,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office and a Republican economist. “Americans are tired of partisan efforts by the Congress and there is no more partisan way to go forward than this.”
In pushing for health reform this week, Obama never uttered the word reconciliation but he did call for the “same kind of up or down vote” as legislation that went through this process.
He said searching for a bipartisan vote on health reform is fruitless because of “honest and substantial differences between the parties.”
The White House wants to see a final vote within the next two weeks. During that time, Hatch promises to continue to challenge the Democrats on their bill and their preferred way forward.
“It is just too big an issue and that is not what reconciliation was designed to do,” Hatch said.
The Democrats’ plan on health reform
Step one » House passes the Senate version of health reform.
Step two » House passes a second bill with negotiated changes.
Step three » Senate passes negotiated changes using reconciliation.
Step four » Both bills go to the president for his signature.
Challenges » House Democrats must keep factions together on the first vote, despite disagreements on cost, abortion and other issues. And Republicans argue that using reconciliation violates Senate rules, a decision that will ultimately be made by the nonpartisan Senate parliamentarian.
Review What is reconciliation?
Reconciliation in effect protects bills from filibusters and thus from the requirement for a 60-vote supermajority to end debate, and instead allows legislation with a budgetary impact to pass by a simple majority after limited debate.
Source: The New York Times
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