House Dems Wary of Health-Care Bait and Switch
Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Rahm Emanuel are running the final days of the health-care bill like a three-card monte game on Times Square. You have to admire their skill and audacity, even if you can't quite follow what they are doing. The suckers in this con could be wavering House Democrats, who may well place their fateful bets ("yes" votes) and lose their shirts.
Silly me, I thought that I understood what the Democratic leaders (and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs) meant when they declared that health care would be "the law of the land" by this coming Sunday.
I was assuming that they were aiming for final congressional action by then—before President Obama jetted off to Indonesia for his truncated (and now-non-spring-break-for-the-kids) trip. I was way wrong.
Here, after patient explanations by Democrats on the Hill, is the scenario:
Democrats are hoping that, on Saturday or Sunday, the House will pass the long-since-passed, original Senate version of health care as part of an enveloping "reconciliation" bill that contains various soothing (to the House) fixes and adds to the Senate bill.
Exactly how this twinned-up bill will be structured in parliamentary terms is unclear, but the Dems hope that it can be built in such a way that a vote on the original Senate bill is only inferred, not actual—thus giving skittish Democrats the chance to argue that they never voted for it, at least not without the amendments.
But since at that moment the Senate and House will have passed identical measures (i.e., the House will have approved what the Senate had wrought), the measure will be eligible for signature by the president.
He will sign it with a flourish, declare it the law of the land, then head for Asia.
But that will not be the end of the congressional story. The Senate will still have to act on the encasing reconciliation bill—i.e., the fixes and adds. This could drag on for days, and is unlikely to proceed in ways the wavering House Dems will like.
For one, Senate Republicans will try to tie up the bill with dozens of amendments. At some point, Vice President Joe Biden—who is likely to spend a lot of time in the Senate president's chair in coming days—will rule them out of order.
But the Senate Democrats themselves may have little interest in passing the reconciliation bill, since a majority of them voted for the original bill that is now in it.
If the Senate passes a different version of the reconciliation bill, there will have to be a House-Senate conference on it. That could be more than a week away.
Or the Senate could fail to pass a reconciliation bill at all, leaving House Dems with a bill they didn't like (though they could try to argue that they didn't really vote for it)—a kind of ghost-train vote.
But health care—or some form of it—will be declared to be "the law of the land" because Obama will sign it, or, if he doesn't sign it, he'll say that House and Senate agreement amounts to the same thing.
There is a kind of demented genius to this bait and switch. But will this way of doing things help Obama or the Dems politically?
I think Obama himself will benefit, if people see immediate changes for the better in the health-care system. And he will finally be seen as effective. But he is holding all the cards. Some of his House colleagues may be left holding the bag.
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Howard Fineman is Newsweek's Senior Washington Correspondent and Columnist, senior editor and deputy Washington bureau chief. He is the author of "Living Politics," a column that began on MSNBC.COM and Newsweek.com and that now also appears in the print magazine. An award-winning reporter and writer, Fineman also is an analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, appearing regularly on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," "Hardball with Chris Matthews" and "TODAY." The author of scores of Newsweek cover stories, Fineman's work has appeared as well in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Republic. His 2008 national best-selling book, "The Thirteen American Arguments," was released in paperback by Random House in the spring of 2009.
One of the nation's leading political reporters, Fineman has interviewed every major presidential candidate from (then-vice president) George H.W. Bush in 1985 to (then senator) Barack Obama early and often in the 2008 campaign cycle. His current work focuses on the Obama Administration and its top officials, as well as on Congress and politics throughout the country. Although based in Washington, Fineman travels widely in the U.S. and has covered politics and other events in 49 of the 50 states.
Fineman's work has produced many milestones and awards. A cover story in November 2001 featured President George W. Bush's first extensive interview after 9/11. Another cover, "Bush and God," was part of a series of articles that won the 2003 National Magazine Award for General Excellence. His reporting has helped Newsweek win many honors from the Magazine Publishers Association and the American Journalism Review. Other awards include a "Page One" from the Headliners Club of New York, a "Silver Gavel" from the American Bar Association and a "Deadline Club" from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). In 2006 he received the Alumni Award from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.
As a reporter and writer, Fineman ranges widely. Besides campaign-year covers, other projects have included: race and politics, the impact of digital technology on society, the influence of Hollywood on politics, the rise of the religious right and of conservative talk radio. He has interviewed business leaders such as George Soros, Bill Gates, Steve Case and Robert Rubin and entertainment figures such as Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda and Jay Leno.
Although now under exclusive television contract to NBC, Fineman over the years has appeared on major public affairs shows, such as Nightline, Face the Nation, Fox News Sunday, Larry King Live, Charlie Rose and the NewsHour. He was a regular panelist on Washington Week in Review on PBS (1983-95) and on CNN's Capital Gang Sunday (1995-98). He worked with Ted Koppel on Nightline specials, and has been a guest on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report."
A native of Pittsburgh, Fineman began his career at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, covering the environment, the coal industry and state politics before joining the newspaper's Washington bureau in 1978. He moved to Newsweek in 1980, was named chief political correspondent in 1984, deputy Washington bureau chief in 1993, senior editor in 1995 and senior Washington correspondent and columnist in 2008.
Fineman holds an A.B., Phi Beta Kappa, from Colgate, an M.S. in journalism from Columbia and a J.D. from the Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville. His legal education included a year as a visiting student at the Georgetown University Law Center. He received Watson and Pultizer Traveling Fellowships for study in Europe, Russia and the Middle East, and has traveled to more than 40 countries, among them China, Vietnam, Japan, Ukraine, Israel, Turkey and the West Bank Palestinian Territories.
Fineman is married to Amy L. Nathan, a senior counsel at the Federal Communications Commission. They live in Washington with their two children, Meredith and Nicholas.
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