Reconciliation and Obamacare: what goes around comes around?

neo-neocon:

I certainly hope we get to find out:

In a private meeting with Americans for Limited Government (ALG) staff, senior aides to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) promised that should Republicans reclaim a majority in the Senate on Tuesday, they would use the budget reconciliation process to go after Obamacare.

It was unclear whether that meant full or partial repeal of the law under reconciliation, but according to ALG vice president of public policy Rick Manning who was at the meeting on October 29, “Aides acknowledged the only way to get any type of repeal or even major changes to the law would be reconciliation.”

The matter was further clarified in an October 30 statement by McConnell spokesman Brian McGuire: “if Republicans are fortunate enough to take back the majority we’ll owe it to the American people to try through votes on full repeal, the bill’s most onerous provisions, and reconciliation.”

The rest of the article is about the finer points of outright repeal vs. change through reconciliation, as well as the question of tax vs. penalty, the probability of an Obama veto, and tactics. But the strategy is to use the Senate majority to shake up Obamacare in a big way.

As I’ve said before: hope we get a chance to see.

Back when Obamacare was being passed, I wrote a ton of posts about the use of reconciliation as a process to drag that thing through. Without reconciliation—which, if I recall correctly, had never before been used to force a major and controversial piece of legislation—Obamacare would have remained in the dustbin of history. Reconciliation could be the first step towards putting it back there again, at least in its present form.

Obama would veto either repeal or a bill passed by reconciliation, of course, if the latter made anything other than tiny changes. But it would be quite the confrontation—and, as the article says, “would set up the 2016 presidential election as a clear referendum on whether or not to keep the law.” While Obama is president, there’s no way for Congress to actually get rid of Obamacare. Even mere defunding would be a disaster, because Obamacare has by now dismantled much of the system it replaced, and that system no longer exists. And even impeachment and conviction of Obama wouldn’t do it, because Biden would then become president, and he would probably veto a repeal or reconciliation bill as well.

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