Can House Democrats trust the Senate not to foul up a two-bill strategy for health care reform?

No.

While most of the public discussion focuses on the procedural challenges particular to reconciliation, a more important point is being overlooked.  The hardest part of the Pelosi/Reid strategy is trying to enact one massive package of legislative changes, spread out over two separate bills, one of which cannot change. Reconciliation is just the icing, and in some ways, reconciliation makes a two bill strategy easier since it avoids the filibuster threat.

The MSM has picked up on the sequencing challenge.  For Bill #2 (the new reconciliation bill) to be scored properly for Senate consideration, Bill #1 (the original Senate-passed bill) has to have passed both the House and the Senate.  But this means that House Democrats would have to vote for Bill #1 before knowing that Bill #2 would make it to the President’s desk.

This is being framed as a “trust” issue.  Can House Democrats trust Senate Democrats to pass Bill #2 and send it to the President?  After all, we know those Senate Democrats were happy to stop work with Bill #1, since that was their original bill.

This lack of trust is reinforced by centuries-old institutional tensions between the bodies, and by comments like Leader Reid saying at the recent Blair House summit that no one is talking about reconciliation.

Read the full post here