Republicans Fan Distrust of Senate in Bid to Thwart Health Bill

March 12 (Bloomberg) -- Senate Republicans are sending a self-deprecating message to House Democrats to persuade them to vote against health-care legislation: Don’t trust senators.

House Democratic leaders are planning to pass legislation approved in December by the Senate. Then both chambers would approve another bill that would change parts of the Senate bill that House Democrats find objectionable.

Republicans are telling House Democrats they can’t rely on the Senate to approve the changes, which congressional leaders are trying to navigate through a process called budget reconciliation. That warning was underlined yesterday, when the Senate parliamentarian said President Barack Obama has to sign a health bill into law before Congress could alter it.

Republicans say once Obama signs the Senate bill, Senate Democrats will have little incentive to amend it.

“House Democrats will have to decide whether they want to trust the Senate to fix their political problems,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters March 9. He recalled a story about onetime House Speaker Tom Foley explaining to a young member: “The opposition, that’s the Republicans. But now the enemy, that’s the Senate.”

House and Senate Democratic leaders are putting the finishing touches on the reconciliation bill. The revisions will likely include House priorities such as more generous subsidies for low-income people to purchase insurance and eliminating a gap in Medicare coverage of prescription drugs for elderly Americans.

No Special Deals

The bill would also scrap deals that Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid cut with lawmakers to win votes for the Dec. 24 vote by the Senate on the health-care overhaul.

A month later, Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown won a special election to fill a vacant Senate seat, denying Reid the 60-vote supermajority needed to pass final legislation that was being worked out with the House amid solid Republican opposition.

So Democrats are resorting to budget reconciliation, which allows passage of legislation by simple majorities as long as it’s focused on spending and taxation.

Because the tactic requires the House to act first, Republicans are trying to capitalize on the traditional distrust of the Senate by House members to persuade wavering Democrats to vote against the legislation.

With the complexity and uncertainty of reconciliation, “I can see why House members might not trust the Senate to go along with this charade,” Senate Republican Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona told reporters on March 10.

‘Right to Be Skeptical’

Democrats have sought to build trust between the two chambers in a series of meetings of House and Senate leaders to discuss the final push for the legislation.

“The House has a right to be skeptical” of the Senate’s ability to act on reconciliation because “they have almost 300 bills they’ve passed sitting over somewhere lost in the Senate,” Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat, told reporters on March 9 after a meeting in the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

To assure House members the Senate will pass reconciliation, Senator Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, said he’d be willing to sign a letter with 50 other senators pledging to do so.

“Whatever it takes,” he told reporters last night.

‘Trust Each Other’

A simple promise should suffice because “those of us who are relatively senior in health care trust each other,” Rockefeller said. If the Senate failed to pass reconciliation, then the House “would never cooperate with us again, ever,” he said. “Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid probably wouldn’t speak for 25 years.”

Republicans say rank-and-file Democrats shouldn’t trust their leaders.

“What the president is doing is asking House Democrats to hold hands, jump off a cliff, and hope Harry Reid catches them,” Senator Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, told reporters. “Senator Reid’s not going to have any incentive to catch them because by the time the reconciliation bill gets to the Senate the president will have already signed the health- care bill.”

The Republican strategy demonstrates “real desperation,” said Connecticut Representative Rosa DeLauro, chairman of the House Democratic Steering Committee. It won’t work because “there is going to be a bill” that she says will solidify Democratic support.

New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, chairman of the Senate Democrats’ campaign effort, said he tells Democrats not to believe that Republicans “are giving you strategic advice to save you.”

He added, “The most successful thing that we can do is pass a bill” so voters will “begin to see benefits” of health-care reform. Otherwise, Republicans “win all around.”

To contact the reporter on this story: James Rowley in Washington at jarowley@bloomberg.net