Don’t Panick Yet- Healthcare Reform Still Needs Senate Passage

One of my friends sent me a text early Sunday morning (1:15 a.m. EST) saying that a trillion dollar House bill had been foisted on America. While it is true that a more-than-trillion dollar bill was passed by the House of Representatives 220-215, this should not yet be a cause for panick.

No, the bill is not good news. However, as Hot Air points out, “Take heart, righties…the likelihood of 60 votes in the Senate, especially after a vote this narrow, [is] very slim indeed.” (Also, see my piece?here on how I think Reid could very well fail in his goal to pass health care reform.)?Furthermore, the upcoming Senate bill (which is still being scored by the Congressional Budget Office) is certainly going to be more moderate than the House one, given the influence of moderate Democratic senators such as Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Independent Joe Lieberman (D-CT). Democrats need 60 out of 100 votes in the Senate, not the 50%+1 (or 218) necessary in the House of Representatives, and assuming all Republicans oppose the bill, even just one of the three Senators listed above voting with Republicans to not close debate on the bill would kill it. Therefore, Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) must keep the bill more moderate. (Unfortunately, of course, liberals will kill it if it’s too moderate, so he can’t make it an actual good bill, just a less-worse one.) This balance of power is what gives Americans reason to hope that this disastrous Democratic form of health care reform does not work. Allow me to briefly explain.

After spending over 14 months in D.C., both at The Heritage Foundation and in health care lobbying, I’m certainly not an expert on the political process, but I know it fairly well, and any number of things could happen that would derail health care reform. The first is getting a Senate bill passed. The second is to get the House and Senate bills to conference and make one combined bill. The third is to then vote on that combined bill in both chambers. However, a number of things along the way could derail the process. A few examples: a Senate bill could be killed in the inital chamber vote; the conference bill could be killed in either the House or the Senate (remember, many liberals are declaring they won’t vote for a bill without a public option, and some won’t vote for a bill that’s pro-life); and, lastly,?the bill could pass in its conference-created form in one chamber but?be modified slightly in the other and therefore have to be voted on again in the chamber that passed the conference bill. This latter course could make the bill unpassable, as the changes could be very minor or very large.

We should all be actively involved in contacting our representatives in Congress, becoming active through organizations such as The Heritage Foundation?or Americans for Prosperity?and generally following the debate so when voting comes around next year we know who to vote out of office. One example of a Republican who?perhaps should be?gone: Representative Joseph Cao (R-LA), who represents a Democratic district and voted in favor of the House bill.