“Congressional procedure experts tell me they could theoretically write that new budget resolution in a vague way, so that reconciliation could be used for any of the following: (1) tax reform, (2) health reform, or (3) both together in one mega-bill.”
One big looming deadline has been motivating Republicans’ probably doomed push to repeal Obamacare this week: September 30.
On that date — this Saturday — Congress’s current “budget reconciliation” instructions, which set up the special process that lets the Senate advance a bill with a simple majority rather than 60 votes, expire.
Some commentary has treated this push as the GOP’s “last effort to replace Obamacare” (as an NPR report deemed it), assuming that the expiration of the budget reconciliation vehicle basically means the effort as a whole is dead. And it’s long been thought in Washington that the GOP would finally take this as an excuse to accept defeat on health care and pivot instead to prioritizing a tax reform bill.
But the reality of what this deadline means for the Republican agenda isn’t quite so cut and dry. Because though some in the party want to move on to tax reform, several Republican senators have recently argued that they shouldn’t abandon the Obamacare, repeal effort.
Click to continue reading. By Andrew Prokop, Vox.com, Sep 26, 2017.