Why the House should just pass the Senate health care reform bill

Given the frightening results of today’s special Senate election in Massachusetts, the prospects for health care reform passing both houses of Congress and making it to the president’s desk have dimmed somewhat. Republican Senator-elect Scott Brown has pledged to vote against pretty much any health reform bill that comes before him, once he is seated.

But wait, you say! Hasn’t a bill already passed in both houses? Wise you are, young grasshopper – the House passed health care reform by a vote of 220 to 215 in early November of last year; six weeks later, on Christmas Eve the Senate passed similar legislation, 60 to 39. (Thanks to the phony filibuster the Republicans don’t have the cojones to actually use, 60 is now the minimum number of votes it takes in the Senate to pass any bill more controversial than, say, a nonbinding resolution commemorating Mother’s Day.)

But the legislation passed by the Senate was only similar to the House version, not exactly the same, and therein lies the rub. Under ordinary circumstances, what would happen is that the two houses would hammer out a compromise between each version of the bill, then return to their respective body and vote the bill out a second time. The problem is that, with 41 members of the Upper House (or, 40 members plus one soon-to-be-inaugurated member), the Republicans are sure to pseudo-filibuster any compromise legislation on the Senate floor.

This leaves the Democrats with only a few options for actually passing a bill in 2010. They could try cajoling the Senate’s last remaining “moderate” Republican, Olympia Snowe of Maine, into supporting the bill. Fortunately, if they are able to accomplish such a feat, global warming won’t be much of a problem anymore, since the earth’s temperature will have dropped significantly due to the freezing-over of hell. Two other options, both very politically risky, would be to either (a) hurry up on that compromise so that the Senate can get a bill out before Scott Brown is inaugurated, or (b) pass the bill through the controversial “reconciliation” process, by which legislation bypasses the normal route and becomes filibuster-proof, thus requiring only 51 votes to pass. Either of these would make the Democrats look like political opportunists going out of their way to subvert the democratic process; at least, that’s how the right-wing media would spin it.

The most sensible option, which has the advantage of being both perfectly legal and legitimate, and also the least politically risky path, would be for the House to simply pass the Senate version of the bill as is, with no amendments whatsoever. This would bypass the requirement for the Senate to hold another vote on the bill, since their prior 60-to-39 vote is still valid. Yes, yes, there’s a million reasons – from the abortion compromise to denying coverage of any kind to undocumented immigrants to setting up state-based exchanges rather than a national one – for the House, and sensible progressive Americans, to object to the Senate bill.

But there’s one big, overriding reason to just pass the thing and get this whole ordeal over with, and that’s the huge political victory the Democrats would be handing the teabagger wing of the Republican Party by failing to pass a health care bill at all. Think of the boost it would give the GOP heading into this year’s midterm elections if they could boast of having defeated President Obama’s single biggest domestic policy initiative despite having only 41 percent of the seats in each House of Congress.

On the other hand, if the Democrats can swing into election season having passed at least some bill, however imperfect, their message will be that much stronger: “Look, you elected us in 2006 and 2008 to make some changes, and as a result of those elections, insurance companies won’t be able to deny you coverage for a preexisting condition or drop you if you’re sick; you’ll be able to keep your health care if you change or lose your job; we’re slowing the rapidly rising cost of health care; and it’s going to be a lot easier for low-income people to purchase and keep health care. If you have a problem with all of those policies and you want them repealed, by all means, vote for the other party. If, on the other hand, you like the direction health care is going and you think we can build on these reforms just like we did with Social Security and Medicare, vote for us.”

The Senate health care bill is far from perfect – heck, parts of it barely even rank as adequate – but defeating it, and thus probably defeating health care reform in any form, would effectively cede the 2010 (and possibly) 2012 elections to the Palin-Beck Republican Party. Doing so would doom America’s chances of passing any major health care reform legislation for at least the next decade.