Health Care rolling on

I don't see this as terrible news

The Senate Parliamentarian has ruled that President Barack Obama must sign Congress’ original health care reform bill before the Senate can act on a companion reconciliation package, senior GOP sources said Thursday.

While it probably makes it harder for House Democrats who don't fully trust the Senate to follow through on its promise, and while it definitely will be highlighted by the GOP (who were the ones who asked for the ruling in the first place) to scare House Democrats, I think that it will ultimately do little to de-rail efforts to pass the Senate bill in the House, and might even make for better politics.

On the one hand, Reid has just sent a letter to the GOP leadership letting them know that he plans to proceed on reconciliation. This is a pretty big commitment, and I'd be blown away if he didn't go for it. More importantly, the Senate leadership and the Administration have promised the House that they would move forward on this through reconciliation--if they screwed House Democrats now they would have lost all chance of getting any more legislation through this Congress. And, as Jonathan Bernstein has pointed out on numerous occasions, the reconciliation fix would be "ice cream and very little spinach." That is, it would be all the good stuff everyone wants to be on record for voting for.

As for the politics, I have been making the argument for a while that the best way to dampen the noise about procedural concerns with reconciliation would be to pass the Senate bill first. The headlines dominate the news cycle, the President gives speeches about how it's been a century in the making. And even the most clueless of reporters will have gotten it through their heads that what is being passed through reconciliation isn't the bill, but a small series of popular amendments. This ruling from the Parliamentarian doesn't change that dynamic, and in fact only enhances it. Next to the historic passage of health care, reconciliation becomes an afterthought.

All that said, it still might make it harder for skittish House Dems, and the skittishness of these particular ponies should never be underestimated.