Democrats Shouldn't Bend Rules To Pass Health Care

The motive for last week's so-called bipartisan health care summit is coming into sharper focus. Now that the Democratic majority in Washington has given Republicans a chance to put their ideas on the table, it considers itself justified in ignoring the GOP, declaring the differences irreconcilable and moving ahead to ram through their version of health care reform.

An editorial in the New York Times pronounced the chasm between the two parties "too profound to be bridged" and sees as the only recourse Congress bending its own rules to pass the Democratic health care bill.

Organizing for America, the action arm of the White House's propaganda machine, noted that President Barack Obama had "extended a hand to the Republicans and showed he's open to any idea that will help cover the uninsured, cut costs, and give Americans control over their own health care. ... After this meeting, all ideas are on the table. Now, Congress must move swiftly to complete and pass a final bill."

That bill, of course, would be the one Democrats negotiated among themselves without much Republican input or influence.

It was assumed passage of the Democratic package was virtually impossible after Republican Scott Brown won the Senate election in Massachusetts, breaking the Democrats' filibuster-proof majority.

But the party's left wing, with seeming support from the White House, is urging the Senate to bypass the traditional 60-vote rule for moving a bill forward and instead fall back on a procedure called reconciliation, which allows a bill to proceed on a bare majority and is almost always used to resolve budget disputes and not to enact major policy.

Tossing out the rules to adopt a one-party health care bill would turn a volatile issue into an explosive one.

It might be different if Republicans were standing in the way of a bill the American people wanted, rather than one the liberal elite insists it must have.

But polls consistently find that half of Americans oppose the Democratic version of health care reform, with barely 40 percent supporting it.

The public remains deeply divided on the proposal despite the constant campaigning by Obama on its behalf. Democrats may hold a majority in Congress, but they don't represent a majority of the nation on this issue.

It would be a mistake for Democrats to be so single-minded in their drive to pass their bill that they would risk destroying for the long term any chance of the two parties working together to pass the necessary measure to control the soaring cost of health care and provide insurance to Americans who can't now afford it.

The summit should have been a starting point for a sincere effort to find areas of agreement and proceed with a step-by-step approach to passing reforms that unite, rather than divide, Americans.

Instead, Democrats are attempting to make the case that because Republicans didn't acquiesce to their version of health care reform, no compromise is possible, ignoring the fact that they didn't move off their positions, either.

It's not certain there's enough Democratic votes left in the House to pass a bill, even if the Senate used reconciliation to hand it one. Many House Democrats are worried about how voters would react this fall if a bill is strong-armed into law.

Supporters of the Democratic proposal say health care is too vital an issue to be derailed by Republican resistance. In reality, it is too vital an issue to be written and passed by one party that bent the rules to get it done.

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