The GOP needs 51 Senate votes and a new president to get it done.
By Karl Rove
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin likes to taunt his Republican colleagues arguing that ObamaCare cant be repealed because 60 votes are required to end debate in the Senate on any measure.
Though Republicans will likely win control of the Senate in 2012 Mr. Durbin is right that they probably wont get to 60 senators. That would require the GOP to win back more than half the Democratic seats up next year.
Rep. Jim Moran (D. Va.) recently called GOP promises of repeal a political scam on their base ... It cant happen.
Not so fast. Keith Hennessey a former White House colleague of mine says Democrats are wrong. He argues that Republicans can repeal health-care reform with a simple Senate majority.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry has called ObamaCare unaffordable unsustainable and unworkable and many have criticized the law for shifting billions of dollars onto the states. GOP governors are in charge of at least 10 key battleground
states and can continue to drill home this message in states such as Ohio and Florida that are vital to Mr. Obamas re-election.
Director of the National Economic Council under President George W. Bush Mr. Hennessey now teaches at Stanford Business School and is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. Last week on his website KeithHennessey.com he made the case that congressional Republicans could use the reconciliation process to kill ObamaCare with 51 votes in the Senate and a majority in the House of Representatives.
The Budget Act of 1974 established the reconciliation process. The House and Senate Budget Committees can direct other committees to make changes in mandatory spending (like ObamaCares Medicaid expansion and insurance subsidies) and the tax code (such as ObamaCares levies on insurance policies hospitals and drug companies) to make spending and revenue conform with the goals set by the annual budget resolution.
For example under reconciliation the Senate Budget Committee could instruct the Senate Finance Committee to reduce mandatory spending on insurance subsidies and Medicaid expansion. These two items make up more than 90 of spending in ObamaCare. All the changes from all the committees are then bundled into one measure and voted upon. Because reconciliation is protected by the rules of the budget process it doesnt take 60 votes to bring it up and it requires only a simple majority to pass.
Will this 51-vote strategy work? One long-time GOP budget whiz embarrassed he hadnt thought of this told me it would. Another Republican veteran of the budget wars agreed though she had some concerns that certain elements of ObamaCare such as some insurance provisions might be beyond the reach of reconciliation.
For example would reconciliation allow Republicans to kill the requirement that younger healthier workers pay higher premiums than they rightly should to keep premiums for older workers lower?
Mr. Hennessey believes that these are strategically unimportant items. He says the goal should be to repeal ObamaCares big-cost drivers and reconciliation provides the tool to do it.
Using reconciliation would require that Republicans pick up at least four seats in 2012 when 23 senators who caucus with the Democrats are up for re-
election many in red states. Already vulnerable Democratic senators like Jon Tester of Montana Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Joe Manchin of West Virginia are talking about how to get rid of some of ObamaCares most objectionable parts like the individual mandate.
Theyll only get more skittish as the election approaches. Democrats cannot complain if the GOP uses reconciliation after Democrats used it to pass ObamaCare through the Senate.
Congressional Republicans are getting crucial help in this battle from allies outside Washington. Republican governors know that ObamaCares mandatory expansion of Medicaid rolls will collapse state budgets.
Even Democratic governors in swing states are critical of ObamaCares Medicaid expansion. There is no hidden pool of money to pay for expanding Medicaid lamented Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper. North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue said she opposes health-care reform that shifts costs to the states.
States are not going to be in a position to pick up the tab of expanding Medicaid warned Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire.
Democrats harp on the 60-vote threshold and ignore the reconciliation option because they want Americans to accept the inevitability of ObamaCare. But its roots are clearly in shallow soil.
Of course a 51-vote Senate strategy would also require a Republican president who would sign a reconciliation bill. All of which means that ObamaCare will be a central issue in the 2012 election. The president may not want to re-litigate ObamaCare but Republicansand a majority of Americansdo.
Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.
