Health care repeal puts yet another wedge between parties

By Karoun Demirjian

Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2011 | 3:29 p.m.

In lieu of a full-out fight over the filibuster, Republicans and Democrats promised each other last week they’d try to accommodate each other better.

Now it’s time to debate the first piece of legislation of the 112th Congress. And it appears lawmakers have gotten bored with playing nice.

Republican leaders promised they wouldn’t filibuster a motion to begin considering the bill. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid promised an open amendment process. And so Republican leaders announced Tuesday that they’d be sponsoring an amendment to the FAA authorization bill: Senate Amendment 13, to repeal the health care law.

Reid, unsurprisingly, was seeing red Tuesday.

"We’re going to do everything we can to get rid of these amendments,” he told reporters at a press conference. "It’s a deficit-buster to say the least.”

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had been threatening a health care repeal vote in the Senate, even though Reid’s office has been holding to the line that such a scenario is "unlikely.”

"What we have today is an opportunity for the majority to re-evaluate what it has done on the issue of health care,” McConnell said Tuesday. "It’s no secret the American people don’t like the health care bill that was passed last year.”

But Democrats don’t agree with that assessment. They point to an Associated Press poll from last month that showed 80 percent of Americans supported the health care law as it is.

Despite the Republican caucus’ determination to give a repeal its day on the Senate floor, it's still a measure likely in need of a successful Hail Mary pass. Reid promised to raise a point of order against the measure -- something lawmakers can do when an amendment would raise the costs of a bill that is otherwise budget-neutral. Democrats and Republicans are still arguing over whether the health care law will in the end make or lose the government money, but because the Congressional Budget Office rated a repeal of health care as costing the economy abut $240 billion over the next 10 years when measured from this point in time, Democrats can raise the objection.

Circumventing a budgetary point of order in the Senate requires a 60-person vote to waive the point of order -- so in plainer speech, to protect their repeal amendment, Republicans have to come up with a filibuster-proof majority. Even if a few Democrats peel off from the fold (likely not many -- only three did when the House voted to repeal last month), it’s highly unlikely Republicans will be able to come up with enough votes to carry the repeal.

Once that’s done, Reid said, they’ll move along to iron out the 1099 reporting requirements change that both parties want, but haven’t been able to agree upon in bill form, before putting the health care issue to bed -- he hopes.

"We want to get this out of their system very quickly,” Reid said.