The Voice of Merrill

Many observers have felt that the Nuclear Option in the Senate would never fly as too many Democrats in the Senate would be fearful of the backlash in the next election.  Robert Costa, from National Review Online’s Corner, explores another idea; that they have already given up on satisfying their constituents.

Dems to Ryan: ‘Get Ready, We’re Reconciling’   [Robert Costa]

“Get ready, we’re reconciling”— that’s what House Democrats are telling Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), the ranking member of the House Budget Committee. Ryan says Democrats are planning to “mark up a budget-reconciliation package as early as next Wednesday, which is probably a week before reconciliation will actually occur.” For now, he says, “they’re in the middle of trying to cut their deals,” all while “public outrage is building, not waning.”

In the Democratic caucus, “there are two pools,” Ryan says. “There are progressive ideologues in moderate districts who think they are going to lose anyway, so they might as well vote for what they believe in. Then there are the ‘no’ votes who are being twisted and turned with the carrot and the stick to vote for this thing.” Democrats, he says, are straining to make any deals “a little more opaque” to avoid bad press (see Kickback, Cornhusker).

Is repeal possible? “Think about it,” Ryan says. “This will be a new entitlement that says that just about everybody making less than $100,000 will have their out-of-pocket health-care costs capped by the government — no more than 2 percent to 9.8 percent of your income will go toward health care, and the taxpayers will pay for the rest. And it will take 60 votes to turn that off. It’ll take a big rift to turn that off. It’s ominous.” Nonetheless, Ryan says he has been “strategizing” with his legislative team to see how “we could do a reconciliation package to peel this thing back,” but admits that such a measure would be “very, very tough.”

Repeal or not, Ryan worries that the “collateral damage to the insurance markets and health-care sector will be devastating” if Obamacare passes later this month. “Insurance companies will have to immediately lay off workers to comply with the new regulations. . . . Even if we’re able to eventually turn this thing off, it will be a different-looking world.”

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