Peter Welch’s Legislative Gambit on HCR

7Jan/110

Peter Welch’s Legislative Gambit on HCR

From the local liberal rag, Seven Days:

In a passionate seven-and-a-half minute plea to colleagues on the House Rules Committee, Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) asked the new Republican leadership to allow up-or-down votes on key aspects of the sweeping health care reform.

Welch is spearheading a campaign to allow the new Congress to vote on individual aspects of health care reform measures, in an effort to preserve:

• The elimination of lifetime limits on care;
• Coverage of individuals up to 26 on their parents’ health care plans;
• A ban on discrimination against those with preexisting conditions; and,
• Free preventive care for seniors.

To date, 65 House members have signed onto Welch's push to allow these items to be voted on separately from the entire piece of health care reform legislation. Welch took his plea directly to the House Rules Committee, which establishes the guidelines for how each piece of legislation is voted on and debated.

In his introduction, Welch congratulated Republicans on their November victory. "Now the question, now the challenge is whether you can govern responsibly. This is going to set the template for the entire 112th Congress," said Welch.

Noting that the GOP ran on a platform of fiscal responsibility, Welch asked where they would find $230 billion in cuts given that repealing parts of the health care reform legislation is estimated to add $230 billion back to the federal deficit, according to the impartial Congressional Budget Office.

Hey, how about this? Bring in the CBO, and ask them under what set of assumptions HCR is supposed to "save $230 billion," and whether or not those assumptions are valid. Then, go through the bill line by line, and vote on each piece.

Remember when the HCR negotiations were going to be held on C-SPAN? Well, maybe this time, people can find out what's in the bill, bit by bit. It is what it is: an enormous monstrosity of government regulation and intervention that can't be cherry picked. It exists in aggregate. If the Democrats agree with the Republicans that it needs reforming, maybe the time to do that would have been before the CBO scores were grotesquely gamed and it was crammed down.

In other places, Democrats are saying that the Republicans ought to determine what the effects of HCR are. That's interesting, considering we needed to pass it in order to find out what was in it--kind of like a shit-filled pinata at a kid's birthday party. So far, we are in a position to note that it's raising the cost of coverage, and that key advocates, such as unions, are asking for exemptions.

Stacy's take on the same story.