The New Health Dialogue

Democrats are moving ahead to get health care an up or down vote via reconciliation, but Republicans are preparing for a "Byrd Bath."

At a Health Affairs event this morning, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) gave his perspective, saying that Republicans would scrutinize every single line in the health reform reconciliation package relying on the rules laid out by Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, the master of Senate procedure. Under the Byrd Rule, every provision must be relevant to the budget. As Gregg put it, every line will be submerged in a “Byrd bath.”

Gregg warned that there was no guarantee the reconciliation package could survive the Senate intact, and Republicans would do whatever they could to change it. He echoed what House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Senate Minority Whip John Kyl (R-AZ) said earlier this week -- House Democrats are nervous the Senate won’t hold up their end of the bargain if the House passes the Senate bill and then tries to fix it. Sen. Gregg thought it was unlikely Senate Democrats would want to go through the reconciliation process after they had “already…gotten what [they] want… I think it’s a reach and it should cause questions for Democrats in the House.” He also argued that the Senate bill had to be passed into law before reconciliation could be used to amend it -- an opinion supported today by the Senate parliamentarian. Gregg said the Senate parliamentarian Alan Frumin was "very fair, very good" and understood his role as an unbiased umpire in the game.

More on Gregg’s remarks here and here.