In the last several days, every single Republican member of Congress, in both the House and Senate, voted to repeal Obamacare. And a federal judge has ruled that the law is unconstitutional. I have a short piece up on NRO today looking at the new political and legal realities that the legislation’s supporters now face. Here’s a snippet:
The Senate vote is also an indication of how close Congress is to passing a full repeal bill. Yes, it would have taken 60 votes to repeal it today in the Senate because of the point of order, and a likely Democratic filibuster if no point of order was applicable. But that need not be the case if Republicans regain control of the chamber in 2013. Recall that, in the aftermath of Scott Brown’s election to the Senate, congressional Democrats made an end run around the Senate filibuster by employing the “reconciliation” process to hammer out the final agreement between the House and the Senate. That allowed the Democrats to pass the original Senate version of Obamacare (passed when there were 60 Democratic votes in the Senate) through the House, and to pass changes to that previously approved Senate bill through both the House and the Senate with a simple majority vote. In other words, the only reason Obamacare is law today is that the Democrats used “reconciliation” to pass it through the Senate without the need for 60 votes.
The same could be done for repeal. As Keith Hennessey has pointed out, if Republicans regain control of the Senate in 2012 (which seems plausible, given the number of seats in play that are currently held by Democrats), and the House remains under Republican control, Republicans could dismantle Obamacare on a reconciliation bill, and they could do so without the need for any Democratic votes. Repeal would need only a simple majority to clear the Senate. There are now 47 solid votes for repeal. With a pickup of just four repeal votes, Republicans could send a full repeal bill to the president in 2013. And if the president is someone other than Barack Obama… Live by reconciliation, die by reconciliation.
You can read the entire piece on NRO here.