Political Quotes

“So the stage is now set where we have gridlock on the issue of comprehensive health care reform. In this situation, we have had the bills passed by both the House and the Senate, and we are now looking to use reconciliation, a procedure which has been employed some 22 times in analogous circumstances. Illustrative of the analogous circumstances are the use of cloture to pass Medicare Advantage and the passage of COBRA, the passage of SCHIP--health care for children--and the passage of the welfare reform bill in 1996. In a learned article in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Henry J. Aaron, an expert on budgetary matters, had this to say: [reconciliation] can be used only to implement instructions contained in the budget resolution relating to taxes or expenditures. Congress created reconciliation procedures to deal with precisely this sort of situation. . . . And he is referring here to what we have with the Senate-passed bill and the House-passed bill. Quoting him further: The 2009 budget resolution instructed both Houses of Congress to enact health care reform. The House and the Senate have passed similar but not identical bills. Since both Houses have acted but some work remains to be done to align the two bills, using reconciliation to implement the instructions in the budget resolution follows established congressional procedure.”