Well, he was born in Manhattan in 1946, went to Colgate undergrad and Georgetown law, and his wife is FTC lawyer Jill Meryl (thanks Wikipedia). More importantly he is your friendly neighborhood Senate parliamentarian – an unelected government official who sits at the dais at the head of the Senate and knows all there is to know about Senate procedures and protocols. So why should you care? If all goes as planned, the bipartisan meeting on health reform that I am watching (on CSPAN since CNBC doesn’t think it’s important enough to focus on) will do nothing; nothing except move the Democrats closer to realistically considering passing a bill via budget reconciliation. And believe it or not, good old Al Frumin plays a pretty pivotal role in how a reconciliation bill would look.
First things first; reconciliation isn’t called budget reconciliation for nothing. The bill, for the most part, can be passed with a simple majority of 51 votes, but (and this is a big BUT) every provision in a reconciliation bill must affect the budget; it must change government spending or government revenues in some way. So any legislation aimed at regulating insurance premium increases, individual health insurance mandates, even abortion would likely be disallowed in a reconciliation bill. The Democrats could expand Medicaid and levy some excise taxes on various healthcare subsectors, but comprehensive health insurance reform is out of the question. This, however, is not enough when compared with Dems’ promises made on the 2008 campaign trail.
In the event that Democrats do go down the path of reconciliation it will get ugly. Reconciliation may pass with a simple majority but this process will certainly not be simple. If the Democrats want to pass sweeping reform, the House will have to pass the Senate bill that was passed on Christmas Eve. They will then amend the original Senate bill with the reconciliation bill. House Democrats are particularly nervous about this. Who’s to say that the House will pass the original Senate bill, only to be followed by the Senate not passing a reconciliation bill? Greater schemes have been pulled off in our capitol.
Even if all does go as planned, reconciliation will be as much of a headache as the Republicans want it to be. Two Senate committees (Finance and Health) and three House committees (Ways & Means, Education & Labor, Energy & Commerce) would each be required to mark up the provisions in the bill that fall under their jurisdiction, and each committee would have to come up with at least $1B of savings over 5 years. Furthermore, there is no time limit for committee markups. Republicans on those committees could offer amendment after amendment until they ran out just to prolong the process. Once those Republicans get tired and the reconciliation bill finally does come to the floor there are more obstacles to overcome. In the House of Representatives, reconciliation isn’t as big a deal since the House Rules Committee can waive all opportunities to challenge the bill with a simple majority vote (Democrats should be able to handle this). In the Senate, however, no such rule exists. Debate time for the bill is set at 20 hours, but that does not include time for proposed amendments. Time for amendments is endless. If Democrats do go the reconciliation route, you can bet that Republican Senators’ aides will be working day and night compiling amendment after amendment for what will amount to a “filibuster: reconciliation style”.
While all this is going on Alan Frumin will have the last word on which provisions and amendments are actually reconciliation-worthy. He will comb the initial reconciliation bill himself, and then during debate, Senators will raise “points of order” or challenges to various proposals. The basis for a point of order comes from the Byrd Rule which defines matters considered to be extraneous to a reconciliation bill. A provision is considered extraneous if:
- It does not produce a change in government spending or revenues,
- It produces a change in outlays or revenue, but the change is merely incidental to the non-budgetary components of the proposed provision,
- The provision is outside the jurisdiction of the committee that submitted it,
- The provision increases spending or revenue, but fails to achieve the Senate committee’s reconciliation instructions,
- The Provision increases spending or revenue during a fiscal year outside of the years included in the reconciliation bill, unless the provision remains budget neutral, or
- The provision affects the social security trust funds.
So you might think Alan Frumin is walking the streets of Washington D.C. feeling pretty pretty good about himself these days. Once again, not so simple. As President of the Senate, Joe Biden can overrule any ruling made by Mr. Frumin. This, however, hasn’t been done since Norm Rockefeller in 1975. What has been done, on the other hand, as recently as 2001 is the following… Then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) fired the then-Senate parliamentarian Bob Dove after Dove struck a Republican provision for natural disasters from a reconciliation bill! Dove was replaced by none other than – wait for it - Alan Frumin.
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