Health Care
Floor Speech
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Mr. CORNYN. If the Senator will yield for a question, I have heard this process whereby the House is going to deem the Senate bill passed and then pass a reconciliation bill which will then be sent over to the Senate as Speaker Pelosi is asking Members of the House to hold hands and jump off a political cliff, hoping the Senate will catch them by passing the reconciliation bill unaltered or just in the same form that it passed the House. But is it not true that complications arise in section 313 of the Congressional Budget Act because of the Byrd rule?
We have heard a lot of talk about the Byrd rule, what points of order might be appropriate in the Senate. I wonder if the Senator--he touched on this a moment ago--would explain, with 41 Senators agreeing to sustain all points of order in the Senate, how many different holes can be punched in the reconciliation bill passed by the House when points of order are sustained.
The Senator from New Hampshire mentioned the Cadillac tax. I note that the president of AFL-CIO was visiting with President Obama at the White House on Wednesday seeking further reassurances that the tax on the Cadillac plans would be deferred, and presumably that would be part of the reconciliation bill.
Can the Senator from New Hampshire explain what kind of jeopardy the Byrd rule and points of order call into play that would make it unlikely that the President's promise to defer the tax on union Cadillac plans could pass the Senate?
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Mr. CORNYN. If the Senator will allow me another question to clarify a point he made, and then certainly turn to the Senator from South Dakota, the point of order we are talking about, is it true that under section 313(B)(1)(F), that provision, that specific provision could drop out of the bill, but under a separate point of order under section 310(g) of the Congressional Budget Act, it could literally bring down the entire bill? Is that a correct reading of the Congressional Budget Act?
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Mr. CORNYN. Following up with what the Senator from New Hampshire is saying by ``being sold a bill of goods,'' is he suggesting the leadership in the House and Speaker Pelosi are guaranteeing to House Members that the bill they pass--the reconciliation bill--will pass the Senate intact and, thus, they will have political cover from their constituents who don't like this bill, but they will be able to shape and affect the final outcome?
Is the Senator from New Hampshire suggesting that because the 41 Senators who have said we will vote against waiving any budget points of order, that there will either be holes punched in that reconciliation bill that will make it impossible for the Speaker to keep her promise to the House Members ultimately or that it will bring down the bill entirely? Is that what the Senator is saying when he talks about selling them a bill of goods?
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Mr. CORNYN. That is particularly true of the promise the President has apparently made to union leadership to defer the application of a Cadillac tax--the excise tax on Cadillac health insurance plans. That promise, as the promise to televise the negotiations and pass the bill on C-SPAN; the promise that if you have a policy you like, you can keep it; the promise that the bill would not raise taxes and the like; that would be another promise that would not be kept--that promise would be broken?
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Mr. CORNYN. I think the Senator explained it very clearly. Put in this larger context, can you imagine being asked to cast a career-ending vote because the people in your district hate this bill. Yet you are following Speaker Pelosi's instructions to vote for it and defying the wishes of your constituents. Can you imagine doing it in the context where there is so little certainty as to the outcome because of this reconciliation process and the Byrd rule and the points of order we have talked about.
Put that also in the larger context that the Senator mentioned of the deeming of the bill passed. I think that is clearly unconstitutional. Have you ever heard of a bill becoming law that wasn't passed by the House and the Senate? There have been legal scholars who have written this is clearly unconstitutional. I imagine there is going to be months, perhaps years, of litigation, possibly even going to the U.S. Supreme Court, challenging this bizarre ``Alice in Wonderland'' procedure known as deeming the bill passed. Have you ever heard of such a thing?
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