Dear Friends,This week I spoke on the phone with over 7,000 middle Tennesseans for a teletown hall. Questions ranged from the Speaker’s race, to the cost of healthcare, to the Syrian refugee crisis, but there was a common thread of general disappointment with the way things work in Washington. I’m as frustrated as anyone, because I see the dysfunction up close day-in and day-out.
Here in the House of Representatives, we’ve made some important accomplishments: we got the earliest start on funding bills since 1974, we passed the REINS Act to give Congress the final say over burdensome new administrative rules and regulations, and we passed a half-dozen pro-life bills to name a few. But in the Senate, it is a different story. The former do-nothing majority under Harry Reid is now a do-nothing minority. Democrats are obstructing conservative, House-passed bills by using a procedural tool known as the filibuster.
This allows the minority party in the Senate to block consideration of a bill unless it receives 60 votes in its favor. It has proven effective for Democrats because Republicans only hold 54 of the chamber’s 100 seats. As a result, bills like the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act – which would protect unborn children from late-term abortion – and legislation to disapprove of the President’s disastrous nuclear deal with Iran were blocked from ever getting a final vote in this chamber.
While there is no magic formula to stop Senate Democrats’ obstructionism, there is a tool available to Congress that can allow certain measures to reach the President’s desk without the procedural hurdles that most items of legislation must overcome: reconciliation. This mechanism, which is spelled out in the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, allows Congress to produce legislation that changes mandatory spending or revenue and advance it through the process with the support of a simple majority in the Senate, rather than the usual 60 votes required to move legislation forward in that chamber. Importantly, legislation passed through reconciliation would still require the President’s signature to become law – but it puts the President on record, forcing him to make a decision and defend that to the American people.
Reconciliation can only be used once a year and anything attached to the bill must be budgetary in nature. For example, Congress could not use reconciliation to force a vote on a border security bill. But we can use it to go after the most egregious portions of Obamacare and combat funding for Planned Parenthood. That is exactly what the reconciliation bill for this year does.
Specifically, our reconciliation package will:
Repeal Obamacare’s individual and employer mandate
Repeal Obamacare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) – the panel of 15 unelected bureaucrats tasked with rationing care for Medicare beneficiaries
Repeal Obamacare’s medical device tax
Place a one year moratorium on federal funding to Planned Parenthood
Today, my colleagues and I on the House Budget Committee held a markup of this reconciliation package, where we listened to debate from both sides of the aisle and ultimately voted by 21 to 11 to send this measure to the House floor. I spoke out during the markup about the importance of the provisions in the bill to combat Planned Parenthood. You can watch my remarks here.
We know that the most meaningful changes to Washington will require President Obama’s retirement from the Oval Office, but I believe that, until then, we should use every tool at our disposal to put our conservative priorities in front of the American people and force President Obama to go on record by either accepting or rejecting our solutions. A strong reconciliation bill that combats the broken promises of Obamacare and the abuses of life at Planned Parenthood will go a long way in accomplishing that goal.