If you’ve ever been in a no-limit high stakes poker game and found yourself with a short stack of chips, you know what it’s like to play with a major disadvantage. It’s not enough to have a good hand. At any time, another player can force you to make the decision between folding and going all-in with the remainder of your chips. Any hand you choose to play could spell your elimination. Under those circumstances, you have to wait until you have a great hand. Bluffing becomes a suicide mission. And, yet, if you just keep folding as you wait for a great hand, your pile will be slowly bled dry by the antes. You must gamble. Analogous decisions have faced the Republicans since the beginning of this Congress.
Barack Obama has watched how the Republicans play their game, and he appears to have come to the conclusion that they like to overplay their hands.
In a meeting with House Republicans at the White House Thursday, President Obama reminded the minority that the last time he reached out to them, they reacted with zero votes — twice — for his stimulus package. And then he reminded them again. And again. And again.
A GOP source familiar with the meeting said that the president was extremely sensitive — even “thin-skinned” — to the fact that the stimulus bill received no GOP votes in the House. He continually brought it up throughout the meeting.
You can call him ‘thin-skinned’ if you want, but he’s really just being realistic. He made concessions to the House GOP during the stimulus debate and he got absolutely nothing in return. In essence, he folded a good hand and lost a pot that rightfully belonged to him. The Republicans had been bluffing about bipartisanship. He’s not about to trust them again over the signature domestic issue of his campaign: health care reform.
It’s a bit byzantine and I’m not going to get into full details here, but the Democrats have decided to use the budget ‘reconciliation’ process to push through health care. It’s a procedure that limits debate, which therefore eliminates the GOP’s ability to filibuster. The point is that health care can pass with 50 votes (plus Joe Biden’s tiebreaker) instead of the 60 normally needed to cut off debate. If Congress does not pass a health care bill by October 15th, it will be passed under reconciliation.
Democratic aides said that Obama made clear to the GOP leadership that he would continue to work in a bipartisan way, but that they didn’t have veto power over health care policy. GOP aides, however, said that Obama was pretty clear that reconciliation would be used. “From what was told me, it sounded more like he would almost definitely use reconciliation for healthcare. I don’t think he hedged much,” said one.
Actually, what Obama meant is that he will definitely use reconciliation if the Republicans don’t act in good faith and attempt to filibuster a health care bill they don’t like. They have until October 15th to work on a bill in a bipartisan way. They can have input, but not veto power. To understand the poker analogy, you have to understand the bluff that Obama just called. Via Roll Call (subscription only), Sens. Cornyn (R-TX) and Hatch (R-UT) threatened to grind the Senate to a halt if Obama uses reconciliation on health care.
The GOP might first go after White House nominations. Republicans could require each appointee to get a separate hearing and a separate roll call vote. They could stop attending committee hearings, and decline to provide “unanimous consent” to move forward on even the most benign issues or routine Senate business. Republicans could also demand that the text of bills, which are often hundreds of pages long, be read aloud.
Essentially, the GOP was betting like they had a full house when they were really holding a pair of deuces. Obama looked them up and down, and then he pushed enough of his chips into the center of table to make the GOP go all-in. Go ahead and grind the Senate to a halt, Obama is saying, but I’m still getting my health care.
Will the GOP fold? Or will they keep throwing good money after bad? With this crowd of high-rollers, you just never know.
