It looks like the House and Senate will ping-pong the health care bill. I previously said that it would be a betrayal to use the ping-pong method, but now that I see their reasons I understand why they want to do it this way and I’ll have to wait to see the results before I can form an opinion on the merits.
Ordinarily, when the Senate and House of Representatives pass different bills, the differences are worked out by a Conference Committee that issues a Conference Report. This involves the designation of conferees from both houses who hold at least one public hearing. This can be avoided, however, if both houses simply pass identical bills in the first place. If the bills start out the same there is no need to reconcile their differences and, thus, no need for a Conference.
The reason the Democrats want to use the ping-pong method is actually very simple to understand. It would avoid several cloture votes in the Senate, each requiring 30 hours of post-cloture debate, and allow Congress to send a bill to the president before his State of the Union address. Whether or not the actual content of the bill suffers as a result of using the ping-pong method depends on whether liberal members like Tom Harkin, George Miller, and Henry Waxman are shut out of the negotiations. It’s really up to Pelosi to drive the hardest bargain she can with the Senate ‘centrists.’
The Republicans will howl that this maneuver lacks transparency, and it will. But the cost of transparency is needless delay.
