Insurance Center

If the Democratic Party is not able to attain the 60 votes needed to get the healthcare to the Senate floor, some top Democrats are suggesting that they may try to go around the traditional legislative process and use an obscure tactic called reconciliation. This type of budgetary maneuver only needs a simple majority, or 51 votes to pass. If a move such as this were performed, it is believed that it might boost the possibilities of a Senate passage of a public health option.

The president it is said will still need support from some of the more conservative members of his party. In the House, it is believed however, that Obama is not assured of such a move since while Democrats may hold a 40-seat majority in the house, in access of more than 50 Democratic representatives are aligned with members of the Blue Dog Coalition.
Reform is a matter of necessity, not politics, Obama said Thursday.

However, the director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics Larry Sabato, says that he laughs anytime he hears a president say it's not about politics.

He says that in reality the members of Congress have their jobs on the line. It's human nature for anyone whose job is on the line. Sabato who is author of The Year of Obama: How Barack Obama Won the White House, says its simple human nature.

Sabato said that after the emotionally charged August recess, the president will have to let Congress dwell on this for awhile.
Things will have to settle down he says, and then they can come back in September and begin serious negotiations. The message he says is simple: If this turns out like what happened to the Clinton administration, we will lose in 2010.

He warns that there will be some who may lose their seats. This is the message, and how to get some health care reform. But it won't be what Obama wanted. It will be much less but they have to come up with something.

It was after the 1994 defeat of President Clinton's health care effort that for the first time in 40 years, the Democrats lost their control of Congress. It was twelve years before they were able to return to power.

It is Rothenberg’s prediction that Congress will put through some kind of legislation this time but said that he didn't think that it will be nearly as complex, or all-inclusive as the liberal elements are hoping for.

Although some political risk still remains in passing legislation without Republican support, according to Rothenberg, he thinks that the risk of nothing being passed is so much greater than that of passing something but in a more partisan way, making it not even close. He added that not passing a bill is basically an invitation for political disaster.