Bypassing Conference Committee On Healthcare Bill Is “Undemocratic” Says Democrat

Discussions regarding health care resume today as Democratic Leadership are meeting with President Obama Tuesday evening to figure out a way to move forward. But it is likely that they will bypass the traditional conference committee. One progressive member of Congress calls that undemocratic.

In a telephone interview, Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA) said “we have to have a conference. It’s outrageous if we don’t have a conference committee. I think that really subverts the process, it’s not democratic.”

After a meeting with the Chairs of key House committees that wrote the health care reform bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer met President Obama at the White House. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid phoned in from Nevada.

Now that both the House and the Senate have passed different versions of the bill, they were expected to discuss how to move forward.

Reconciling the two different versions is often done through a conference committee, made up of numerous members of each body. It is likely that stage will be skipped because of the lengthy process of appointing committee members and passing a conference report.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office says they don’t have a choice because Republicans say they will do everything they can to slow down the process.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said on Dennis Miller’s radio show that he’s going to “fight it ‘till the bitter end.”

But House Democrats could be a hindrance to this plan.

“We worked too hard in the house to get a public option in the bill,” Lee says. “We worked too hard to get our…tax surcharge on the wealthy and we worked very hard and the people supported what we did in the House.”

Lee is one of dozens of members of the House that wrote a letter before Christmas outlining their demands for health care. They detailed much of what was in the House-passed bill, which includes a public option and more generous subsidies for low- and middle-income people to buy health insurance.

The House narrowly passed its version and the Senate’s vote tally was even closer, with no room for a single defection.

If the conference committee is by-passed, House and Senate leaders would play main roles in negotiating a bill, rather than appoint a committee of members to do so.

Representative George Miller, Chair of the House Education and Labor Committee, said House rank and file Democrats would still have input on the negotiations.

“One of the things we’ve never done is bypass our caucus,” Miller said. “Our caucus has said time and again this is the most inclusive leadership they’ve ever experienced, whether it was on the energy bill, the education bill, the stimulus or the health care bill. That’s the way the Speaker runs its leadership, with full input and full explanation.”

Meanwhile, a television ad campaign has been launched to influence negotiations to include a public option and provisions to ensure health care is truly affordable.

Jacki Schechner is with Health Care for America Now, the group who launched the ad campaign. Schechner said the coalition “prefers” the House bill.

The ad will run on CNN and MSNBC nationwide.

After Democratic Leadership meets with the President Tuesday, Speaker Pelosi will meet with members of her caucus Thursday.

Their goal is to pass health care before the President’s State of the Union address which will be held either at the end of January or the beginning of February.

For an audio version of this story visit, FSRN.org

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