Rove Hypocritically Suggests GOP Use Reconciliation To Repeal Health Care Law

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published

In a February 10 Wall Street Journal column, Karl Rove suggested that Republicans use the budget reconciliation process to eventually repeal the health care reform law. However, as Media Matters has noted, Rove previously attacked the idea of Democrats using reconciliation to pass the health care bill, calling it a "parliamentary trick" and claiming that Democrats "changing the rules midstream" by using reconciliation.

From Rove's column:

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin likes to taunt his Republican colleagues, arguing that ObamaCare can't be repealed because 60 votes are required to end debate in the Senate on any measure.

Though Republicans will likely win control of the Senate in 2012, Mr. Durbin is right that they probably won't get to 60 senators. That would require the GOP to win back more than half the Democratic seats up next year. Rep. Jim Moran (D., Va.) recently called GOP promises of repeal “a political scam on their base ... . It can't happen.”

Not so fast. Keith Hennessey, a former White House colleague of mine, says Democrats are wrong. He argues that Republicans can repeal health-care reform with a simple Senate majority.

Director of the National Economic Council under President George W. Bush, Mr. Hennessey now teaches at Stanford Business School and is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. Last week on his website, KeithHennessey.com, he made the case that congressional Republicans could use the reconciliation process to kill ObamaCare with 51 votes in the Senate and a majority in the House of Representatives.

[...]

Democrats harp on the 60-vote threshold and ignore the reconciliation option because they want Americans to accept the inevitability of ObamaCare. But its roots are clearly in shallow soil.

Of course, a 51-vote Senate strategy would also require a Republican president who would sign a reconciliation bill. All of which means that ObamaCare will be a central issue in the 2012 election. The president may not want to “re-litigate” ObamaCare, but Republicans -- and a majority of Americans -- do.