Democrats Abandon Bipartisanship

The Democrats may be hard-headed, but it looks like the truth may be finally seeping in. It's taken them an entire year of begging for bipartisanship to realize the Congressional Republicans just aren't interested. No matter what the Democrats try to do, there is only one answer the Republicans will give -- NO.

The Senate and the House have both passed heal care reform bills, but the bills have a lot of differences. In more normal (and bipartisan) times, a conference committee would be appointed and would then hash out the differences between the bills. But it looks like that is not going to happen.

Introducing a resolution to appoint a conference committee would just give Republicans, especially in the Senate, an opportunity to further delay the final bill. They could try to filibuster the resolution and offer endless amendments. Defeating their efforts could take a lot of time and many new votes.

The chances are now very good that there will be no conference committee. The Democrats will ignore the Republicans and work out the bills differences in their own caucus and with the president. After all, we already know the Republican position on anything that would be discussed, and that position is "no reform of any kind".

I know the Republicans will scream and howl about how unfair it is, but they have brought this upon themselves. There are no rules regarding how the two bills' differences are to be worked out, as long as both the House and Senate finally pass identical bills. They Republicans can give their "no" votes when the bills come up for a final vote. Until then, their failure to participate in a bipartisan effort justifies them being excluded from the process to modify the bills.

I just think it's a shame the Democrats didn't figure this out several months ago. If they had, maybe we could have had a better bill already passed and signed into law. Now it looks like we'll wind up with a weak health care bill that falls far short of real reform.

I hope the Democrats will remember this when the next important piece of legislation comes up for debate. At the slightest sign of Republican recalcitrance, they should just ignore them and do whatever needs to be done.

Bipartisanship is a thing of the past (and maybe the future), but it does not exist in the current Congress. It should neither be expected nor sought.