With the decision to skip a conference committee and use another, faster Congressional procedure, health care reform is moving along quickly. Many hours have been spent trying to discern the difference between the House and Senate reform bills and decide which provisions to choose.
So what exactly does the new method entail? Instead of gathering a group of Democrats and Republicans to hash out a single bill in conference committee, the so-called "ping-pong" approach leaves any chance of compromise in the hands of Congressional leaders.
Democratic leaders shunned the conference committee because it would allow Republicans to delay the process at several places along the road – a political strategy the GOP has promised to pursue. But the ping-pong procedure uses "messages between the Houses" to add amendments (created by party leaders) to the Senate bill and pass new versions of the bill back and forth between the Houses until one version is decided upon. (For a full explanation of messages between the Houses, click here.)
The conference committee procedure is a bipartisan effort. Republicans and Democrats are in the room together, hammering out the details of both bills until one, uniform bill is decided upon and then sent back to Congress for a vote. However, with the messages between the Houses, Democrats essentially have full control. They will decide on the amendments, and, when the time comes, easily have the majority vote they need to pass the bill. Even people who support reform have to admit that seems a slight to the legislative process.
