(Bloomberg) — Republicans in Congress are exploring a way to enact a partial repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and other parts of their agenda soon after a new Republican president takes the oath of office in 2017.
Several Republicans said they're discussing the possibility of adopting a budget this year that would let the next president's agenda — including top goals like slashing PPACA — bypass a Democratic filibuster at the very start of the year. Republicans used a similar move early this year to send a bill repealing much of PPACA and defunding Planned Parenthood to President Barack Obama, who vetoed it.
The strategy would allow Republicans who control the House and Senate to put just such a bill on the desk of a new president if their party wins the White House, without having to grind through months of budget process. To succeed, Republicans need the Senate parliamentarian to let them use rules set by a budget resolution into the next Congress.
"It could be pretty powerful if it works," said John Cornyn of Texas, the second-ranking Senate Republican. "We haven't yet concluded one way or the other."
'Pass muster'
Such a strategy "might pass muster," said Bill Hoagland, a vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center and a former Republican congressional aide.
Legislation generally expires at the end of a Congress. Yet rules set by a budget resolution remain in force until a new one is adopted, meaning that a resolution enacted by the current Congress may allow a filibuster-free vote early next year on a new Republican president's economic agenda, Hoagland said. "I think it might be an open question," he said in an interview.
"What unified us this last year on the budget was the ability to vote to defund Planned Parenthood and Obamacare with 51 votes," Cornyn said. "So if we find a similar unifying theme then I think that does provide us with an opportunity and that's what we're exploring. We haven't settled on anything yet."
This Congress would first have to enact a budget resolution, something that is optional because lawmakers and the White House agreed to a two-year deal that raised spending caps last year.
Bipartisan agreement
Instead, Congress could skip the budget process and just move ahead with spending bills, which are a top priority of Republican leaders this year. A number of senators are urging that path because there already is a bipartisan agreement on the overall budget amount. A group of Republican conservatives, though, want to cut spending below that level.
Going forward with a budget this year has another downside for Senate Republicans, because it would require many of their vulnerable incumbents to vote on politically charged amendments.
Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who faces a tough fight for re-election against former Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold, said he and other Republicans want to see if the parliamentarian will approve the idea of using this year's budget to bypass a filibuster in the next Congress.
Johnson said he also wants the ability to cancel the filibuster-proof instructions if Democrats take control of the Senate in November. Otherwise, he would rather give up on that strategy — known as reconciliation — and work on the spending bills.
'It's intriguing'
"I'd rather spend time working thoughtfully, prioritizing spending in each one of those spending bills, unless we can have reconciliation and be able to kill it if we need to," he said. "There's a lot of strategy involved there."
