A Bump In the Road for Conservatives and Their Plan to Send an ObamaCare Repeal Bill to the President's Desk...

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Conservatives may suffer a setback in their plan to send a bill repealing the ACA to the President's desk y the end of this year.

Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough has sent up red flags as to whether the senate can use the procedural process known as budgetary reconciliation as vehicle to attempt a repeal of ObamaCare.

THE HILL - GOP sources say Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough has raised red flags in response to queries about whether it’s possible to use a special budgetary procedure to repeal the controversial law “root and branch,” as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said.

Senate Republican officials have pushed for an interpretation of the rules that would allow for repealing the law with a one-sentence provision on a simple-majority vote.

The special process is known as budgetary reconciliation. It can be used to circumvent the Senate’s customary 60-vote threshold to produce changes in spending and revenue.

But it’s a matter of debate about how broadly it can be interpreted.

Some conservatives argue that because ObamaCare impacts spending and revenue, 51 Senate Republicans and a majority of the House can pass a one-sentence provision. While President Obama would surely veto a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, many Republicans want to get such a measure on his desk.

And there is growing pressure on GOP leaders to make that happen. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Tea Party groups, including FreedomWorks and the Senate Conservatives Fund, have called on the Republican-led Congress to use reconciliation on ObamaCare

“We think from what we’ve heard there’s a really credible case to be made that the one-sentence repeal instruction for reconciliation passes all the tests,” said Dan Holler, spokesman for Heritage Action for America.

“From our vantage point, we think there are credible arguments that you can get all of ObamaCare [repealed] through reconciliation and that’s where the focus of lawmakers should be as the budget comes up and as instructions are written,” he added.

I note that links to Freedom Works, Senate Conservatives Fund, and Heritage Action, all conservative organizations, were added by this site and are not in the article. It seems only sensible however to provide ths information.

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Via: Memeorandum