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This Is What "Bipartisanship" Looks LikeWhat do the GOP amendments to this Senate health care bill actually say?

By Christopher BeamPosted Thursday, July 16, 2009, at 7:29 PM ET

Sen. Ted KennedyWhen the Senate health, education, labor, and pensions committee passed its health care bill Wednesday, the Obama administration hailed it as a "bipartisan" effort. No matter that it passed the panel on a strictly party-line vote, with all 13 Democrats voting for and all 10 Republicans voting against. It was bipartisan, administration officials explained, because it contained 160 Republican amendments. Republican senators said that characterization was absurd. After all, they said, most of the 160 amendments were technical, rather than substantive, changes. Lisa Murkowsi of Alaska told the New York Times that, while it was "pretty impressive" that 20 of her amendments were accepted, "they were all technical."

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Who's right? There's no real way to resolve this debate without examining the content of these amendments, and the committee has yet to officially release them. But a Senate Republican source sent Slate a summary of many of the amendments, with a short description of each. (Download the Excel file here.) Disclaimer: This is an incomplete list. Of the 788 amendments filed, only 437 appear here. And of the 161 GOP amendments passed or accepted, we have confirmed only 80 as such. We hope to update the document as more information becomes available.

That said, some context: Of the 788 amendments filed, 67 came from Democrats and 721 from Republicans. (That disparity drew jeers that Republicans were trying to slow things down. Another explanation may be that they offered so many so they could later claim—as they are now, in fact, claiming—that most of their suggestions went unheeded.) Only 197 amendments were passed in the end—36 from Democrats and 161 from Republicans. And of those 161 GOP amendments, Senate Republicans classify 29 as substantive and 132 as technical.

Yet many of the GOP amendments on this incomplete list do seem pretty substantive. For example, one amendment offered by Oklahoma's Tom Coburn requires members of Congress and their staff to enroll in the government-run health insurance program. Another, sponsored by Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, would "establish an auto advisory council to make recommendations to the Secretary of the Treasury regarding how best to represent the taxpayers of the United States as the majority owner of General Motors." An amendment written by North Carolina's Richard Burr requires that "a private plan would be exempt from any federal or state requirement related to quality improvement and reporting if the community health insurance option is not subject to the specific requirement."

The list goes on. An amendment from Mike Enzi of Wyoming promises "to protect pro-patient plans and prevent rationing." Another of his would "prohibit the government run plan from limiting access to end of life care." An amendment from New Hampshire's Judd Gregg "requires all savings associated with follow-on biologics to go towards deficit reduction."

There are some technical-seeming amendments, too. For example, an amendment from Burr (which was accepted) says, "On line 23 after 'groups' insert 'and reduces the cost of health care.' " Another amendment, proposed by Coburn, "[d]efines [the] average work week as 40 hours."

Again: We're working with limited information here. The summaries are vague. There's no accounting yet for the other 80 or so Republican amendments that were included in the legislation. But in this sampling, at least, it appears that a good portion of the GOP amendments offered were substantive (which, of course, is hardly a criticism). Whether that makes the bill "bipartisan" is a separate question.

Got more details? Let us know.

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Christopher Beam is a Slate political reporter. Follow him on Twitter.

Photograph of Sen. Ted Kennedy by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

COMMENTS

Whether or not the process can be counted as bipartisan, I have to say that I like some of the Republican amendments described in this article (and this from a dyed-in-wool liberal from Canada!) Absolutely, all Congress members and their staff should be enrolled in the public option. Doing so will guarantee that no-one in Congress can turn it into a garbage dump. And I agree with Mike Enzi that the government option should not limit access to end of life care. I'll be curious to hear more about this topic.

-- TerryVB
(To reply, click here)

I think that this is a very interesting evolution of the concept of bipartisanism as applied to bills in Congress. It seems to me to make sense if we talk about a bill that contains substantial input from both parties as a "bipartisan bill" even if only one party actually supports the bill when it comes to a vote. On the other hand, a "non bipartisan" bill could be written by only one party (or individual), and still pass, unamended, with broad "bipartisan support".

I think that it was very clever for Obama et al. to have separated out these two fairly distinct manners of bipartisan involvement in a bill.

And it is not true that this trivializes the concept of "bipartisan" because all bills contain input from both parties. As we have seen, there have been recent Congresses both Democratic and Republican where the majority controls the process so tightly that it is very difficult for the minority to have meaningful input. If the Democrats adopt this "bipartisan bill" definition, then if they want to claim that they are bipartisan, they are committing themselves to include the minority in the process (the debate, the amendment process, resolution, etc.), even if they know they will not get their votes. I think that this is a very felicitous use of the word, and I hope it sticks.

-- Greg Shenaut
(To reply, click here)

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