reconciliation

“If the House passes the latest version of legislation this weekend and sends it to the Senate, that will be the key legislative event in the long health care debate, because both chambers have already passed the legislation,” says Timothy McBride, Ph.D., health economist and associate dean of public health at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.  “I believe the House will pass the legislation, but the vote will be very close, probably within one vote or two. The House probably has not had a vote this close since the vote on Medicare prescription drugs.”

Congressional expert Steven S. Smith says Congress has plenty of parliamentary tactics for stalling and pushing through legislation. The fate of the health care reform bill could be determined by a process of reconciliation, filibusters, deeming or something Smith calls a “vote-a-rama”.

Reconciliation is a “fast-track” legislative process that bypasses potential Senate gridlock and permits the passage of budget-related legislation by majority vote. It’s a hot-button issue now as the Senate grapples with health-care legislation. “The passage this term of health-care legislation, and perhaps the future of health care reform more generally now may turn on rulings of the current parliamentarian,” says Cheryl Block, JD, professor of law. 

As President Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress head for a final showdown over long-stalled health-care reform legislation, pundits are struggling to explain an array of arcane congressional rules and protocols that may determine whether health care reform passes or dies on the vine. Many of these pundits are getting it wrong, suggests WUSTL congressional expert Steven S. Smith, Ph.D.

These skulls, from victims of the Khmer Rouge, are on display in a Buddhist stupa at Choeung Ek, a mass burial site commonly known as one of “the killing fields.”Lessons learned from research into the societal effects of post-Apartheid “truth and reconciliation” hearings in South Africa are now being applied to a U.S. National Institute of Peace-sponsored study of the long-term mental health impact on Cambodians from human rights tribunals targeting the killing of millions by the nation’s former Khmer Rouge regime, says James L. Gibson, a professor of political science at Washington University in St. Louis and co-author of a study published Aug. 6 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

*Overcoming Apartheid*South Africans celebrate a decade of democracy this month as they observe the 10th anniverary of the April 1994 elections that brought Nelson Mandela to power and ended years of apartheid and white rule. While many expected South Africa’s transition to democracy to be filled with pain and heartbreak, a new book attributes the nation’s remarkable success to it’s steadfast faith in the power of truth to promote national healing and reconciliation. “Without the truth and reconciliation process, the prospects for a reconciled, democratic South Africa would have been greatly diminished,” concludes James L. Gibson, author of “Overcoming Apartheid: Can Truth Reconcile a Divided Nation?”