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SALT LAKE CITY — Sen. Mike Lee is hoping to use a complicated procedural maneuver to force another vote on Obamacare by using what's known as the nuclear option.
The Utah Republican announced his plan Friday after an Affordable Care Act repeal amendment was scheduled for a Sunday vote during consideration of the Senate highway bill.
"Republicans now have an opportunity to make good on our promise to repeal Obamacare," Lee said in a press release. "The first Obamacare vote on Sunday will have a 60 vote threshold and Democrats will likely block it. But thanks to the sequencing of the votes we just locked in, Republicans will have the opportunity to resurrect that Obamacare amendment later on in the process, and put it back before the Senate in a manner that only requires a simple-majority vote."
It's uncertain whether the strategy will work, but if it does, it would repeal the Affordable Care Act with 51 votes from senators who would likely vote to repeal it, the Washington Post reported Friday.
Republicans now have an opportunity to make good on our promise to repeal Obamacare.
–Sen. Mike Lee
At issue is whether the Senate floor can vote on the language to begin with. Legislation usually needs to get 60 votes before proceeding to an actual vote in the Senate, but Republicans don't have enough Affordable Care Act opponents in the Senate to reach that threshold.
So Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, is planning to prove that point on Sunday during the vote, according to the Post.
After cloture is reached on the Export-Import Bank amendment, senators will still be allowed to offer amendments to the highway bill, each of which would only require a simple majority to pass.
If the Affordable Care Act amendment is ruled non-germane, Senate Rule 22 also allows any senator to appeal that ruling to the full Senate, according to Lee. At that point, a simple majority of senators would have the power to add the Obamacare repeal amendment to the highway bill.
Lee sees it as an opportunity to force another vote, which he claims in his press release will repeal the act and "finally bring real reform to our health care system."
But Tim Chambless, a political science professor of the University of Utah, is skeptical that the maneuver will succeed. He said similar efforts have not worked in the past, and even if it does work, the president is certain to veto it.
"Anything is possible in politics, but this would be so unusual," he said. "I'd be very surprised if the Senate majority leader allows a vote of this kind of unusual technicality."
Instead, Chambless believes the move is politically driven.
"There is a Senate re-election campaign underway, and I would suspect it is hard to separate the politics from the governing," he said. "To me, it's a reminder to Utah voters that (Lee) is trying to do whatever he can to oppose President Obama … and to make a statement to his opposition to the Affordable Care Act."
