Disregarding the “reconciliation” package, if the House passes the Senate bill, the President will sign it, as quickly as he possibly can. That bill and only that bill is then immediately the law of the land. Regardless of what happens after that, the President will have ObamaCare. The American people will have ObamaCare.

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Unless President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi can bribe, blackmail or waterboard their way to the 216 House votes currently required to pass ObamaCare (assuming no one falls suspiciously ill or suffers an equally suspicious accident), it is over, done, finished, kaput...for now.

For reasons explained below, it is imperative for opponents of ObamaCare, through every legitimate and lawful protest and grassroots lobbying mechanism known to man, that they not get those 216 votes.

If Obama and Pelosi do get their 216 votes, what are those votes for?  They are for the Senate version of the bill, word-for-word as it is written, including all the corrupt special deals, all the mandates and all the taxes.  If that passes, by whatever procedure-molesting contortion is chosen, then the Senate bill, having passed both houses, goes to the President for his signature.

At the same time that the House votes on the Senate bill, the Democratic leadership intends a vote on a series of “fixes” to the Senate bill.  Those “fixes,” to be sent to the Senate as a separate “reconciliation” bill, are the only way the House can conceivably get the votes necessary for the Senate bill, given opposition to elements of it.  Labor, for example, objects strenuously to the so-called “Cadillac insurance plan tax,” as imposed by the Senate, so that will be one of the fixes contrived.

The reason a “reconciliation” bill must be used for any new Senate vote on ObamaCare is that, with the election of Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, the Democrats lost their ability to hold the 60-vote majority required under regular rules of order to bring a bill to the floor. 

A Senate “reconciliation” bill can be passed by a simple majority of 51 votes, but it requires set points of deficit reduction, as advised by the Senate parliamentarian.  That is one reason the proposed government takeover of student loans (which, like ObamaCare, could not obtain the 60-vote Senate threshold) is being lumped into the package of fixes to be put before the House; technically, it meets the deficit-reduction requirement.  Virtually all the direct fixes to the Senate bill, as they are currently understood, increase costs or raise taxes even further, and the illusion of ultimate “deficit reduction” for health care is just that.

Disregarding the “reconciliation” package, if the House passes the Senate bill, the President will sign it, as quickly as he possibly can.  That bill and only that bill is then immediately the law of the land.  Regardless of what happens after that, the President will have ObamaCare.  The American people will have ObamaCare.

If the Senate subsequently cannot obtain 51 votes for the “reconciliation” bill, exactly the way it passes the House, then that part of the multi-story house of cards collapses or requires more intense wrangling.  The President will still have ObamaCare.  The American people will still have ObamaCare.

First, however, Obama and Pelosi must get the 216 House votes.  That vote is now expected to take place on Sunday, March 21.  Obama and Pelosi are pulling out all the stops to get there.  Opponents must do no less to stop them.