ABSTRACT
If the congressional budget process is an example of routine politics, battling over health care policy can be described as torturous politics, given its public salience and a deep partisan divide that accompanies it. In 1993, President Bill Clinton’s health care bill died in the committee. In 2009, during the Obama administration’s efforts to pass the Affordable Care Act (ACA), a number of moderate Democrats on E&C wavered on the bill, so then-Chairman Henry Waxman threatened to have the bill skip his own committee. The ACA eventually passed E&C, but six Democrats joined the Republicans in voting against the bill. Despite the claims of the Republican members at the E&C hearing, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that 24 million Americans would lose health insurance under the bill. The White House was seemingly driven less by a policy vision or even a larger political plan, but a desire to win the news cycle.
