"Parliamentarian’s task: referee Senate health care fight" by Matt Viser, Globe Staff | March 14, 2010
WASHINGTON — Alan Frumin may be unknown outside the corridors of Washington, but he is having an outsized influence over the fate of President Obama’s health care proposal.
Frumin labors in relative obscurity as the Senate’s chief parliamentarian, a post he has held under both Democratic and Republican majorities. His job: making sure Capitol Hill combatants play by the rules.
Already, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Harry Reid are wrestling over Frumin’s procedural verdicts. It is with Frumin’s guidance that Democrats must engineer a legislative triple bank shot to win a health care bill — first passing a Senate version of the proposed law in the House and then pushing through a set of repairs to the measure, which must pass both chambers.
That way the MSM can pronounce an unexpected success when it passes.
It's what I have termed a "s*** fooley."
The Senate Democrats’ plan to use “budget reconciliation,’’ which allows them to skirt a Republican filibuster, promises to keep Frumin in the middle of the action.
Republicans, planning a variety of procedural challenges, have argued that reconciliation has never before been used for something as sweeping as an overhaul of the health care system.
Past parliamentarians have lost their jobs with less at stake.
“You make decisions that annoy various senators and their staffs, and you make them all the time,’’ said Bob Dove, the previous parliamentarian — who was hired three times and fired twice. “It’s part of the job.’’
The 63-year-old Frumin, who might as well be wearing the stripes of a National Football League referee, scrupulously avoids press interviews. The job of parliamentarian was created in 1935 to interpret mind-numbing Senate codes, which are based on a combination of rule and tradition.
“It’s very arcane,’’ said Senate historian Donald A. Ritchie. “And very intricate.’’
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The Senate has generally not overruled the parliamentarian’s decisions, but it is possible. And there typically aren’t any votes to hire or fire a parliamentarian. In the past they have been promoted, or summarily axed, by the majority leader.
Frumin was appointed to the top parliamentarian job by the Republican majority after Dove, the previous officeholder, was fired when GOP leaders grew frustrated with some of his decisions involving reconciliation.
Photographs posted online provide a few insights into Frumin’s character: he likes to travel, and he walks in high-powered circles. Pictures show him posing in front of the Taj Mahal, riding an elephant in Jaipur, India, and on a golf course. One shows him in cutoff jeans in front of a lake, a series of others show him wearing a tuxedo and posing with former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, former vice presidents Dick Cheney and Al Gore, or shaking hands with President Obama....
Oh, I'm feeling real good about his call.
It will be up to Frumin to decide what aspects of the bill can be done through reconciliation....
“The parliamentarian is like the umpire at a baseball game,’’ said Ritchie, the Senate historian. “It only works if everyone decides he’s neutral and agrees to it. Once there’s a suspicion that he’s not, it doesn’t work.’’
Senator Scott Brown’s surprise victory two months ago in Massachusetts gave the Republicans the 41 votes they need to filibuster the Democrats health care plan in the Senate. That is what has caused the Democrats to consider such a delicate legislative maneuver to get final approval for the plan....
Why not rewrite the damn thing for 51 votes instead of the s***-headed 60 then?
If it is such a critical issue, why rush?
Some Republicans have already accused Frumin of being biased toward Democrats, but most say they have confidence that he will be impartial.
“He’s the prosecutor, he’s the defense attorney, he’s the judge, and he’s the hangman,’’ said Senator Judd Gregg, a New Hampshire Republican.
Sounds like a dictator.
“But as a very practical matter, I have a lot of confidence that he’ll be a fair player and rule on the basis of precedent and what he sees is the correct way to do it in a fair and unbiased way.’’
So when is the Senate vote?
