Senate Republicans zero in on 'reconciliation' to try to dismantle Obamacare

The Washington Examiner reports:

Senate Republicans will likely move to gut Obamacare after they assume the majority next year by using a parliamentary maneuver that would allow them to skirt an expected Democratic filibuster, GOP sources said.

The Senate’s complicated “reconciliation” rule, designed to ease the passage of deficit-reduction legislation, won’t permit Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act in its entirety. But the tactic will allow them, with the support of a simple majority rather than the customary, filibuster-proof 60 votes, to eliminate key provisions of the law, like the individual mandate to purchase health insurance, so as to render it effectively inoperable.

“That will be one avenue for us,” incoming Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, told reporters on Wednesday, when asked where reconciliation fit into Republicans’ plans to dismantle Obamacare. “Of course, in order to do that, we have to pass a budget, which hasn’t happened since 2009.”

Strategy.