“Health Care repeal passes the House…… Senate action unlikely.” These are the type of headlines and news crawls that have been flying around DC ever since the vote (link: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2011/roll014.xml) of 245 to 189 was announced in the House of Representatives last Wednesday evening.  As a matter of fact, during the C-SPAN showing of the House vote, the crawl that ran at the bottom of the TV screen was a statement by Sen. Reid (D-NV) saying that he had no intention of having the Senate consider the Health Care repeal bill.

However, this writer believes Senate action on the health care repeal is not only very likely, but a vote in relation to the repeal of Obama health care could occur in the Senate in the month of January if certain parliamentary maneuvers take place.

The reason it could happen as early as before the end of January is this. The Senate has yet to consider several Senate resolutions needed to complete the organization of the 112th Congress. The Senate Majority Leader has been under extreme pressure from many on his side of the aisle to radically change the Senate rules. The way Sen. Reid is considering doing this is to have the Vice President/ presiding officer declare that the Senate is not a continuous body. If the chair reverses 200+ years of Senate tradition, then in theory the Senate is without rules to operate since their rules from last Congress won’t continue if they are deemed to be not a continuous body. Consequently, the Senate must re-do its rules at the beginning of each Congress. Sen. Reid will likely offer a rules change resolution that with change the cloture rule to require some number less than the current 60 votes needed to end a filibuster in the Senate. I go into this minutia so that you know that the Senate must resolve this rules dilemma on Tuesday, Jan. 25. Sen. Reid has been negotiating with Sen. McConnell in the hopes that the two Leaders will be able to agree to this new Senate rules change. Once the Senate makes a decision on the rules change, either by agreement or it being forced by Sen. Reid, then they must pass resolutions to set the committee ratios for the 112th Congress and a resolution to actually appoint Senators to their committee assignments for the 112th Congress.

Again, learning about these insider housekeeping resolutions is important because Sen. McConnell could offer a form of the health Care repeal to any or all of these needed resolutions that will come to the Senate on Jan. 25. Sen. Reid may be truthful in saying he has no intention of having the health care repeal voted on in the Senate, but he must eventually organize the 112th Congress for the Senate to begin doing business. Organizing the Senate requires the Senate to pass resolutions doing so. Those resolutions could be a vehicle to carry a vote or two on repealing Obama Care.

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives will be considering the Small business loan bill, bill (link: http://rules.house.gov/Media/file/PDF_112_1/Floor_Text/GRAVES_004_x...). Currently, this bill expires at the end of January. This bill includes general business loan guarantee programs, small business investment company programs and smaller programs including grants to small business development centers, women business centers and other programs which typically do not operate under a direct appropriation. Passage of the bill will extend these small business programs through the end of March, 2011. The House will also consider a bill (link:  http://rules.house.gov/Media/file/HRes__Colepresidentialelectioncam...) that will end taxpayer funding of Presidential campaigns and national party conventions. By week’s end, the House will consider a resolution directing Cong. Ryan (R-WI) as the chairman of the Budget committee to submit for the Congressional Record, allocations for the Appropriations committee to cut non-security spending programs back to 2008 levels. This procedure is in order due to the fact that the last Congress under Speaker Pelosi did not pass a budget resolution.

Finally, both the House and Senate will join the President in the House chamber Tuesday at 9pm to hear the President’s State of the Union address. The two legislative bodies have decided that mixing up the seating in the chamber so that democrats and republicans can sit together will be a strong indicator that the two parties are trying to be civil to one another. I am guessing that most of us have been to family gatherings where cousins, aunts or maybe siblings who don’t care for one another can sit together for a Thanksgiving meal. After the meal no one in the family expects the dislikes to disappear just because they sat together.

Stay tuned to see who sits with who for the 90 minute State of the Union speech and if the civility lasts longer than the speech.

Elizabeth B. Letchworth is a retired, elected United States Senate Secretary for the Majority and Minority. Currently she is a senior legislative adviser for Covington & Burling, LLC and is the founder of GradeGov.com (http://www.gradegov.com)