What's in the bill right now is pretty much set in stone -- the reconciliation process is just the process of merging the current house version with the previously passed version in the senate. The house doesn't trust the senate, so they set it up as an "all or nothing" reconciliation process -- so it's not going to change.
My understanding is that they passed two things last night.
First was the Senate version of the bill, so that is basically the baseline now.
Second was an amendments package that "fixes" some parts of the bill. This package is what is going to the Senate for "reconciliation". The reconciliation process allows these amendments to be passed by a simple majority, provided there are no amendments added by the Senate (there is a risk the Republicans will try to add some). If the Senate passes the amendments as they stand, then they would also become law. If the Senate passes them with changes, then they would go back to the House for another vote.
Either way though, the reform voted on in the first part (the existing Senate version) is law.
As I understand it, if the Senate changes anything, then the house passing the senate bill in the first place undoes itself. I'm not positive on the exact mechanics at this point because they were changed a couple times but I do know that the plan, as publicly pronounced by leadership in both houses, is that what's on paper now is what will be passed by the senate and signed by the president.
Don't count the sale till the money's in the bank and all that, but it seems like that's the most likely scenario at this point, they only need 51 / 59 democratic senators.
According to CNN, Obama is going to sign the bill on Tuesday. The amendments are a totally separate bill, which will now be punted back and forth between the House and Senate, assuming the Senate doesn't just pass it as it stands.
No, as noted elsewhere the late December Senate bill has been passed by the House and will become the law of the land tomorrow when Obama signs it (subject to challenges heard by the Supremes and for all we know a Constitutional Convention (yeah, yeah, but this is the first time I've heard it being really seriously discussed)).
Going forward, the Senate may end up passing nothing that amends it in addition to the other possibilities mentioned in this thread.
"As a result, a new plan would call for the House to pass the Senate bill and send it to Obama. The Senate would then use budget reconciliation rules to make several changes demanded by House Democrats. Those rules prohibit filibusters."
Interesting. I wonder why the democrats didn't think of this right away? Everyone was saying the bill was dead when that republican senator got elected right?
I'm sure the house leadership had the plan worked out pretty quickly, it just takes time to work out the details with the Senate leadership, then communicate it to the >250 democrats in the House and line up the required number of votes.
Was the plan hard to figure out for the media and other commentators? Probably, because they don't have access to the House rules people, nor do they think about procedural maneuvers all day.
In retrospect, passing two bills was a very elegant solution. By passing the Senate version straight up, they guarantee that at least some version of victory is achieved without having to deal with the 59 seat issue. Then sending an amendment package back to the Senate with only carefully chosen amendments that allow the reconciliation maneuver gives it a decent shot despite the loss of the supermajority. Had they tried to pass one bill that combined the original and the amendments, the filibuster could have killed it.
The rules for reconciliation say that the changes must only be financial in nature, ie, if you decided to subsidize all boat builders it would make sense for reconciliation to change the amount of the subsidy. But not add some new program for elephant trainers. That would be out of bounds.
The reason reconciliation was set up was so that the financial numbers could be tweaked with minimum fuss on bills whose policies were already voted for by the Senate.
