Senate Reconciliation: Health Care Vote-a-Rama

WASHINGTON, March 24, 2010— -- Meet Alan Frumin. He is the mustachioed Senate parliamentarian. He doesn't give interviews and avoids the public eye.

Capitol Hill press photographers have had little luck snapping his picture, but Frumin is about to play a key role in what the final health reform law will look like.

How key a role?

"He's basically the defense, the prosecution, the judge, the jury and the hangman in this scenario," said Sen. Judd Gregg, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee.

Normally it takes 60 votes to get anything done in the Senate – the number of votes needed to overcome filibuster and cut off debate.

But Democrats, since losing their 60th seat in January, will try to pass a series of fix-its to the bill they passed Christmas Eve and President Obama signed into law Tuesday morning.

The fix-its, passed by the House of Representatives Sunday night, were necessary to get House Democrats to support the bill. And Frumin, as parliamentarian, decides what is germane, under Senate rules.

In other words, he decides which amendments require 51 votes, which Democrats have, and which amendments require 60 votes, which they don't.

Democrats won the first battle late Monday night when Frumin agreed with them that the bill does not affect Social Security. Had he sided with Republicans, the entire set of fix-its would have been ruled out of order and Democrats would have had to muster 60 votes -- they are at least one short -- to bypass him.

That move brought criticism from some Republicans, who point out that Frumin, as a Senate employee, is nominally employed by the majority party.

But Republican leaders have not yet said Frumin is anything but an unbiased umpire.

"We'll have views about that, I suppose, as we move along. We'll see what the parliamentarian rules and whether he becomes a player in this exercise or truly a referee, an umpire," said Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.