Kos: Majority rule is "the nuclear option"

[cal04]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/2/24/840251/-Majority-rule-is-the-nuclear-option

Back when Republicans had the majority and Trent Lott ran the Senate, Republicans were more than happy to use the reconciliation process to pass their agenda. You see, they acted like a majority party with conviction for their ideology, and they used all tools at their disposal to make it happen.

And boy, did they ever, using reconciliation --

Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (first Bush tax cuts)
Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 (second Bush tax cuts)
Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (Medicare, Medicaid, student loans, assistance for needy families)
Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005 (tax cuts)
College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007 (student aid, loan forgiveness)

In fact, it's kind of hard to find any health-related bit of legislation that didn't pass via reconciliation:

The use of expedited reconciliation process to push through more dramatic changes to a health care bill of such size, scope and magnitude is unprecedented," Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) wrote in a letter to President Obama on Monday, urging him to renounce the possibility of trying to pass a bill using the procedure.

But health care and reconciliation actually have a lengthy history. "In fact, the way in which virtually all of health reform, with very, very limited exceptions, has happened over the past 30 years has been the reconciliation process," says Sara Rosenbaum, who chairs the Department of Health Policy at George Washington University.

As Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid has noted:

"Since 1981, reconciliation has been used 21 times. The vast majority of those reconciliation efforts have been by Republicans," he said. "hey should stop crying about reconciliation as if it's never been done before. It's done almost every Congress, and they're the ones that used it more than anyone else."

He added, "The Contract for America, most of the stuff in the Contract for America was done with reconciliation. Tax cuts, done with reconciliation. Medicare, done with reconciliation. So they better go back and look at history a little bit."

What's more, while the filibuster is just a Senate rule, reconciliation is ACTUAL LAW:

Yes, reconciliation is more than just a procedure hidden away in the Senate rules somewhere. It's a matter of law. Specifically, the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 (2 U.S.C. § 641(e)(2)). Yes, that's right. As a matter of federal law, you can pass a reconciliation bill with just 51 votes. Because 2 U.S.C. § 641(e)(2) specifically limits -- by law -- debate in the Senate on reconciliation bills to 20 hours. Which means you can't filibuster it. Which means that it gets an up-or-down vote (remember those?), with no 60 vote threshold required. Plain old majority rules.

By. Law.

In other words, while the Senate could adopt new rules by fiat eliminating or limiting the filibuster (subject to a filibuster, mid-session, but not when organizing the next Senate), eliminating reconciliation would require a new law, passed by the Senate and House and signed by the president.

That's not stopping Fox News from freaking out about the NUCLEAR OPTION!!! But if reconciliation was a "nuclear" option, we'd be suffering through a serious Bush-induced nuclear winter right now.

It's not. A smart Democratic Party would've used reconciliation last year to make all this happen, or at least as a threat to force compromise from the more recalcitrant Democrats, but we go to Congress with the Democrats we have, not the Democrats we wish we had. And we certainly have crappy ones. Republicans have never had any problem using whatever tools are at their disposal to push their agenda.

It's only now, as an act of desperation, that Democrats have begun seriously considering reconciliation. And Republicans, suddenly facing a procedural process they can't obstruct, will do everything they can to muck up the picture and confuse both the media and the public.

But here's the bottom line: Budget reconciliation is law, and has been used quite a bit, mostly by Republicans, to pass legislation. Crying about "nuclear option" is nothing more than disingenuous partisan hackery.

[pleah]

1. K&R

[nashville_brook]

2. not much to say except f'n k n'r