Lindsey Graham is asked to respond to Harry Reid's statement that the GOP Should "Stop Crying" About Reconciliation:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told reporters Tuesday that Republicans "should stop crying" about the possible use of the parliamentary procedure known as budget reconciliation to pass a health care reform bill.

Reid said reconciliation had been used 21 times since 1981, mostly by Republicans when they were in control of the Senate for the passage of items like the Bush tax cuts. (Here's a handy chart of when the procedure has been used.)

Under reconciliation, Democrats would need a simple majority in the Senate to pass legislation, as opposed to the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster. "They should stop crying about reconciliation as if it's never been done before," Reid said.

Of course Graham thinks this will be the "end of minority rights in the Senate" after the Republicans being the most obstructionist in history and the Democrats accepting 160 Republican amendments to this mess of a health care bill which is unfortunately already bipartisan. These Republicans continually count on the country listening to what they say as opposed to what they do. That doesn't stop Graham from calling getting what is a bipartisan bill passed on health care "arrogance on steroids" and calling this the "end of the Senate as you know it".

Sorry Lindsey. This has just been more of the Senate as we know it where what might be good bills go to die a slow death and Senators from states representing much less of the population than most of the large cities in the United States can muck up legislation for the rest of us who are not equally represented there. I'm just sick to death of the Democrats accepting Republican ideas without demanding some votes in return for caving into their wishes. It allows the likes of Graham here to continue to do their revisionist history on how none of their ideas were accepted.

February 23, 2010 C-SPAN

I was out all day and missed most of the reaction to Obama's suggested health-care plan. (Although I did learn from the Washington Post that this reheated version of the Senate bill is the White House team's idea of "going big." Heaven help us, I'd hate to see what "going small" looks like.)

From jumping around the blogs tonight, here's a roundup of some of the more interesting stuff.
From Think Progress:

The Obama plan maintains key elements of the Senate proposal but also incorporates stronger anti-fraud provisions and allows the federal government to review insurance rate hikes. On a call with reporters Pfeiffer insisted that the administration has not determined “on which path to move forward with”, but the bill’s substance suggests that Obama is hoping to bypass a prolonged-Senate debate and use the reconciliation process to fix the Senate bill and convince reluctant House progressives to pass the Senate legislation. “The American people deserve up or down vote on health reform,”Pfeiffer said. “We can get an up or down vote if opposition decides to take extraordinary steps of filibustering health reforms.”

But it’s unclear if progressive House members will embrace the new compromise. While the bill addresses House members’ affordability concerns, increases the excise tax thresholds and completely closes the donut hole in Medicare Part D, the legislation does not include a public option, retains the Senate bill’s state-based exchanges and keeps the start date for most reforms at 2014. (Obama’s plan also retains the Senate’s abortion compromise and most other core provisions).

And I know you're dying to read the reaction from the National Right to Life committee, right?

In its statement, the National Right to Life committee said that the president’s proposal “limits rights of Americans of all ages to use their own money to save their own lives.”

Burke Balch, the director of the National Right to Life Committee’s Powell Center of Ethics, likened the president’s plan to imposing a limit on the cost of restaurant meals.

“It is as though a government, concerned about the high cost of restaurant food, imposed a price limit of $5 per meal, and then asserted that for those who like their restaurant food, nothing will force them to change their eating habits,” the statement said. “The reality, of course, is that restaurants would be unable to afford to offer meals at prices below the cost of their ingredients. Consequently, about all restaurant-goers would be able to get would be fast food.”

Yes, because unlike health care, it's not as if you couldn't buy food and cook it yourself. (Try not to think about it, it'll just make your head hurt.)

Lambert, as usual, cuts to the chase:

NOTE: And this part is truly weird. You know the 31 million number that keeps getting tossed around? I always that was due mostly to Medicaid expansion --- moving the opportunity to get medical care after losing all your assets, like your house, up the income ladder -- but no. Right in the first paragraph:

"The President's [cough] Option" -- sorry, "Proposal" -- makes insurance more affordable by providing the largest middle class tax cut for health care in history, reducing premium costs for tens of millions of families and small business owners who are priced out of coverage today. This helps over 31 million Americans afford health care who do not get it today – and makes coverage more affordable for many more.

It's a tax cut!? Are Republican talking points truly the only ponies left in the stable?

I'm not even gonna try to gild that particular lily.

Fox News' Megyn Kelly this morning, on the supposedly "opinion free" and "fair and balanced" "news show" America Live:

Kelly: Moments ago, at the White House briefing, reporters asked Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about reports the Democrats are ready to use the so-called "nuclear option". This would mean forcing a health-care reform bill through with only fifty-one votes in the Senate as opposed to sixty.

Here is Gibbs, refusing to rule that out.

Kelly then played a video of Gibbs trying to explain that the reconciliation option is always there, and always has been. (Indeed, it would require a suspension of Senate rules to take it off the table.)

Then she brought on Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey, who similarly tried to explain that reconciliation is always an option if the forthcoming summit on health care does not produce a bipartisan agreement, and that taking it off the table is not an option. Kelly wasn't listening.

But that, of course, is only the half the problem. The other is that reconciliation is not a "nuclear option" -- it's a normative part of Senate rules. And its use simply underscores the fact that the Constitution did not create a Senate in which legislation may only pass by sixty votes. It created one in which fifty-one was sufficient.

It's only been in recent years, through Republican abuse of the filibuster, that sixty votes has become the standard level of support to get anything passed. Reconciliation is the one process that circumvents the filibuster and negates such abuse.

Moreover, as Media Matters explains, the term "nuclear option" refers to a Republican plan to do away with the filibuster altogether, threatened back when Democrats used filibuster threats to hold up the Bush administration's extremist slate of judicial appointments. That's hardly what Democrats are planning with health-care reform.

Indeed, as the New York Times pointed out last year, reconciliation has always been a popular option with Republicans in getting key pieces of legislation passed.

But there are a couple of problems for Republicans as they push back furiously against the idea, chief of which is the fact that they used the process themselves on several occasions, notably when enacting more than $1 trillion in tax cuts in 2001.

That means critics can have a field day lampooning Republicans and asking them — as Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, did repeatedly the other day — why reconciliation was such a good idea when it came to giving tax cuts to millionaires but such a bad one when it comes to trying to provide health care to average Americans.

The record is also replete with past statements by Republicans such as Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the party’s leader on budget issues, praising the logic of reconciliation.

“We are using the rules of the Senate here,” Mr. Gregg said in 2005 as he fought off Democratic complaints that reconciliation was wrongly being employed to block filibusters against opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. “Is there something wrong with majority rules? I don’t think so.”

But he and other Republicans, with some Democrats concurring, say that using reconciliation to accomplish Mr. Obama’s sweeping objectives would distort the intent of a procedure intended mainly to lower the deficit, not restructure the national economy.

Hahahahahaha! Good one! As though Bush's tax cuts -- which predictably had the result of widening the gap between rich and poor in this country -- didn't represent a fundamental restructuring of the national economy.

Indeed, Ronald Reagan used the reconciliation process in 1981 to pass his tax cuts -- which had a similar effect.

But when Democrats go that route, they're suddenly going "nuclear."

Right.

As per Chris Bowers' whip count, we knew Thursday that Sen. Reid said he wouldn't rule out the addition of the public option to health-care reform through the reconciliation process, but today's statement sounds much stronger:

The health care debate just got reignited in Washington, D.C. Late Friday afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced he would work with Democrats and the White House to pass a public option through reconciliation, according to the Huffington Post.

Reid put a caveat to the statement saying that he would support it if that's the path the Democratic Party chooses with the legislation.

Ezra Klein, who too often accepts the conventional "centrist" wisdom, still might be right when he says the public positions in the Senate are a lot different from the private ones (Jonathan Cohn expresses similar doubts):

I've spoken to a lot of offices about this now, and all of them are ambivalent privately, even if they're supportive publicly. No one feels able to say no to this letter, but none of them seem interested in reopening the wars over the public option. That's why the White House kicked this at Reid and Reid tossed it back at the White House. If the public option is a done deal, everyone will sign on the dotted line. But between here and there is a lot of work that no one seems committed to doing, and that many fear will undermine the work being done on the rest of the bill.

What you're seeing here are the weird politics of the public option at play. It's popular in the country. It's wildly popular among the base. It's the subject of obsessive interest in the media. There is little downside to supporting it publicly, huge downside to opposing it, and no one is allowed to ignore the issue, or even take a few days to see where the votes are.

[...] No one I've spoken to -- even when they support the public option -- thinks that its reemergence is good news for health-care reform. It won't be present in the package that the White House will unveil Monday. Everyone seems to be hoping this bubble will be short-lived.

But it might not be. The media is talking about it, liberals are organizing around it, none of the major actors feels politically capable of playing executioner, and Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson don't have the power to do the job on their own. As of now, the strategy only has 20 or so supporters, and it'll need at least another 20 or 25 to really be viable. But if it gets there, White House and Senate leadership are going to have some hard calls to make.

Balkinization: Justice Department will not punish Yoo and Bybee because most lawyers are scum anyway

Open Left: Reid says reconciliation is on the table and insurers are providing needed ammunition for action

Macroadvisers: Refuting the demagoguery: The Stimulus is working

The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks: Randomness: Product Endorsement Style

$Blind In Texas$: CPAC -and their sponsor - seats Steele at the back of the bus

The TM Fish Camp has a good idea for helping the people of Haiti

I want to believe this is actually happening, I really do. But we've been burned so many times already, I have to wonder: Are they really serious about this, or is this just another show to placate the base? Because if it's the latter, they're going to have even angrier Democratic voters on their hands.

But I do! I do want to believe! Via Plumline:

This is key: Senator Chuck Schumer has just signed the letter calling on Harry Reid to hold a reconciliation vote on the public option.

Schumer just fired off an email to supporters in which he announced that he’s added his name to the letter, which was initially spearheaded by Senator Michael Bennet and three other Senators. He wrote:

I just added my name to their effort to pass a public option through the reconciliation process, and I wanted you to be the first to know.

This is far from a done deal, but it’s an opportunity to break through the obstructionism Republicans have pushed for the past year.

That brings the total number of Senators calling for this vote to 17. But Schumer’s signature is arguably far more important than many of the others.

That’s because Schumer has now become the first member of the Dem Senate leadership to join this effort. As the former head of the DSCC he played a major role in engineering the Dem takeover of the Senate.

Schumer’s voice is highly respected inside the Dem caucus on policy matters. He played a major role in driving support for the public option throughout this process. And, crucially, Dems have trust in his political instincts. So his support implicitly suggests he thinks a reconciliation vote on the public option could also represent good politics.

Rachel talks to Sen. Bernie Sanders about whether there is any chance of the public option being included in the health care bill after having it negotiated away as Susie already noted Group of Senators Throw Hail Mary Pass for the Public Option. Rachel reports that the number of Senators who have signed the letter is now up to eleven total.

Michele Bachmann and Hannidate had a wankfest over the mere thought that reconciliation might be used to pass health-care reform. Isn't it part of America's legislative process? Maybe Bachmann was talking about herself when she said members of Congress were anti-American.

Hannity: So, is the San Francisco Speaker, is she off-script, or is the bipartisan meeting that the president is orchestrating just a sham?
…
Hannity: Can we believe them? Are they just being disingenuous?

Bachmann: Well, that’s the question that we need to have addressed, because the president only let John Boehner, the Republican leadership, know that he wanted a health care summit just an hour he went on national TV with Katie Couric to announce this is what he wanted to do. No heads up, in effect. Then John Boehner sent a letter to President Obama, asking questions, ‘Are we going to start over? Or are we working off of your Democrat plan?’ The president was real clear – he said he plans to pass the Democrat plan, Robert Gibbs went to the microphone, said the same thing. And then as you said, Speaker Pelosi’s Number One health-care negotiator in the House said they’ve got a legislative trick, and they know exactly how they’re going to pass their plan. That’s after the president’s invitation. If they’re already saying they’re going to pass their bill, then what is this for, this summit?
…
Hannity: All right, so are you looking specifically for a promise? In other words, Mr. President, do you promise – and I saw the letter that John Boehner and Eric Cantor sent to the president – do you need a promise or a commitment that he will not use the reconciliation process before it would be wise enough to sit down?

Bachmann: I think the best negotiation would be one where the president says, ‘I will not use the reconciliation’ – the legislative trick, in the Democrats’ own vernacular. And where he says we’ll start from scratch, we’ll start over with a blank sheet of paper, and we’ll start new with our ideas and we’ll truly come together, with cameras, both sides, and come to a discussion. That’s really what the American people expect and that would be the best outcome.

Maybe Congress should just pass Paul Ryan's whacked out budget too.

IOKIYAR. Isn't that always the case? Ronald Reagan used reconciliation along with Clinton. George Bush used it to pas his tax cuts. And another of the wanker elitists is Judd Gregg who attacks it now but used it in 1994 for Newt and wanted to use it against ANWAR.

In 1994, he was a freshman Senator using budget reconciliation to move pieces of Newt Gingrich's Contract With America through the Senate. In 2005, he argued that budget reconciliation should be used to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

And of course, George W. Bush made great use of the procedure with the help of Ben Nelson.

On May 26, 2001, Nelson was one of a dozen Democrats to support president George W. Bush's Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001: the massive tax cut package that defined the administration's plans for job growth. The bill was passed using reconciliation -- meaning it wasn't subject to a Democratic filibuster -- and received the support of 58 Senators. Two years later, Bush had introduced a second tax-cut package, this one entitled The Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003. That too was passed through reconciliation with Nelson's vote proving even more critical.

My name is Noelle Cigarroa Bell, and I've been working for the past year on health care reform as a grassroots advocate. I would like to announce exciting news--we're working with Darcy Burner on the FixItAndPassIt! Project. Here's what our project is about:

Healthcare Reform: Fix It and Pass It! is a project of the Progressive Congress Action Fund, a 501(c)(4) non-profit organization dedicated to connecting the progressive movement, ideas, and Congress.

I've started this movement with Eve Gittelson, a noted health care activist, and Darcy Burner, the Executive Director of ProgressiveCongress.org. We're starting a massive push to make 1,000,000 calls to Congress on February 24th and February 25th around the time of President Obama's bipartisan summit to push for a reconciliation fix to the Senate bill. Will you please help join us to fix the bill and get it passed?

Democracy For America is onboard with us for our effort, and we're working on an even bigger push next week to get this job done. Speaker Pelosi has it right when she says she doesn't have the votes for the Senate bill. She's whipped her caucus, tried to get them to a "yes" vote, but they're not going to do it because the Senate bill is political poison because of the lack of a public option, the Medicare buy-in, the excise tax, the sweetheart deals with PhRMA, and the Nebraska Cornhusker Kickback deal.

We're pushing to fix this bill by calling for these items in the reconciliation fix--the public option, the Medicare buy-in, excising the excise tax, increasing the subsidies, drug reimportation, and kicking the Nebraska cornhusker kickback deal out of the Senate bill. The votes won't materialize otherwise. It's the harsh reality. This just doesn't stop here, because truly, this Senate bill even if it gets passed by an Act of God, isn't enough. We will continue to fight for better health reform. Let's get this done and leave it all on the road on February 24th and February 25th.

Thank you for joining us at FixItAndPassIt.org! You can also follow us on Twitter @ProgActionNow.

I extend my sincere thanks to the editor team at Crooks and Liars and to John for allowing this guest post through.

I suppose the president is doing this as political cover for the eventual use of reconciliation. But I suspect he really thinks he's going to change the way things work in Congress -- either he's crazy, or a genius. Personally, I wish he'd give up trying to be the Great Mediator and just ram through his agenda - the same way George Bush did with much less public support:

President Obama moved to jump-start the stalled health-care debate Sunday, inviting Republicans in Congress to participate in a bipartisan, half-day televised summit on the subject this month.

The president made the offer in an interview with CBS News anchor Katie Couric hours before the network televised the Super Bowl.

Obama challenged Republicans, who have been largely unified in opposing his proposals, to bring their best ideas for how to cover more Americans and fix the health insurance system to the public discussion.

"I want to consult closely with our Republican colleagues," Obama said. "What I want to do is to ask them to put their ideas on the table. . . . I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats, to go through, systematically, all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward."

The invitation to meet together on Feb. 25 -- and to do so live in front of the American public -- represents an effort by Obama to hit the reset button on the top domestic priority of his first year in office. It also reflects a recognition that he must have at least some Republican support if he hopes to see health-care reform pass.

[...] GOP leaders on Sunday said they welcomed the outreach but called it evidence that Obama knows he must start over if he wants to earn their support going forward.

I was on a conference call with Nancy Pelosi Tuesday afternoon, and she was clear: There's not a snowball's chance in hell that the House will vote to pass the Senate health-care bill in its present form.

"Don’t even think of asking us to vote for the Senate bill unless the other bill has passed both houses that will amend it through reconciliation," she said. But she promised several times during the call: "We will get this done."

What the House apparently will vote for is a repeal of the antitrust legislation that exempted the health insurance and malpractice insurers for the past 65 years. She said it will happen next week.

And in case you haven't figured it out yet, the new Democratic mantra is "Jobs, jobs, jobs." Pelosi wove the theme throughout the call.

She talked about job lock ("If you want to leave your job and become a writer or an entrepreneur without worrying about your health insurance, you can do that.")

"Every issue for us has been about jobs. The recovery, the budget, health, education, climate and energy bills – all about the economic well-being of America’s families," she said.

"Healthcare is central because the current system is so unsustainable. It’s not back-burnered," she said. She noted the difference it make "in the economic security of America’s families.

"We have to get this done, we are so very, very close.

She said some senators are calling her, urging her to take the opportunity to put in single payer and the public option. "I have to wonder, is there a market for these things?" she said, noting she didn't think the Senate had the votes for either.

She ended the call with an exhortation.

"It’s a heavy lift," she said. "The other side has endless money, total determination that change will not happen." She said the insurance industries have the "same philosophical backing as the same people who tried to keep Medicare from happening."

"It’s a pretty exciting time. You can’t be discouraged, we have to keep fighting for the American people and our democracy, she said.

"It’s not only about their health, it’s about economic security. We are determined to get that done. If I sound calm, it’s because we will not be deterred from this, we will get it done."

Chris Matthews attacks Alan Grayson and accuses him of pandering to the netroots because he believes the reconciliation process can be used to get a health care bill passed.

(Nicole:) Hmm....I think someone has gotten under Tweety's craw. First of all, Matthews is simply factually wrong, for all his puffed up self-importance of "years of experience" on Capitol Hill, about no programs created in the reconciliation process.

As Congress began using the process more regularly, lawmakers also began to find ways to get policy past its seemingly impenetrable revenue-related framework.

The 1997 Balanced Budget Act, for instance, was passed through reconciliation and created both the State Children’s Health Care Program, known as SCHIP, and the Medicare Advantage program for the elderly.

You were saying, Chris? Whether the will (and gonadic fortitude) is there with the congressional leadership to get the bill passed via reconciliation is a separate issue, but on this one, Tweety, Grayson has you dead to rights. I would suggest that next time you want to challenge a politician, you don't choose someone like Grayson, who is clearly up for pushback. C'mon, this is the same guy who is taking on Iraq War profiteers.

And the "pandering to the netroots" dig is just sad, Tweety. I know you don't like us--mostly because we're not so forgiving of your devotion without principle to politicos. But Chris, we've been right on this health care discussion--and pretty much all political discussions-- more than you or any of your Beltway Bubble Buddies ever have. Grayson may actually be smart enough to realize that we in the netroots might know what we're talking about.

Out of curiosity, Tweety, do you think that E.J. Dionne, one of your Very Serious People inside the Beltway, is equally pandering to the netroots when he writes the exact same thing in today's WaPo?

So here’s an idea, I have been told reliably, that leaders of both Houses are considering: The House would pass a version of the reconciliation bill containing the various amendments and send it to the Senate. The Senate would change it slightly (in ways that the House agreed to), which would require the House to vote on it again. Only after it got the revised reconciliation bill would the House take up the Senate bill. The House could then pass both bills and send both to the president. Problem solved, health-care passes, and we move on.

Blue Gal remarked in an email that Matthews appears to be exhibiting classic Freudian "narcissism of minor differences."

...we reserve our most virulent emotions – aggression, hatred, envy – towards those who resemble us the most. We feel threatened not by the Other with whom we have little in common – but by the "nearly-we", who mirror and reflect us.

As Blue Gal puts it, Tweety knows deep down that if it had not been for a couple lucky breaks he'd be a blogger nobody reads.

William K. Wolfrum: Dear Media, Reconciliation is only obscure because of you.

Happy fifth blogiversary to Figleaf's Real Adult Sex: A good time to think about Haiti's coerced domestic child-servants.

After The Future: Three political realities.

Mock, Paper, Scissors: Paging Senator Vitter...

That's Why: A totally rational response to the news of the day.

Blue Gal posting for Mike, who is on a blues cruise! Send tips to bluegalsblog AT gmail DOT com.

There are a lot of ideas floating around about what to do with health care. President Obama's remarks aren't helping either.
There's an article in the NY Daily News that says this:

Democratic insiders say they are weighing several options to save health care reform, and one actually may be bold enough to revive a depressed, turned-off Democratic base: use the obscure reconciliation loophole to pass a public option.

“Let’s do a public option, or let’s go back and do a single-payer plan,” a frustrated senior Democrat told the Mouth. “You can have people say, ‘Look, if we’re going to do reconciliation, let’s get more, not get less.’”

“If you’re going to use reconciliation, then use it hard,” the Democrat said, adding that it’s a serious option.

We look at some of the other ideas in the paper today, but that’s the one progressives want.

For instance, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee immediately began sending around a petition last night advising Democrats not to take the wrong lesson from Massachusetts, and to use reconciliation.

“The loss of Ted Kennedy’s seat — due to a lack of enthusiasm among Democrats and Independents — sends a clear message to Congress. The Senate health care bill is not the change we were promised in 2008, and it must be improved. The Senate must use ‘reconciliation’ to pass a better bill with a strong public option.”

PCCC’s Adam Green said it got 10,000 signatures in the first hour.

I was talking to Howie Klein last night and we agreed. What about expanding Medicare and medicaid?

Ezra has the same thoughts:

There is another option.

Democrats could scrap the legislation and start over in the reconciliation process. But not to re-create the whole bill. If you go that route, you admit the whole thing seemed too opaque and complex and compromised. You also admit the limitations of the reconciliation process. So you make it real simple: Medicare buy-in between 50 and 65. Medicaid expands up to 200 percent of poverty with the federal government funding the whole of the expansion. Revenue comes from a surtax on the wealthy.

And that's it. No cost controls. No delivery-system reforms. Nothing that makes the bill long or complex or unfamiliar. Medicare buy-in had more than 51 votes as recently as a month ago. The Medicaid change is simply a larger version of what's already passed both chambers. This bill would be shorter than a Danielle Steel novel. It could take effect before the 2012 election. If health-care reform that preserves the private market is too complex and requires too many dirty deals with the existing industries, then cut both out. But get it done. Democrats have a couple of different options for passing health-care reform this year. But not passing health-care reform should not be seen as one of them.

So the Democrats lost one seat. Big deal. They had 58 seats for a long time anyway. Just don't panic and move forward and be decisive.
The Villagers don't understand that Americans want a progressive health care bill. here's some evidence.

Digby caught a weird exchange between Tweety and Howard Dean.

Somehow, I don't think Matthews or any other villager was convinced by Dean's argument. They just don't think that way. Therefore, electing a Republican will never result in the political establishment and the media understanding that it was because the Democrat wasn't liberal enough. Best not to get too fine with this stuff and just send them a message they can understand.

Yesterday Labor leaders sent Harry Reid for a National Exchange in health-care reform and Reid says they will move HCR forward

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