And when they get those votes and they pass the big bill, that will go down to the president and it will be signed. And this side bill, which is called the reconciliation bill, will really become almost irrelevant. [Judd Gregg, everyone’s favorite almost-cabinet-member, on CNBC, via The Wonk Room]
What’s this all about? Well, Republicans have realized that they’re not winning the battle against reconciliation. So now, they’ve moved onto a new tactic — trying to convince House liberals that reconciliation won’t actually happen to get them to vote against passing the Senate bill in the House.
Mark my words, though — they won’t stop arguing that the reconciliation bill is a democracy-killing catastrophe. That means Republicans will be in the very awkward position of simultaneously claiming that reconciliation is both of huge importance and completely irrelevant. And do you think anybody in the media will ask them about the contradiction?
Wow Jeff you want to use this article to try to promote the health care bill. Lets look at the problems.
One, Newsweek left out a lot of extremely important details. Some examples:
* The Senate no longer has the makeup when the bill passed in December 2009. Given the current makeup of the Senate this bill can’t be passed since Harry Reid can’t get clouture.
* The reason why reconciliation is needed was left out. The House wants to make some corrections to the bill such as removing the Cornhusker Kickback , the Lousiana purchase, correct the tax increase on cadicalic health care. Because that will generate technically a new bill which requires sixty votes in the Senate which the Democrats don’t have the Democrats now have to pass two bills in the House (the Senate bill and reconcillation).
* Totally left out of this discussion on reconcillation was that will rule out a correction to the Senate’s abortion language. The language which in effect says that the government will provide abortions. The language which if the house adopts will endorse. There is Bart Stupka and about ten other democrats in the House that by this strategy are going to be forced to either betray their beliefs or kill the bill if Nancy can’t round up other votes (and keep in mind with the current makeup of the House she has just 216 at best right now)
* This is known as the Byrd rule. It was written by Robert Byrd a democrat. Odd Newsweek doesn’t want to point out that Mr. Byrd has taken the position that reconciliation shouldn’t be used to pass the health care bill.
Two, Newsweek who you’re using to show that the Republicans are stupid made a few interesting factual errors.
* They claimed for example that the bill passed with sixty democrat votes. Um wasn’t the makeup of the Senate at the time 58 democrats, 40 Republicans, and two independents? Mind you the independents seat with the Democrats so that might be why they were called sixty democrats.
* It claimed that the 2001 Bush tax cuts weren’t bi-partisan. In the year 2001 there were either 50 or just 49 Republicans. If it got 58 votes that meant at least eight democrats voted for the bill. That’s a bi-partisan bill.
* And Jeff thank you for pointing out Obama and how he does support the sixty vote rule. If in 2005 and 2006 when the so called Republican nuclear option was being discussed it was so that the Republicans will need to have sixty votes to allow the vote on a judge. Think about this Jeff. Obama said that it is a matter of life and death that sixty Senators say that we vote on John Smith or Jane Doe for judge because they could have a tremendous influence on our lifes. So why on Earth can’t we agree that we should have sixty votes to have a vote on a health care bill that will affect the way that we live and eventually die?
Furthermore just to point out another error Newsweek made with that one point of their rebutal the Republicans weren’t demanding a new standard for the appointment of judges since they were saying that a judge had always deserved a majority yes or no vote. All they were asking for is a judge shouldn’t have their appointment vote held up by having to get sixty votes to be voted on. That new standard was one democrats were imposing to try to keep out judges that they thought were bad for the country. Yet you want to complain now about the Republicans using the same sixty vote threshold to stop Obama appointees. You can’t have it both ways.
One side note. This is the same Newsweek that had done a story about ten decisions that changed America. One decision was Jim Jeffords decision to join the Democrats in 2001 because that stopped President Bush from implementing his extreme agenda. Really. The Republicans controlled the House 223 to 212 (five vote margin of error) and with Jeffords controlled the Senate 51-50 using the Vice President to tie break. Compare the margins of 59-41 in the Senate and something like 250 to 185 in the House. Yet this was considered to be the one vote that stopped George Bush. If Newsweek got that wrong at the time it’s quite easy to claim they didn’t know what they were writing about here.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN