Reconciling With the Past

By THOMAS E. MANN, NORMAN J. ORNSTEIN, RAFFAELA WAKEMAN and FOGELSON-LUBLINER
NYT

WITH President Obama and Congressional Democrats intent on one last push for health care reform, the main Republican talking point is outrage over the likely use of the reconciliation process to pass a separate House-Senate compromise. The Republicans’ best hopes of killing health reform rest on the use of a filibuster in the Senate. But bills considered under reconciliation cannot be filibustered and therefore can pass the Senate by a simple majority vote.

Bill Frist, a former Senate majority leader, called reconciliation an “arcane” procedure that Congress has “never used ... to adopt major, substantive policy change.” Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee asserted that this parliamentary tactic was unprecedented for a bill like health reform. Senator John McCain of Arizona said that the use of reconciliation would have “cataclysmic effects.”

So, would reconciliation represent an anomalous and dangerous power grab? The accompanying chart, which lists 15 major reconciliation bills passed by Congress since the process was first used in 1980, provides evidence for assessing that charge.

(More here.)