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Utopia Talk / Politics / "Stop crying" - Harry Reid on healthcare

Peter Walsh
Member Tue Feb 23 23:27:05
http://www....health.care/index.html?hpt=T2

Sen. Harry Reid says approach has been used before, says Republicans should "stop crying"

Democrats could bypass GOP on health care bill

Washington (CNN) -- As a major White House meeting on health care reform approaches this week Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid acknowledged Tuesday that he may use a controversial parliamentary shortcut to bypass GOP opposition and pass a bill.

The fast-track approach, known as reconciliation, would allow Democrats to pass the bill with just 51 votes, not the 60 usually required to overcome a filibuster.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Democrats are being "arrogant" because the American people don't want a giant health care overhaul, but Democrats still plan to "use any parliamentary device to jam it through a reluctant Congress."

"It's hard for us to quite understand why, with reconciliation being planned, we're having a meeting which is allegedly designed to engender some bipartisan agreement," said the No. 2 Senate Republican, John Kyl of Arizona.

Reid bluntly warned Republicans to "stop crying" about the shortcut because Republicans have used the same procedure many times in the past, he said.

"They 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 said.

Reid noted that reconciliation has been used 21 times since 1981.

CNN Political Ticker: White House has 'loser mentality'

Before their weekly policy lunch in the Capitol on Tuesday, several Democrats said they support using reconciliation.

"I don't look at it as jamming it through. I don't look at it that way at all," said Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, a moderate. He said it was a matter of "simple majority."

"What we want is an up or down vote on things," said Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Michigan, who is more liberal. "Filibusters aren't about an up or down vote on things. Reconciliation is just one of the processes of getting things done that involves a majority vote."

Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Indiana, and Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Connecticut -- famous for their desire to work across the aisle -- also appeared to support the idea.

"Obviously, if the minority is just frustrating progress, that argues for taking steps to get the public's business done," Bayh said.

House Democrats also indicated that they are preparing to use reconciliation to pass health care.

California Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-California, said Tuesday that "reconciliation will be our platform. It has to be reconciliation."

But Woolsey said elements of the bill that cannot be voted on under the budgetary procedure would be set aside and voted on later in a separate bill.

Moderate Virginia Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly pushed back on the notion that using the procedure circumvents the legislative process, as House Republicans have charged.

"If it's done, it will be done in broad daylight and I think it's fairly clear what might be in it now," Connolly said.

Connolly, who served as a congressional aide to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the 1980s, pointed out that Republicans have used reconciliation to pass several major policy initiatives.

"More often than not Republicans have used reconciliation to try to affect their agenda, so what's good for the goose ought to be good for the gander," he said.

Not all Democrats are expected to support reconciliation. conservative Democrat Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas has already said she will not.

Ahead of the White House-led meeting Thursday -- a last-chance effort to build bipartisan consensus for the legislation -- the deep division between the two parties was clear as Reid and McConnell spoke about their visions of health care reform.

"You will not see from us a 2,700-page comprehensive rewrite of one-sixth of the economy," said McConnell, who argued for smaller, targeted reforms that would lower costs.

Reid countered: "We need major health care reform. That's what the people of America want. They want health care reform, not some Band-Aid."

CrownRoyal
Member Wed Feb 24 03:41:38
Unreconciled
The GOP resolves to forget how it passed welfare reform.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2010, at 12:01 AM ET
Click here for a guide to following the health care reform story online.

To Republicans, it's nothing short of dishonorable that President Barack Obama would use the Senate budget reconciliation process (which doesn't allow filibusters) to try to pass health care reform.

"You know, we've witnessed the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, the Gatorade, the special deal for Florida," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Feb. 22 on Fox News. "Now they are suggesting they might use a device which has never been used for this kind of major systemic reform." Sen. Orrin Hatch, R.-Utah, wrote Feb. 23 in USA Today that the Obama White House is engaged in "an all-out push for the highly partisan 'nuclear option' of reconciliation, special rules to circumvent bipartisan Senate opposition, to jam this bill through Congress. To be clear, this procedure was never contemplated for legislation of this magnitude." Sen. Chuck Grassley, R.-Iowa, said Aug. 23 on CBS News' Face the Nation, "If you have reconciliation, it's a partisan approach." Sen. Olympia Snowe, R.-Me., said much the same in April. "If they exercise that tool," she told the Washington Post, it's going to be infinitely more difficult to bridge the partisan divide."

But look at the Senate roll call on the conference report for the 1996 welfare reform bill, the most momentous piece of social legislation to become law in the last 20 years. The bill's formal name was the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 [italics mine]. It was called that because it passed the Senate through budget reconciliation, even though the bill's purpose ("ending welfare as we know it") was only peripherally about trimming the federal budget. Yet McConnell voted for the bill. So did Hatch, Grassley, Snowe, and every other Republican in the Senate. So, for that matter, did most Democrats.

Why did the Republican-controlled Senate use reconciliation to pass welfare reform? Interestingly, when I posed that question to several welfare-reform expertsincluding one person (Brookings' Ron Haskins) who's published a narrative history of itnone could immediately remember why. Why couldn't they remember? Because the decision to use reconciliation was one of the least remarkable things about the bill.

Reconciliation has been used to raise taxes. It's been used to cut taxes. It was used (by a Republican-controlled Senate) to create COBRA, the program that compels employers to allow departing employees to buy into their health plan for 18 months. COBRA stands for the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1986 [italics mine]. President Ronald Reagan signed COBRA into law. Reconciliation was used several times to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit for the working poor during the 1990s and the early aughts. It was used (again, by a Republican-controlled Senate) to create in 1997 the beneficial Children's Health Insurance Program and the wasteful privatization experiment known as Medicare Advantage. It's been used repeatedly to set federal policy regarding higher education loans and grants. "It's done almost every Congress," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on Feb. 23, "and [Republicans are] the ones that used it more than anyone else." (For a complete list of all reconciliation bills signed into law between 1980 and 2008, click here.) In a Feb. 10 essay for the New England Journal of Medicine, Henry Aaron, a health policy expert at the Brookings Institution, argued,

"Congress created reconciliation procedures to deal with precisely this sort of situationits failure to implement provisions of the previous budget resolution. The 2009 budget resolution instructed both houses of Congress to enact health care reform. The House and the Senate have passed similar bills. Since both houses have acted but some work remains to be done to align the two bills, using reconciliation to implement the instructions in the budget resolution follows established congressional procedure."

Reconciliation is not, I should add, what is meant by the term "nuclear option," invented by former Sen. Trent Lott, R.-Miss., to describe a different and riskier (though, I believe, wholly justifiable) parliamentary maneuver also known as the "constitutional option." The nuclear/constitutional option was contemplated five years ago by Senate Marjority Leader Bill Frist, R.-Tenn., to scale back use of the filibuster. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid opposed it then and (regrettably) opposes it now. Hatch's misuse of the term above echoes a propaganda campaign at Fox News, which lately has been attempting to sow confusion (a curious ambition for a news organization) by re-branding reconciliation "the nuclear option."

The GOP's use of reconciliation in 1996 to get welfare reform through Congress seems, retrospectively, a little puzzlingnot because the use of reconciliation was somehow illegitimate but simply because the Senate votes didn't end up being especially close. The bill passed the Senate 74-24 in late July, then picked up an additional four votes (78-21) when the Senate approved the conference report one week later. The Republicans' reasoning becomes a little clearer when we remember the larger political context.

The 1994 elections gave the GOP control of both houses of Congress for the first time in more than forty years. Senate Republicans were less conservative than (and slightly alarmed by) their House counterparts, who were champing at the bit to legislate their Contact With America. The Contract called for "a tough two-years-and-out provision [for welfare recipients] with work requirements to promote individual responsibility," and in general was more hostile to welfare than President Bill Clinton, who in 1992 had campaigned on a pledge to "end welfare as we know it." Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole was a moderate Kansas Republican struggling to shore up his conservative bona fides in anticipation of his 1996 presidential bid. He calculated that the surest way to keep the Senate's Republican moderates lined up behind the Contract's anti-welfare pledge was to wrap it into a larger budget reconciliation bill. "[A]ny objectionable welfare provisions would be less salient in a big package," Georgetown political scientist R. Kent Weaver explains in his book Ending Welfare As We Know It, "and [Republican] moderates would not want to risk sinking a reconciliation bill since their party had such a big stake in it." Lowering the threshold of victory from 60 ayes to 51 would at any rate make the measure harder to sink.

The strategy failed because President Clinton wouldn't play along. He vetoed the reconciliation bill on the grounds that it called for excessive cuts in government programs, especially Medicare and Medicaid. Clinton and the Republican Congress then entered a game of chicken, neither willing to back down as budget deadlines came and went, with the result that the federally government temporarily shut down twice in November and December 1995. The public blamed the GOP Congress. Clinton then vetoed a stand-alone welfare reform bill in Jan. 1996. (The triumph was not unmitigated, however. The first shutdown required an unpaid White House intern named Monica Lewinsky to sub for furloughed staffers in Chief of Staff Leon Panetta's office, whence she began her affair with President Clinton. But I digress.)

By now an election year was dawning for Clinton, Dole, one-third of the Senate, and everybody in the House. The Republican leadership became increasingly confident that if it sent another welfare reform bill to the White House electoral pressures would make it difficult for Clinton (who by now was urging Congress to send him a welfare bill he could sign) to say no a third time. But tempers were still running high and, with 53 Republicans, the Senate was seven votes shy of a filibuster-proof Senate majority. "As in 1995," Haskins writes in Work Over Welfare, "the major advantage of moving the bill as part of reconciliation was that Senate rules did not allow a reconciliation bill to be filibustered." Reconciliation also helped move the bill along quickly; without it, the Senate might not have achieved final passage before the fall 1996 election season brought major legislative action to a halt.

Neither Haskins nor Weaver seems to think reconciliation was as important a factor as the mutual unwillingness of Clinton and the GOP to be seen as definitively opposed to welfare reform, which was popular with voters. Today, partisan divisions within Congress are more pronounced, and voter preferences with regard to health reform are less clear. (Its chief provisions are quite popular, but the public is sharply divided over the whole.) The GOP doesn't seem particularly afraid of being perceived as blocking reform, despite efforts by the Obama White House to send that message. That means reconciliation will likely play a more significant role this time out, if a bill is to be passed at all. More significant, yesbut not remotely novel.

http://www.slate.com/id/2245772/

Renzo Marquez
Member Wed Feb 24 06:43:20
None of those pieces of legislation were close in magnitude to this alleged healthcare reform bill.

CrownRoyal
Member Wed Feb 24 06:48:46
So? Is there a scale somewhere that decides the magnitude?

CrownRoyal
Member Wed Feb 24 06:57:29
Moreover, the tax legislation enacted under Bush from 2001 through 2006 will cost $2.48
trillion over the 2001-2010 period. Passed by reconcilliation. Senate HC bill is around 900bil/10 years. If we are discussing magnitude.

http://www.ctj.org/pdf/bushtaxcutsvshealthcare.pdf

CrownRoyel
Member Wed Feb 24 07:20:21
They used it against us now it's our turn. Now we democrats get to force things down america's throats. They did it too so now we are even.

CrownRoyal
Member Wed Feb 24 07:24:43
^Howcome you are not a new member, lol?

charper
Member Wed Feb 24 07:26:53
Cos JB just made the nick in the LoDT...

CrownRoyel
Member Wed Feb 24 07:27:39
Cos JB just made the nick in the LoDT...

CrownRoyal
Member Wed Feb 24 07:29:41
Ah, I see.

YouAreFuckingStupid
Member Wed Feb 24 08:51:10
Look at the fucking foreigners try to push American politics left. You know what, shut the fuck up and ruin you rown countries wiht your shitty policy and leave us out of it.

chen
Member Wed Feb 24 11:58:28
The problem is that the House only have 2 year terms. All the minority party has to do for those 2 years is fuck with whatever the majority is trying to do. Come election time they campaign on how worthless the majority is because they can't get anything worthwhile done. The majority switches and then we repeat.

All Reid is doing is posturing because he knows his seat is in jeopardy. He doesn't actually care about health care as much as he cares about looking productive. Nor do the republicans care about hc as much as making the democrats look useless.

Per usual the issue is meaningless. It's just a game.

Y2A
Member Wed Feb 24 12:04:45
damn, chen is right.

Canadian
Member Wed Feb 24 13:36:25
chen is right, and laughs at YAFS, "you rown". You sure that isn't "ronery"?

licker
Sports Mod Wed Feb 24 13:51:13
"They 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 [Reid] said. "

lol...

What a fucking whiner.

If you're going to do it, just do it, don't cry about how the other guys did it first.

Fucking politicians, all of them should be impeached.

patom
Member Wed Feb 24 14:39:00
I wonder if their outrage would be as high if they had to buy their own insurance as individuals?

This is all an act anyway, since they all know that the next Congress will be made up of the Corporate Party. Since the Supreme Court has created an outlet for unlimited funding of ads for candidates. Any candidate with asperations to gain office will have to pass muster with the Corporations in order to have enough money to win.

YouAreFuckingStupid
Member Wed Feb 24 16:42:25
And Obama's campaign based on credit card donations from foreigners, George Soros slush funds, and hippie feminist faggots is somehow superior?

STFU you stupid piece of shit.

Cletus Tiberius
Member Wed Feb 24 17:02:54

^ 10/10

Ninja
Member Wed Feb 24 17:05:09
""It's hard for us to quite understand why, with reconciliation being planned, we're having a meeting which is allegedly designed to engender some bipartisan agreement," said the No. 2 Senate Republican, John Kyl of Arizona. "

More political posturing. They've only threatened to use reconciliation if the republicans don't play ball.

Forwyn
Member Wed Feb 24 17:09:35
Anything passed by a stark 51% should not be forced on 100%.

Fuck them both.

Renzo Marquez
Member Wed Feb 24 18:13:16
CrownRoyal
Member Wed Feb 24 06:57:29
"Moreover, the tax legislation enacted under Bush from 2001 through 2006 will cost $2.48
trillion over the 2001-2010 period. Passed by reconcilliation. Senate HC bill is around 900bil/10 years. If we are discussing magnitude."

One is permanent and one was set to expire in 10 years when is was passed.

Turtle Crawler
Admin Wed Feb 24 19:06:45
I'm OK with reconciliation for budget things, but this idea that they would pass the senate bill in the house then pass a patch for it with reconciliation is bullshit. if they want reconciliation, do the entire thing that way, but no individual mandate or other worthless shit that it would take 60 votes to undo.

Turtle Crawler
Admin Wed Feb 24 19:14:37
CrownRoyal, that link you posted was bullshit, because it includes 'fixing' AMT, something that passes every year with a bipartisan vote and which I think Obama has fixed in his own budget proposals.

CrownRoyal
Member Thu Feb 25 01:23:24
"One is permanent and one was set to expire in 10 years when is was passed. "

I was under the impression that HC, if passed under reconciliation, would also be covered by Byrd's Rule and also expire in 10 years. Not that it makes much difference, opponents can try and repeal everything when in power.

"CrownRoyal, that link you posted was bullshit, because it includes 'fixing' AMT, something that passes every year with a bipartisan vote"

So? I am aware that there were Dems that voted for Bush tax cuts and for AMT fix. For the purposes of our discussion, its even better. It shows that this HC via reconciliation move is not unprecendented, it was done numerous times before and quite recently. Would you like me to not call it Bush tax cuts, cause some dems also voted for it? I can use the bill name, if it offends you. Here you go - Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003. LOL, it even has reconciliation in its name. And if you are concerned with the cost ($2.48 trillion) because of ATM fix, you can change it, supply your own number.

show deleted posts

Peter Walsh Member	Tue Feb 23 23:27:05 http://www....health.care/index.html?hpt=T2 Sen. Harry Reid says approach has been used before, says Republicans should "stop crying" Democrats could bypass GOP on health care bill Washington (CNN) -- As a major White House meeting on health care reform approaches this week Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid acknowledged Tuesday that he may use a controversial parliamentary shortcut to bypass GOP opposition and pass a bill. The fast-track approach, known as reconciliation, would allow Democrats to pass the bill with just 51 votes, not the 60 usually required to overcome a filibuster. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Democrats are being "arrogant" because the American people don't want a giant health care overhaul, but Democrats still plan to "use any parliamentary device to jam it through a reluctant Congress." "It's hard for us to quite understand why, with reconciliation being planned, we're having a meeting which is allegedly designed to engender some bipartisan agreement," said the No. 2 Senate Republican, John Kyl of Arizona. Reid bluntly warned Republicans to "stop crying" about the shortcut because Republicans have used the same procedure many times in the past, he said. "They 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 said. Reid noted that reconciliation has been used 21 times since 1981. CNN Political Ticker: White House has 'loser mentality' Before their weekly policy lunch in the Capitol on Tuesday, several Democrats said they support using reconciliation. "I don't look at it as jamming it through. I don't look at it that way at all," said Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, a moderate. He said it was a matter of "simple majority." "What we want is an up or down vote on things," said Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Michigan, who is more liberal. "Filibusters aren't about an up or down vote on things. Reconciliation is just one of the processes of getting things done that involves a majority vote." Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Indiana, and Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Connecticut -- famous for their desire to work across the aisle -- also appeared to support the idea. "Obviously, if the minority is just frustrating progress, that argues for taking steps to get the public's business done," Bayh said. House Democrats also indicated that they are preparing to use reconciliation to pass health care. California Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-California, said Tuesday that "reconciliation will be our platform. It has to be reconciliation." But Woolsey said elements of the bill that cannot be voted on under the budgetary procedure would be set aside and voted on later in a separate bill. Moderate Virginia Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly pushed back on the notion that using the procedure circumvents the legislative process, as House Republicans have charged. "If it's done, it will be done in broad daylight and I think it's fairly clear what might be in it now," Connolly said. Connolly, who served as a congressional aide to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the 1980s, pointed out that Republicans have used reconciliation to pass several major policy initiatives. "More often than not Republicans have used reconciliation to try to affect their agenda, so what's good for the goose ought to be good for the gander," he said. Not all Democrats are expected to support reconciliation. conservative Democrat Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas has already said she will not. Ahead of the White House-led meeting Thursday -- a last-chance effort to build bipartisan consensus for the legislation -- the deep division between the two parties was clear as Reid and McConnell spoke about their visions of health care reform. "You will not see from us a 2,700-page comprehensive rewrite of one-sixth of the economy," said McConnell, who argued for smaller, targeted reforms that would lower costs. Reid countered: "We need major health care reform. That's what the people of America want. They want health care reform, not some Band-Aid."
CrownRoyal Member	Wed Feb 24 03:41:38 Unreconciled The GOP resolves to forget how it passed welfare reform. By Timothy Noah Posted Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2010, at 12:01 AM ET Click here for a guide to following the health care reform story online. To Republicans, it's nothing short of dishonorable that President Barack Obama would use the Senate budget reconciliation process (which doesn't allow filibusters) to try to pass health care reform. "You know, we've witnessed the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, the Gatorade, the special deal for Florida," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Feb. 22 on Fox News. "Now they are suggesting they might use a device which has never been used for this kind of major systemic reform." Sen. Orrin Hatch, R.-Utah, wrote Feb. 23 in USA Today that the Obama White House is engaged in "an all-out push for the highly partisan 'nuclear option' of reconciliation, special rules to circumvent bipartisan Senate opposition, to jam this bill through Congress. To be clear, this procedure was never contemplated for legislation of this magnitude." Sen. Chuck Grassley, R.-Iowa, said Aug. 23 on CBS News' Face the Nation, "If you have reconciliation, it's a partisan approach." Sen. Olympia Snowe, R.-Me., said much the same in April. "If they exercise that tool," she told the Washington Post, it's going to be infinitely more difficult to bridge the partisan divide." But look at the Senate roll call on the conference report for the 1996 welfare reform bill, the most momentous piece of social legislation to become law in the last 20 years. The bill's formal name was the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 [italics mine]. It was called that because it passed the Senate through budget reconciliation, even though the bill's purpose ("ending welfare as we know it") was only peripherally about trimming the federal budget. Yet McConnell voted for the bill. So did Hatch, Grassley, Snowe, and every other Republican in the Senate. So, for that matter, did most Democrats. Why did the Republican-controlled Senate use reconciliation to pass welfare reform? Interestingly, when I posed that question to several welfare-reform expertsincluding one person (Brookings' Ron Haskins) who's published a narrative history of itnone could immediately remember why. Why couldn't they remember? Because the decision to use reconciliation was one of the least remarkable things about the bill. Reconciliation has been used to raise taxes. It's been used to cut taxes. It was used (by a Republican-controlled Senate) to create COBRA, the program that compels employers to allow departing employees to buy into their health plan for 18 months. COBRA stands for the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1986 [italics mine]. President Ronald Reagan signed COBRA into law. Reconciliation was used several times to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit for the working poor during the 1990s and the early aughts. It was used (again, by a Republican-controlled Senate) to create in 1997 the beneficial Children's Health Insurance Program and the wasteful privatization experiment known as Medicare Advantage. It's been used repeatedly to set federal policy regarding higher education loans and grants. "It's done almost every Congress," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on Feb. 23, "and [Republicans are] the ones that used it more than anyone else." (For a complete list of all reconciliation bills signed into law between 1980 and 2008, click here.) In a Feb. 10 essay for the New England Journal of Medicine, Henry Aaron, a health policy expert at the Brookings Institution, argued, "Congress created reconciliation procedures to deal with precisely this sort of situationits failure to implement provisions of the previous budget resolution. The 2009 budget resolution instructed both houses of Congress to enact health care reform. The House and the Senate have passed similar bills. Since both houses have acted but some work remains to be done to align the two bills, using reconciliation to implement the instructions in the budget resolution follows established congressional procedure." Reconciliation is not, I should add, what is meant by the term "nuclear option," invented by former Sen. Trent Lott, R.-Miss., to describe a different and riskier (though, I believe, wholly justifiable) parliamentary maneuver also known as the "constitutional option." The nuclear/constitutional option was contemplated five years ago by Senate Marjority Leader Bill Frist, R.-Tenn., to scale back use of the filibuster. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid opposed it then and (regrettably) opposes it now. Hatch's misuse of the term above echoes a propaganda campaign at Fox News, which lately has been attempting to sow confusion (a curious ambition for a news organization) by re-branding reconciliation "the nuclear option." The GOP's use of reconciliation in 1996 to get welfare reform through Congress seems, retrospectively, a little puzzlingnot because the use of reconciliation was somehow illegitimate but simply because the Senate votes didn't end up being especially close. The bill passed the Senate 74-24 in late July, then picked up an additional four votes (78-21) when the Senate approved the conference report one week later. The Republicans' reasoning becomes a little clearer when we remember the larger political context. The 1994 elections gave the GOP control of both houses of Congress for the first time in more than forty years. Senate Republicans were less conservative than (and slightly alarmed by) their House counterparts, who were champing at the bit to legislate their Contact With America. The Contract called for "a tough two-years-and-out provision [for welfare recipients] with work requirements to promote individual responsibility," and in general was more hostile to welfare than President Bill Clinton, who in 1992 had campaigned on a pledge to "end welfare as we know it." Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole was a moderate Kansas Republican struggling to shore up his conservative bona fides in anticipation of his 1996 presidential bid. He calculated that the surest way to keep the Senate's Republican moderates lined up behind the Contract's anti-welfare pledge was to wrap it into a larger budget reconciliation bill. "[A]ny objectionable welfare provisions would be less salient in a big package," Georgetown political scientist R. Kent Weaver explains in his book Ending Welfare As We Know It, "and [Republican] moderates would not want to risk sinking a reconciliation bill since their party had such a big stake in it." Lowering the threshold of victory from 60 ayes to 51 would at any rate make the measure harder to sink. The strategy failed because President Clinton wouldn't play along. He vetoed the reconciliation bill on the grounds that it called for excessive cuts in government programs, especially Medicare and Medicaid. Clinton and the Republican Congress then entered a game of chicken, neither willing to back down as budget deadlines came and went, with the result that the federally government temporarily shut down twice in November and December 1995. The public blamed the GOP Congress. Clinton then vetoed a stand-alone welfare reform bill in Jan. 1996. (The triumph was not unmitigated, however. The first shutdown required an unpaid White House intern named Monica Lewinsky to sub for furloughed staffers in Chief of Staff Leon Panetta's office, whence she began her affair with President Clinton. But I digress.) By now an election year was dawning for Clinton, Dole, one-third of the Senate, and everybody in the House. The Republican leadership became increasingly confident that if it sent another welfare reform bill to the White House electoral pressures would make it difficult for Clinton (who by now was urging Congress to send him a welfare bill he could sign) to say no a third time. But tempers were still running high and, with 53 Republicans, the Senate was seven votes shy of a filibuster-proof Senate majority. "As in 1995," Haskins writes in Work Over Welfare, "the major advantage of moving the bill as part of reconciliation was that Senate rules did not allow a reconciliation bill to be filibustered." Reconciliation also helped move the bill along quickly; without it, the Senate might not have achieved final passage before the fall 1996 election season brought major legislative action to a halt. Neither Haskins nor Weaver seems to think reconciliation was as important a factor as the mutual unwillingness of Clinton and the GOP to be seen as definitively opposed to welfare reform, which was popular with voters. Today, partisan divisions within Congress are more pronounced, and voter preferences with regard to health reform are less clear. (Its chief provisions are quite popular, but the public is sharply divided over the whole.) The GOP doesn't seem particularly afraid of being perceived as blocking reform, despite efforts by the Obama White House to send that message. That means reconciliation will likely play a more significant role this time out, if a bill is to be passed at all. More significant, yesbut not remotely novel. http://www.slate.com/id/2245772/
Renzo Marquez Member	Wed Feb 24 06:43:20 None of those pieces of legislation were close in magnitude to this alleged healthcare reform bill.
CrownRoyal Member	Wed Feb 24 06:48:46 So? Is there a scale somewhere that decides the magnitude?
CrownRoyal Member	Wed Feb 24 06:57:29 Moreover, the tax legislation enacted under Bush from 2001 through 2006 will cost $2.48 trillion over the 2001-2010 period. Passed by reconcilliation. Senate HC bill is around 900bil/10 years. If we are discussing magnitude. http://www.ctj.org/pdf/bushtaxcutsvshealthcare.pdf
CrownRoyel Member	Wed Feb 24 07:20:21 They used it against us now it's our turn. Now we democrats get to force things down america's throats. They did it too so now we are even.
CrownRoyal Member	Wed Feb 24 07:24:43 ^Howcome you are not a new member, lol?
charper Member	Wed Feb 24 07:26:53 Cos JB just made the nick in the LoDT...
CrownRoyel Member	Wed Feb 24 07:27:39 Cos JB just made the nick in the LoDT...
CrownRoyal Member	Wed Feb 24 07:29:41 Ah, I see.
YouAreFuckingStupid Member	Wed Feb 24 08:51:10 Look at the fucking foreigners try to push American politics left. You know what, shut the fuck up and ruin you rown countries wiht your shitty policy and leave us out of it.
chen Member	Wed Feb 24 11:58:28 The problem is that the House only have 2 year terms. All the minority party has to do for those 2 years is fuck with whatever the majority is trying to do. Come election time they campaign on how worthless the majority is because they can't get anything worthwhile done. The majority switches and then we repeat. All Reid is doing is posturing because he knows his seat is in jeopardy. He doesn't actually care about health care as much as he cares about looking productive. Nor do the republicans care about hc as much as making the democrats look useless. Per usual the issue is meaningless. It's just a game.
Y2A Member	Wed Feb 24 12:04:45 damn, chen is right.
Canadian Member	Wed Feb 24 13:36:25 chen is right, and laughs at YAFS, "you rown". You sure that isn't "ronery"?
licker Sports Mod	Wed Feb 24 13:51:13 "They 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 [Reid] said. " lol... What a fucking whiner. If you're going to do it, just do it, don't cry about how the other guys did it first. Fucking politicians, all of them should be impeached.
patom Member	Wed Feb 24 14:39:00 I wonder if their outrage would be as high if they had to buy their own insurance as individuals? This is all an act anyway, since they all know that the next Congress will be made up of the Corporate Party. Since the Supreme Court has created an outlet for unlimited funding of ads for candidates. Any candidate with asperations to gain office will have to pass muster with the Corporations in order to have enough money to win.
YouAreFuckingStupid Member	Wed Feb 24 16:42:25 And Obama's campaign based on credit card donations from foreigners, George Soros slush funds, and hippie feminist faggots is somehow superior? STFU you stupid piece of shit.
Cletus Tiberius Member	Wed Feb 24 17:02:54 ^ 10/10
Ninja Member	Wed Feb 24 17:05:09 ""It's hard for us to quite understand why, with reconciliation being planned, we're having a meeting which is allegedly designed to engender some bipartisan agreement," said the No. 2 Senate Republican, John Kyl of Arizona. " More political posturing. They've only threatened to use reconciliation if the republicans don't play ball.
Forwyn Member	Wed Feb 24 17:09:35 Anything passed by a stark 51% should not be forced on 100%. Fuck them both.
Renzo Marquez Member	Wed Feb 24 18:13:16 CrownRoyal Member Wed Feb 24 06:57:29 "Moreover, the tax legislation enacted under Bush from 2001 through 2006 will cost $2.48 trillion over the 2001-2010 period. Passed by reconcilliation. Senate HC bill is around 900bil/10 years. If we are discussing magnitude." One is permanent and one was set to expire in 10 years when is was passed.
Turtle Crawler Admin	Wed Feb 24 19:06:45 I'm OK with reconciliation for budget things, but this idea that they would pass the senate bill in the house then pass a patch for it with reconciliation is bullshit. if they want reconciliation, do the entire thing that way, but no individual mandate or other worthless shit that it would take 60 votes to undo.
Turtle Crawler Admin	Wed Feb 24 19:14:37 CrownRoyal, that link you posted was bullshit, because it includes 'fixing' AMT, something that passes every year with a bipartisan vote and which I think Obama has fixed in his own budget proposals.
CrownRoyal Member	Thu Feb 25 01:23:24 "One is permanent and one was set to expire in 10 years when is was passed. " I was under the impression that HC, if passed under reconciliation, would also be covered by Byrd's Rule and also expire in 10 years. Not that it makes much difference, opponents can try and repeal everything when in power. "CrownRoyal, that link you posted was bullshit, because it includes 'fixing' AMT, something that passes every year with a bipartisan vote" So? I am aware that there were Dems that voted for Bush tax cuts and for AMT fix. For the purposes of our discussion, its even better. It shows that this HC via reconciliation move is not unprecendented, it was done numerous times before and quite recently. Would you like me to not call it Bush tax cuts, cause some dems also voted for it? I can use the bill name, if it offends you. Here you go - Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003. LOL, it even has reconciliation in its name. And if you are concerned with the cost ($2.48 trillion) because of ATM fix, you can change it, supply your own number.
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