Dadt? ???
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
The military dealie trying to keep homosexuals out of the military.
You need some reading comprehension. The reconciliation process specifically applies to fiscal bills. Bush’s bills were arguably fiscal matters. That’s why it fits. The original stated reason used when creating the reconciliation process was that it would help reduce deficits, but it was never said that you can only use it if it does in fact reduce the deficit.
I also did not say that Bush should have used it, or that it was a good idea. I merely said that the difference between Bush’s use and the use of it for health care is that Bush’s uses were actually budgetary matters for which reconciliation is an accepted practice (again, perhaps excepting his student loan plan), and that may be why it didn’t seem to raise a whole lot of ire in the general media and why I don’t remember it.
I also specifically said that the Democrats CAN use it, because they tied it to deficit reduction by claiming that by passing a sweeping new health care program they can get medicare costs under control. I just don’t think it’s a good idea to use reconciliation for a bill of this magnitude, and that it will open the door to similar abuses by Republicans in the future.
You seem to think I’m wrong so much because you have a habit of twisting or interpreting what I say to make it fit in the filter of what you think I mean, then attacking that particular straw man. I get asked for cites more often than anyone else on this board, and provide them every time. I’m not perfect, so I’ll occasionally have lapses of memory like anyone else. The difference is that the numerous errors of the lefties on this board go unremarked and unrecorded, but anything I say that can possibly be interpreted as being misleading or incorrect is attacked. In this thread alone there are a number of incorrect statements, including accusations that I used ‘nuclear option’ incorrectly, or your own statement that I somehow claimed that Bush’s tax cuts fit within the definition of deficit reduction, which I never did.
The difference is that I don’t run around yelling, LIAR! TROLL! every time someone makes an error or makes an inflammatory statement about my side of the debate.
And here I thought that’s what those butt-ugly uniforms were for.
In some recent reading I have done today (forget what it was now…sorry) it was suggested that a Health Care Reform Bill passed via reconciliation would be nowhere near as broad or encompassing as that on the table right now. I presumed that to mean it would be much narrower for precisely the reasons you suggest…it has to relate to a budgetary matter to be in reconciliation.
I have meant to try and find an analysis of whether that is true and how much they’d differ but have not gotten around to it. Would not surprise me if it is true else the Dems may as well have run down that road in the first place and avoided all this hassle. My sense of it is the reconciliation version would be considerably less then the full bill currently under debate. The Dems want more and need to do that through the usual legislative process which is what they are doing.
Whether you think Health Reform, even sharply pared down, is still too much a stretch for reconciliation is another debate and one we’d need to see what it actually looked like before debating it.
Unless the lefties don’t like the law. In that case, they shout about the “tyranny of the majority” and game the court system until they get the law thrown out.
I think the Democrats can already legally do it. The issue has to be decided among Democrats - you have to decide whether the price of pushing it through under reconciliation is worth it. I can’t answer that question. And a lot will depend on how the Republicans, and the public in general, react to it. If the Democrats are competent, they’re already doing internal polling of the population to try and determine what they can or can’t get away with.
You did make several errors of fact, however, and your explanation of the “nuclear option” mistake is awful. The term had one specific meaning when it was a big issue in 2005: it meant changing the Senate’s rules so judicial nominees couldn’t be filibustered. I don’t know where you found other definitions.
Dick Dastardly, Bush was office for almost a year after this crisis started, and for a couple of months after it gained steam in September. He stayed out of the crisis almost entirely before eventually geting behind the stimulus package. Nobody said a word about the inaction because they were paying attention to the presidential campaign and had written Bush off.
In any case, the approach in the '30 was better and there was a view that the government could really exert authority over the private sector. Unfortunately I don’t think anybody’s going to try that now.
Let’s not forget that the whole concept of the filibuster is a weird anomaly which doesn’t have any grounding in either the US constitution or in general democratic practice around the world. And the current idea that almost every piece of legislation requires a 60 seat majority doesn’t even have grounding in Senate tradition. Is there any legislature in the world where legislation routinely requires a super-majority? The so-called “reconciliation rules” are purely arbitrary creations which have changed in the past and can be changed again. There is nothing particularly wrong with just doing away with the filibuster altogether and requiring a simple majority for all legislation like pretty much every other democracy in the world. Of course this would reduce the power of individual senators of both parties which is probably the main reason the filibuster still survives.
What were the several errors of fact? I forgot that Bush had used reconciliation. What else?
And my explanation of ‘nuclear’ option was not awful, and it wasn’t a mistake. It has been used commonly during THIS debate to refer to reconciliation. I even posted a link to CNN using it in that way.
Here’s a headline from The Hill: House Democrats pull 'nuclear option” on healthcare
CNN had a whole segment on it. You can see it here at Media Matters. In fact, Media Matters has a whole collection of links to various media people referring to reconciliation as ‘the nuclear option’.
A headline from FoxNews.com:Reid Threatens ‘Nuclear Option’ to Pass Health Care Reform as Panel Starts Work.
Here’s the Council of Foreign Relations using ‘nuclear option’ in a completely different way, as a label for the tactic of using an extreme analogy, sort of like Godwin’s law.
Honestly, I used it that way because that’s the way I have seen it referenced. After Googling, it appears that the left really hates this - that they’re trying to protect the use of the term ‘nuclear option’ to refer to Republicans changing the Senate Rules. But I see no reason why they should get their way. It’s a term that has entered the common lexicon to refer to an extreme, last resort tactic to get one’s way or to shut down debate.
If you want to argue that this is an intentional right-wing attempt to smear a legitimate procedure, go right ahead. To me, that’s a little paranoid - I think it’s just a juicy phrase, which is why Trent Lott came up with it in the first place. I don’t think it’s particularly pejorative, either. It’s just a more colorful way of saying “trump card”. Certainly you’re within your rights to declare that no one should use it other than the way in which you want it used, but that doesn’t make my use of the term in this way a mistake, awful or otherwise. Democrats are not gatekeepers of the lexicon, and I’ve shown ample evidence that the term is in common use in exactly the way I used it.
Sure they can legally do it and it remains an option.
I am saying however that I do not think Dems can do more than a fraction of what they want via reconciliation. Some things in the current bills being passed around clearly fall outside of the reconciliation bailiwick and no amount of Master Level Spinning can get even these folks past that. As such a lot will be left on the cutting room floor.
As such reconciliation is a final option to get something which may be seen as a foot in the door to get after the other stuff later.
Or not…as I said I may have misunderstood what I was reading. It was not very clear on this point at all.
I guess I don’t know enough about the procedural specifics. I thought they could just wrap it all up in an omnibus health care bill, wrap a fig leaf of cost containment justification around the whole thing, and pass it under reconciliation. I thought the real question is more a matter of how far they can push it before people in general start to howl about abuse of process.
What would be the difference between Bush’s Medicare bill (passed via reconciliation with 54 votes) that was entirely unfunded with a 10 year cost of over a trillion and the (partially funded) Democrat healthcare bill if they chose to pass it by reconciliation? Why is it OK for Bush to do it but not the Democrats?
That’s because nobody is trying. FDR completely ignored the banking lobby and did the best he could to fix the problem. Obama is bending over for the bankers, not prosecuting anybody, giving them trillions of taxpayer money and letting them privatise the profits they make from it, not bringing in new regulation. Basically continued the Bush response to the crisis, after specifically saying on the campaign trail that he’d get tough with them, you know the whole change thing. I think anybody who criticised Bush’s handling of the financial industry and who is now an apologist for how Obama is handling the situation is laying themselves open to charges of hypocrisy.
I’d have to go back and look at Bush’s Medicare bill. Did it involve sweeping legislative changes? Was it part of the normal bugetary authorization process? Did it involve reforms that were intended to lower costs?
This seems to be a rather pointless debate anyway, since I’ve never said that Democrats should not be allowed to pass health care under reconciliation. What I said is that IF they use it for a purpose that the public decides was inappropriate, they’ll pay a political price. And also, if they use it for this, it gives the Republicans a ‘get out of jail free’ card to use it for something THEY want the next time they have a simple majority.
Ultimately, it’s the Democrats’ decision to make. The Democrats are the ones that will pay the price if the whole thing goes pear-shaped, especially if they pass it without a single Republican vote and through the reconciliation process to deny Republicans the ability to filibuster. At that point, there won’t even have the tiniest ability to blame the result on Republicans.
I guess if you’re truly confident that this Congress can produce a bill that will make the majority of the population happier about their health care and won’t raise taxes on them, then you’ve got nothing to lose. Five years from now, when public health care is all the rage and approval ratings of the health care system are sky-high, the Democrats can use the lack of Republican support as a stick to beat Repubicans with over and over again.
On the other hand, if you have the slightest doubt that the collection yahoos and corrupt politicians can reform 1/6 of the economy without making a mess of things, then you need to understand what you’re risking. If the health care program fails to solve the problems and adds new ones, the Democrats are going to get absolutely slaughtered for ramming it through.
In the end, it’s your call.
From your own original fiscal point of view it was a trillion dollar unfunded bill, like Obama’s trillion dollar ten year bill. How come it’s OK for Bush but not for Obama?
And it’s nice to see how concerned you are about the Democrats.
And? That’s what the Republicans always do. They push for whatever they can get away with, regardless of the opinion of anyone else. They don’t need a “get out of jail” card.
And if they don’t ram real reform through, they’ll take the blame for when things get worse. Because the Right will ALWAYS blame the Democrats, and the Left will know that the reason there was no meaningful reform is the cowardice and corruption of the Democratic leadership.
The Democrats have a choice; they can spit in the collective faces of the Republicans, ram some real reform though, and hopefully get the credit for the results. Or, they can lie down yet again for the Republicans, and at best shove some “reform” that’s been turned into something useless or worse. They can’t compromise with the Republicans, and even trying to do so is foolish. The Republicans accept only complete submission. The Republicans don’t compromise, have no desire to reform health care ( or anything else ), would prefer to see the country collapse before Obama or the Democrats succeeding at anything, and have no concern for this country or its citizens.
They are the enemies of the Democrats; not rivals. They are not the “loyal opposition”. And the Democrats need to wake up and realize that.
Don’t blame me, I voted for Ron Paul. He has a proven track record for following through with his promises.
Don’t tell me we didn’t warn you. What could have been. Oh what could have been. Well, maybe Ron Paul will run again in 2011 and the Obama suckers will vote for him.
Why in the world would people who voted for Obama and are dissatisfied vote for a pro-life libertarian goldbug?
If someone was willing to vote for the first African-American president, surely they could also vote for someone who said, “I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in [Washington, DC] are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.”
What?