Legal Commentary

The False Arguments Against Reconciliation

By Big Tent Democrat

Brian Beutler:

[T]he dispute boils down to a question of whether Democrats should be willing to test the limits of what's technically feasible under the law and Senate rules--whether they should go farther than even the Republicans went when they used reconciliation to pass the Bush tax cuts--or whether doing so would steer U.S. politics on to a course so fraught and unpredictable that the consequences could outstrip the substantive gains they'd make by passing a comprehensive health care bill.

This is not the dispute at all, even though Mark Schmitt, whose Theory of Change has been thoroughly discredited, wants you to think it is. Sen. Chuck Schumer nicely described the "liberal" position:

[TAPPED]: Is it possible that using reconciliation will produce an ineffective bill, because of procedural problems like the Byrd rule?

[SCHUMER:]We’ve looked at it and you can’t use reconciliation for everything, [but] you can use it for a good number of things. There’s nothing wrong with using it for the places where you can use it and then trying to get the 60 votes on the places where when you can't. You'd be surprised -- the number of places where you can use it is larger than we first thought.

(Emphasis supplied.) Schumer describes a two bill approach, one using reconciliation (where the public option would be enacted) and a separate later bill to enact the "reforms" near and dear to the BaucusCare apologists like Schmitt.

Beutler's article is basically sourced by Schmitt, so it is not surprising that he paints an inaccurate picture here.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on September 21, 2009 (boomark / email).