Irreconcilable Differences

One of the more annoying tropes of the past few weeks, as it has become more and more likely that the Democrats will finally get their act together and inch past the goal line on health care reform, is the idea that budget reconciliation is somehow ”unprecedented” and “extreme” and ”jamming it through.”

This is bullshit, plain and simple. A few points:

First, it is, without question, not unprecedented. Even that dastardly Mainstream Media know this:

Second and more imporantly, the Democrats have already passed health care reform. All that’s left to do is find a way to reconcile (not exactly what “budget reconciliation” means, but we’ll get to that) the House and Senate bills. The difficulty is that since the Second Boston Massacre — WHICH CHANGED EVERYTHING DIDN’T YOU KNOW – the Democrats no longer have 60 votes in the Senate to pass an amended bill.

With the Senate GOP voting in lockstep against everything, the only way to get anything close to the (again, already-)passed bills to the President’s desk is for the House to pass the Senate’s bill. There are significant differences between the two, but the foundation is largely the same. What matters now is whether Pelosi and co. can get enough “no” votes to switch to “yes.” (And at least fewer “yes” votes to switch to “no.”) That is literally all that matters for health care to pass. Reconciliation is only a small part of the bargain between the House and the Senate to get that done.

If you watch CNN, however, you’ll see Mary Matalin, who is about as pleasant as bedbugs, drone on about how reconciliation is a travesty of democracy and will destroy the Democrats’ majority come November. Every other cable news network will carry another loathesome version of the same drivel. You’ll read more of this in the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal and in a thousand witless posts on the Corner.

It’s all a big red herring.

Budget reconciliation, as I understand it, is just a patch for legislation that has already been approved. Because budget-related legislation is so complicated, involving so many committees, the budget reconciliation process allows policy changes to entitlements (such as MEDICARE) and tax laws to be passed in a streamlined, unfilibusterable way, to avoid total gridlock. After all, the federal government’s gotta have a budget, one way or another. If you’re really interested in the procedure, the House Rules Committee has a nicely dense summary.

In the case of health care reform, reconciliation will allow the Senate to appease House members’ concerns about things like affordability and the Medicare Part D “donut hole,” but not, since it’s not budget-related, things like the Stupak abortion language and the structure of the insurance exchanges. Still, still, still: all that matters is that the House pass the Senate bill.

The point is that reconciliation is the icing, not the cake. It doesn’t even actually have to happen for reform to pass. The worst fears of conservatives arrive earlier – health care reform is a few House votes away from becoming law. (I suspect the rumors of a smaller compromise bill are a political feint. Obama said as much yesterday.) The furor over reconciliation is merely a last-ditch effort on the part of Republicans to squeeze a little more political blood from the fight. They aim to tar Obama as a partisan, so they can run against him and his “socialized medicine” in the fall. Let them. Health care reform is too important, and too close, to be sacrificed on the altar of politics. The ineptitude of the Democrats over the past year has already guaranteed a bloody midterms. And the hubristic failure of Rove’s “permanent majority” should have Democrats realizing that huge majorities are unsustainable anyway.

Besides, if they don’t get health care reform passed, the Democrats are really screwed in November. They couldn’t be that stupid, could they?