Which Way’s Up?

The Senate Finance Committee’s health care bill was passed today by a 14-9 margin, with Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) voicing the sole “aye” for the Republicans.

With today's vote, we are almost to this stage of the health care sausage

The vote represents clearance of another massive hurdle for health care reform, marking the furtherest such a bill has ever advanced through the legislative process.  All that remains to be done is (deep breath) . . . reconcile the Senate Finance and Health Committee’s bills, debate and vote on the new pieced together Franken-bill in the full Senate, meanwhile the House will debate and vote on its own bill which is still to be reconciled from the House Ways & Means, Energy & Commerce, and Education & Labor Committees — if both reconciled bills pass both houses of Congress then the closed door deliberation of the Conference Committee can begin.  Here influential leaders from the House and Senate will burn both the Senate and House bill to create a brand-spanking-new “Phoenix Bill” that, if all goes to plan, will rise from the ashes of previous health care bills, brainwashing both houses of Congress just long enough to push through sweeping reform (exhale).  And then, with just a stroke of his pen, President Obama can finally bring universal health care to the U.S. (or more likely a health care bill just toothless enough that no centrist elements can object to it, coupled with a process exhausting enough that suicide would be preferable to opposition for the left-wing of the Democratic Party).

A more easily understood (but less thorough) explanation can be found here.

What’s interesting is not that the bill has gone this far (it would have even without any Republican support), nor that Republicans by-and-large oppose it (denying Obama legislative victories is the crux of the opposition’s strategy to take back Congress).  What’s interesting is this from CNN:

To get a bill passed, Reid could implement a legislative option known as reconciliation, which would mean 50 votes would be needed instead of 60. However, Republicans have promised a “minor revolution,” in the words of GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, if Democrats resort to that rarely used tactic.

It does sound quite unfair of the pushy Democrats to evoke an arcane legislative process to bring unwanted, unneeded and unpopular change to the health care system.  I mean the last time this process was used was way back in  . . . 2007.  Hmm, well that must be an anomaly, the time before that was . . . 2005.  I see.

Since the creation of the reconciliation process in 1974, it has been used 23 times.  That’s an average of more than once every other year.  If we go ahead an take out the first six years before Congress broke its reconciliation cherry, that average bumps up to nearly four out of every five years.  Including a stretch of eight straight years from 1980 to 1988.

A smudged photo of the elusive, rarely used Senate Christmas tree.

So perhaps “rarely used” is not as informative as intended.  Can we agree on “regularly invoked” or “about ∏ times every presidential term.”   Either way works for me.

Which Way's Up? Politics CNN, Health care, Politics, reconciliation, the media