For weeks, the news media have been obsessed with the question of whether congressional Democrats would use a legislative mechanism known as "reconciliation" to pass changes to the health care reform legislation that passed the Senate in late December.
Unfortunately, that obsession has not actually resulted in reporters consistently getting the story right. Basic facts that should be central to the debate over the propriety of reconciliation have gotten lost in the mix. First, nobody is talking about passing the entire health care reform package via reconciliation -- the Senate has already passed its bill, and did so by overcoming a filibuster. Reconciliation would, instead, be used to pass a much smaller package of changes to that legislation via majority vote. Second, there is nothing hasty or debate-stifling about using reconciliation in this case: Congress has been considering health care reform for more than a year. Finally, reconciliation isn't all that unusual, having been used in connection with some of the highest-profile legislation in recent decades, including President Bush's tax cuts and the welfare reform bill President Clinton signed. Those are facts, and they are not in dispute.
And yet the media are referring to reconciliation as the "nuclear option" and portraying it as an obscure procedural gimmick being considered in an attempt to circumvent Senate rules and "ram" health care legislation through Congress. The conservative media are going so far as to claim that use of reconciliation would be "unprecedented."
http://mediamatters.org/columns/201003030032
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