That's right, it can be done. We have an opening! All our Democratic Congresscritters need to do is screw on their gonads and do it.
It can be done with only 51 votes in the Senate, it's Byrd Rule compliant, and most of all, the Democrats would be heroes if they pulled it off.
Read on...
Nate Silver has it right when he analyzed the strategies available for passing a health care bill and concluded the Senate-Bill-plus-reconciliation-sidecar strategy is the best way to go.
Start with passing the straight Senate health care bill in the House. It requires a simple majority, and the promise of a resurrected public option may be enough to entice the Progressive Caucus members currently objecting to the bill to come around. Once it's passed, it goes directly to President Obama's desk, he signs it into law.
Then, it's time for the reconciliation sidecar. Just to start, it needs all of the modifications to the Senate bill that were agreed upon before the Choakley disaster, including raising the threshold where the Cadillac tax kicks in, the exemption of unions from the excise tax for a few years, and all the other modifications that were agreed upon.
But wait. As I mentioned, you can add a public option to the reconciliation sidecar, and it's still perfectly legal. Because the public option, like most of the House-Senate conference modifications, are Byrd Rule compliant (the public option requires the spending of federal money to seed it, and would affect the health care market, reduce the expenses for Medicare, thus affecting the deficit), that means we can resurrect the public option.
Read it again. We can resurrect the public option, and we only need 51 votes in the Senate.
We can shove this down the throats of McConnell and Brown, and we can give the middle finger to Lieberman and Nelson.
We can use reconciliation to take the Senate bill, and make it into an great health care reform bill. Democrats come out as heroes, reverse the crashing poll numbers and loss of enthusiasm in the base, the Rethugs and DINOs get humiliated, what's not to like?
As I said, all the Democrats in Congress have to do is screw on their gonads and do it!