Good news! For those of us who hate the filibuster, and for those of us who see the need for reconciliation to save health care reform, North Dakota Sen. Kent Conrad's words couldn't be more welcome. As the chairman of the Budget Committee, Conrad is responsible for shepharding bills through the reconciliation process. Today, Conrad has said he will support sidecar reconciliation. What's more? He sees reconciliation as something the Senate will have to use more and more if 60 is the new 50.
David Waldman's front page diary touches on the increasingly-obvious need to revise Senate rules, the filibuster first and foremost. With no provisions for old-school talkathon filibusters, what was intended as a rarely-used delaying tactic has become a de facto 60-vote requirement for everything. With Democrats' 60-vote supermajority lost, the filibuster makes it impossible to complete health care through the normal process, illustrating what Paul Krugman, Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, and James Fallows have all argued: the filibuster is making the country ungovernable. Sens. Tom Harkin, Jeff Merkley, and Tom Udall have added similar support and even Vice President Biden has questioned how the country can function with a supermajority requirement.
Thankfully, Kent Conrad now joins those voices and voices support for using reconciliation to finish health care reform. Nick Baumann at Mother Jones has the scoop.
Regarding health care reform and sending fixes through reconciliation,
Conrad argued that it's not possible to use reconciliation—which requires merely a straight majority vote—to win passage of an entire comprehensive health care bill, as some progressives have advocated. (There are assorted rules that prevent this.) But Conrad noted that he's open to using this legislative maneuver to make limited, though significant, changes to a measure the Senate has already passed—provided that certain procedural kinks could be ironed out.
On a broader level, Conrad attacked Republican obstructionism and made the obvious inference that the routinization of the filibuster would make passing major legislation through the reconciliation process inevitable.
[I]n a brief conversation with reporters on Thursday afternoon, Conrad slammed Republican obstructionism and vigorously defended the use of reconciliation to pass important legislation.
The Senate "was not designed to have everything require 60 votes," Conrad said. "It wasn't designed to prevent important action on the problems facing the country." If a supermajority is effectively necessary to pass any piece of legislation, he added, this "puts a great deal of pressure on going to more of a reconciliation process to deal with things."
What's more, Conrad appears to join those of us advocating revisiting Senate rules.
"Frankly I think we have to reconsider the rules by which this body is governed," because the Senate "is in danger of becoming dysfunctional," and "there's going to be a building demand in the country to change the system."
(The obvious response to this is, "In danger?!")
Two thoughts on what this means: this actually isn't the first time Conrad has expressed openness to sidecar reconciliation, saying he was open to using it just last Wednesday. But restating his support makes it a much likelier prospect. Many Senate centrists - even many who were not problematic earlier in this debate - are getting cold feet regarding reconciliation. Although few ruled it out completely - even Ben Nelson backtracked - clearly people like Claire McCaskill, Mark Pryor and Mark Begich are uncomfortable with the idea.
For a centrist like Kent Conrad - a progressive bete noir for his opposition to the public option - to say this indicates that there is mainstream support for this. Getting to 50 votes seems like a very realistic prospect.
Second, although Conrad's comments about the filibuster were not as strong or detailed as Harkin's or Udall's for example, it adds momentum to the position that Senate rules must change. Perhaps a sane and working Congress isn't out of reach?