Seems the "Punch the Hippie" wing in Washington wants to scare folks into attacking those progressive legislators who refuse to pretend that reconciliation can't be used to fix the ticking timebomb that is the fatally-damaged Senate HCR bill. Even several Kossacks have fallen for the "Either the Senate Bill as is or Nothing!" scare schtick.
Too bad those Kossacks apparently don't read David "Kagro X" Waldman's diaries and posts, either here or over at Congress Matters, or they'd know that this really isn't an "either/or situation". More after the jump.
As David says concerning how reconciliation can be used to fix the Senate bill:
If House Members are still skittish about voting for the Senate bill straight-up, even after securing a fix through reconciliation, they can use a little procedural trick called a "self-executing rule" (see this CRS report [PDF] for more)-- or at least a self-executing provision in a rule -- to take care of business. At the conclusion of the reconciliation process, when the House and Senate have both passed their bills and have agreed on a conference report settling any differences, the House may opt to include in the rule it adopts to govern debate on that conference report a provision deeming the Senate amendment to H.R. 3590 agreed to by the House. That way, when the House adopts the rule to allow the reconciliation bill conference report to come to the floor, it also agrees to the Senate bill it's amending along the way, just moments before beginning debate on the fix, and without ever having a separate, stand-alone vote on the Senate bill they don't like.
Pretty neat, eh? Well, it's still a long and potentially rough road getting there. Do read all of what Jeff had to say about the perils of reconciliation and keep it in mind. It's no picnic, but even so, he does conclude by saying it wouldn't be unreasonable to think the process could be wrapped up by late February.
The "60 vote" threshold that the White House apologists and "Punch the Hippie" crowd insists is the corporatist-friendly "reality" we all must accept? Well, Bernie Sanders said back in November that it wasn't, and that reconciliation (which only needs 51 votes and which Bush -- who never had more than 55 GOP Senators at the most to work with -- used to powerful effect) could indeed work.
But now that even Chris Van Hollen is admitting that reconciliation is possible, suddenly nobody can apparently find the 51 Senate Democrats needed to make it work. In other words, the Senate Democrats are determined to deliver the bill that the White House wants, the Senate bill -- and progressives are now "traitors" and "monsters" if they won’t go along.
If this doesn't seem right to you, call your legislators and tell them to give reconciliation a try rather than calling those of us who back it "monsters".