What a shock! The first thing out of the Republicans' side is Lamar Alexander and the rarity of reconciliation--how we just don't use that for healthcare. Sen. Alexander, you know what the "R" in COBRA stands for, right? You know that SCHIP passed through reconciliation in 1997, right? [Update from Ezra: "This morning, Lamar Alexander said that reconciliation has never been used for anything as big as health-care reform. Health-care reform has a 10-year cost of about $950 billion. The Bush tax cuts, which passed through reconciliation, had a 10-year cost of about $1.8 trillion. Lamar Alexander voted for them."]
Healthcare reform has consistently been passed via reconciliation. And Lamar Alexander was perfectly happy to use reconciliation to pass the Bush tax cuts. And, of course, he mischaracterizes the Dems' approach, as TPM describes:
Democrats have already passed comprehensive legislation through regular order in both chambers. Two different bills. What they're planning, tentatively, to do now is use reconciliation to make some minor changes to one of those bills.
A reminder on the logistics. The summit runs from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., EST. The first four hours will be broadcast on MSNBC, they will switch to Olympics at 2:00, EST. Live C‑SPAN coverage continues for the duration on C‑SPAN3, C‑SPAN.org and C‑SPAN Radio. It is streamed live on whitehouse.gov and streaming on DKTV.
Update: Media Matters has much more on the Rs and reconciliation. And Harry Reid had a strong rebuttal, with his facts in order on the number of times the Republicans have used reconciliation, and for what purposes.
Update 2: The best use of technology today: the Sunlight Foundation is also streaming the summit, with tremendous added value: they are showing the campaign contributions from the healthcare industry for whomever is currently speaking. Brilliant.
Update 3: Reid's rebuttal:
