Resolving to Reconcile

By Raza Rasheed, Staff Columnist

Published on Thursday, March 4, 2010

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Thursday’s health care summit — the latest in a string of sad, farcical attempts to produce a bipartisan compromise bill — has predictably come up short (Congressional Republicans, for their part, declared the summit a failure while it was still in progress ). Now, Congressional Democrats finally appear poised to do what they should have done months ago when they still had public opinion on their side. Democrats should ram a health care bill through the Senate using the budget reconciliation procedure. This welcome step would allow a bill to pass through Senate debate with a mere 50 votes (Vice President Biden holding the tiebreaker) as opposed to 60 through the more common cloture procedure. It has been denounced by opponents on the right as a shady maneuver that undermines the spirit of democracy itself.

These opportunistic and hypocritical blowhards, however, apparently have very short memories. Rather than reject reconciliation to continue the hopeless pursuit of compromise with a party that’s been hijacked by its lunatic fringe, Congressional Democrats should follow the example set by past Republicans and pass not just health care, but every one of their important agenda items through reconciliation.

It’s ironic that the Republicans would be the ones to cry foul over budget reconciliation given that they practically wrote the proverbial playbook on it. Since the tactic was created by the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 to stop indefinite and unproductive stalling by deficit hawks, it has been used 21 times, most of those by Republican leadership to pass controversial measures over heavy and determined minority opposition. Many of the programs conservatives hold most dear—the Contract for America, both rounds of the Bush tax cuts and Medicare prescription drug expansion, to name a few—were passed using the procedure.

In fact, almost all changes to health care system in the past 30 years have been done via reconciliation. And that’s actually much closer to the way democracy is supposed to work than the convoluted mess we’re currently saddled with. Elections are supposed to have consequences, and the winning party should, through majority rule, have the opportunity to try out its policies. The current system, whereby 41 Senators can stop virtually anything from passing through endless debate serves absolutely no one.

Reconciliation actually has a couple of tremendous advantages over the more conventional legislative methodology. Due to the Byrd Rule Amendment of 1990, it may only be used for measures that have a large impact on the budget, and all increases to the federal deficit must be both capped and meticulously accounted for. Non-budgetary policy changes, such as laws pertaining to contentious social issues and changes to Social Security cannot be achieved through reconciliation. This system produces more moderate and fiscally responsible policy outcomes than the sort of unfunded devil-may-care-how-we’re-going-to-pay measures that usually pass Congress, because the process is strictly about the numbers and not the BS that usually accompanies politics. The health care bill is only even eligible for reconciliation because the Congressional Budget Office has determined that it would decrease the deficit by approximately $130 billion over the next decade.

Furthermore, reconciliation might be the best way to help the Democrats reverse their sagging political fortunes. Contrary to the popular media meme, the Democrats trail in most polls not because the opinions of the American people have changed much (although the party has seen a legitimate loss of support from independents), but because they’ve so dispirited their base through division and inaction that most pollsters believe that Democrats will stay home on election day. The only way for Democrats to fire up their base again is by actually passing bills that their supporters care about.

Congressional Republicans have proven that they have no interest in bargaining in good faith with the Obama administration on any issue of salience. Repugnant and morally bankrupt as this stance is, that’s their prerogative—they’re merely responding to the wishes of their constituents, after all. Their dogma should not under any circumstances prevent the Democrats from living up to the promises they made to voters in 2008. It’s time for the Democrats to stop twiddling their thumbs and lead for once, even if they have to use reconciliation repeatedly to do it.