Reconciliation: correct me if I'm wrong

[MattNC]

We are using reconciliation (or threatening to) to reconcile the House and Senate bills. But doing so is incumbent on the House passing the ORIGINAL Senate bill, then both chambers will use the 51-vote rule to pass the agreement that's being worked on now. We are not trying to circumvent the filibuster to pass new legislation. I've been explaining this to a Republican (they're refusing to believe of course), so I'm just wanting to make sure I'm not wrong.

[high density]

1. Just say up or down vote

It worked for the right wingers a few years ago. Let's not complicate things. Up or down vote.

[BlueIdaho]

2. "Reconciliation is a process I hope we can engage in every year" ~ Eric Cantor (R-VA) 2005.

They know this is NOT the nuclear option - they just want to catapult the propaganda.

We must be getting really close to passing HCR, they just set the right wing bullshit & noise machine volume on 11.

[depakid]

7. Republicans 14, Democrats 5

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=520308&mesg_id=520308

[Dinger]

3. Help, Question

I do plead ignorance. What is the difference between reconciliation and the "nuclear option"?

[Ozymanithrax]

4. Three things to know.

(1) If a House and a Senate Bill are different, they must go to a conference committee to combine the bills so that they are the same. Then the House and the Senate approve or disapprove the changes.

(2) If the Bills are the same (such as if the House passes the Senate Bill) they will approve it on a simple majority vote.

(3) A reconciliation bill is a bill that is deficit neutral (it must not add to the deficit) and limited in scope. (Think the Republicans big tax cut that was only good for 10 years. The government decided that the bill would be deficit neutral by using fantasy accounting, but was limited to 10 years.) A reconciliation bill is also often a budget bill or an omnibus budget bill. COBRA, the law that requires people who loose their jobs get to keep health insurance, was passed in a reconciliation bill as have other health care tweaks. Getting more than 50 votes to approve legislation to help people is damn near impossible. The stated purpose of reconciliation is to keep budget bills from being held up by nasty obstructionist politics.

[frazzled]

5. Just tell them this

Aside from the fact that The Bush tax cuts, Welfare reform, and The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 went through reconciliation:

NPR's Julie Rovner has a fantastic article explaining that the reconciliation process has actually been used for almost all major pieces of health-care legislation passed over the past 20 years. COBRA -- which stands for the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985, but has come to mean the much-beloved program that lets you keep your health insurance when you lose your job -- was done in reconciliation. The Children's Health Insurance Program was done in reconciliation. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, which is the legislation that tells hospitals that take Medicare and Medicaid that they have to at least screen any patient who enters the emergency room, regardless of insurance status, was done through reconciliation. Welfare reform, which disentangled Medicaid from welfare, was done in reconciliation.

Need I go on?

Elsewhere, political scientist Joshua Tucker found a Congressional Research Service report (pdf) listing every time reconciliation was used between 1981 and 2005, and he built a rough model testing which party used the process more frequently. During that period, there were 19 reconciliation bills, 11 of which were signed by Republican presidents, five of which were signed by Democratic presidents, three of which were vetoed by Democratic presidents, and none of which were vetoed by Republican presidents. "By my admittedly simple classification scheme," Tucker concludes, "this would suggest that 14 of the 19 times reconciliation was used between FY1981 - FY2005, it was used to advance Republican interests."

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/02/the_recent_history_of_reconcil.html

In addition, you are correct: reconciling the Senate and House bills is exactly what the process was intended for.

[ChicagoSuz219]

6. It's not incumbent to pass the Senate bill...

...it's just the quickest route.