re: #275 Walter L. Newton

What’s the problem, if I remember correctly, there has been 21 bill passed by using the reconciliation process, and 16 of those times it was instigated by the GOP.

What’s good for the goose…

It’s a spin war in the media that I think the GoP is currently winning.

The way they would like it framed, and the way I’ve mostly seen it reported in the media, is that it would be an unprecedented use of reconciliation “ramming” a 2000+ page bill through with a simple majority in the Senate. The reason I put ramming in quotes is that seems to be the verb of choice used by reporters yesterday.

What actually is likely to happen though, is the 2000+ page Senate bill, that already passed the Senate by that oh-so-important 60 vote margin, would be passed by the House as is and signed into law by the President. Shortly after a new, much smaller bill (based off of the 11 page document the President put out recently), which is essentially a number of tweaks to the first bill, would be passed through Senate reconciliation. Both the scope of that follow-on bill and the fact that it deals with healthcare would be consistent with previous uses of reconciliation.