Good news in the U.S. Senate, where an agreement has been reached to keep reconciliation available as an option on health care reform.
The aggressive approach reflects the big political claim that President Obama is staking on health care, and with it his willingness to face Republican wrath in order to guarantee that the Democrats, with their substantial majority in the Senate, could not be thwarted by minority tactics.
While some Democratic senators were reluctant to embrace the arrangement, Mr. Obama made clear at a White House session on Thursday afternoon that he favored it, people with knowledge of the session said.
The reason for the reluctance is understandable. Reconciliation is not an ideal process and the Republicans are pledging holy war over the use of this tactic (such pledges are, of course, way ironic because Republicans have also used reconciliation for major policy changes).
That said, taking reconciliation off the table would be absolutely foolish. Former President Clinton said it was his biggest mistake. And taking reconciliation off the table leaves Republicans able to kill any reform bill simply by holding strong -- and they have every political incentive to kill reform.
Here's what our senior Senator had to say (in the NYT article linked above)
Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Finance Committee, said Friday that he would prefer not to pursue health legislation through the reconciliation process.
"I think it gets in the way," Mr. Baucus said, explaining that his goal was to produce a health care bill that could "get significantly more than 60 votes."
"If we jam something down somebody's throat, it's not sustainable," he said.
Here's the good news for Republicans. The Senator responsible for writing the bill is wisely trying to avoid using the reconciliation process, take a broad array of input, and write a bill that can get bipartisan backing. But the Republicans can't just stonewall now, nor can they hold hostage a process and a bill demanding massive concessions that would render the bill worthless.
It is important that Republicans not be allowed to run amok on health care, especially considering their treatment of Kathleen Sebelius, the moderate Governor of Kansas nominated to head the Department of Health and Human Services. The fact that Republican Senators are proposing filibustering Sebelius is another sign of how crazy the modern GOP has become. Sebelius only got two Republican votes on the Finance Committee -- a Senator from her home state of Kansas (where Sebelius is quite popular) and Olympia Snowe, the Senate Republicans' only true moderate.
