'Time to nuke the Republican party' - Guardian (UK) [View All]

Steven Guess (August 22)

Time to nuke the Republican party - Republicans don't want to pass real healthcare reform – so Democrats should push the button on the 'nuclear option'


Barack Obama's opponents view defeating healthcare reform as their ticket to recapturing power, with one Republican Senator infamously declaring that it would be the president's "Waterloo". Efforts by Republicans to feign interest in real reform by seeking to slow the progress of the bill or start over are nothing more than thinly veiled efforts to undermine the scope of reform and preserve the status quo. As a result of this increasingly polarised political landscape, Democrats are now signalling that they may pass part of the healthcare bill without Republican support by splitting the bill into two more manageable pieces.

The first part would include insurance reform and could be passed with broader approval. The second, more controversial bill would involve substantive reform and may include a government-run "public option" or nonprofit cooperative that would compete with private insurers. Passing the more contentious part of reform would require using a budget device called "reconciliation" that would enable the bill to pass by simple majority rather than the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.

Talk of using reconciliation has Republicans crying foul, calling it the "nuclear option", as well as an "end run" around the democratic process. It's difficult to take seriously protests that are so clearly hypocritical in the face of years of strong-arm Republican legislative tactics that used this same same tool on at least four occasions involving tax cuts and oil drilling. Moreover, George Bush's Senate allies once denounced the filibuster as the "formula for tyranny by the minority" and downplayed reconciliation as simply the "constitutional option".

More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/aug/22/healthcare-obama-reconciliation-congress