Reconcile Yourself to Reconciliation

The word of the day is reconcile:

1. to cause (a person) to accept or be resigned to something not desired: He was reconciled to his fate.
2. to win over to friendliness; cause to become amicable: to reconcile hostile persons.
3. to compose or settle (a quarrel, dispute, etc.).
4. to bring into agreement or harmony; make compatible or consistent: to reconcile differing statements; to reconcile accounts.

As the time for the reconciliation vote on the healthcare bill approaches, all four of those definitions seem rather appropriate depending on the side of the aisle you’re on. The GOP is laughing at the Dems for passing a hotly debated piece of legislation in what appears to be a shady underhanded way. Yup, thanks for handing them the election next fall. Oh, but wait! Hypocrisy abounds!

As Senator Orin Hatch put it in the Washington Post last week, reconciliation would be, “unprecedented in scope. And the havoc wrought would threaten our system of checks and balances, corrode the legislative process, [and] degrade our system of government.”
Oh, puuuuh-leeze! I wonder if he felt that way when he voted for the 2003 Bush tax cuts under reconciliation rules (by the way, V.P. Dick Cheney had to come in and cast his vote to break a 50-50 tie in that vote). In fact, of the 22 bills passed under reconciliation through 2008, 16 were passed under a Republican controlled Senate.

You know what else came about thanks to a reconciliation vote? The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, more fondly known as COBRA.

At the end of the day though, here is what’s most likely going to happen:

If you’ll remember, the Senate has already passed a healthcare bill. Remember the Night Before Christmas? Unfortunately, the House doesn’t like certain parts of the Senate bill and are likely to tweak it, undoing certain compromises that were made to pass the bill with 60 votes. In order to re-pass the bill through the Senate with those tweaks in place, they will probably have to use reconciliation rules. Ironically, this happens all the time. The difference here is that those tweaks will happen very quickly, in a matter of days rather than years.

But in reality, legislation is constantly being tweaked. A bill that you hear has passed one chamber of congress will, most likely, not be the bill that is ultimately enacted into law.