Research

Not long ago, a United States Senator from Illinois took to the floor to rail against the parliamentary tactic of reconciliation, declaring:

Under the rules, the reconciliation process does not permit that [full and fair] debate. Reconciliation is therefore the wrong place for policy changes … In short, the reconciliation process appears to have lost its proper meaning. A vehicle designed for deficit reduction and fiscal responsibility has been hijacked to facilitate reckless deficits and unsustainable debt.

That Senator was Barack Obama, and the year was 2005.  But this afternoon, President Obama is expected to call for Democrats to hijack the reconciliation process to ram through their $2.5 trillion government-run health care experiment.  And while the measure under consideration in 2005, the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, made tough budget choices for which the reconciliation process was intended, the health care bill clearly does not.

In fact, the more one considers the ... more